So I'm building a vile little scenario that I think might be interesting.

Demon A is a fetus, a Parasite hosted in the body of its master - a pregnant woman.

Demon B is a Passer, looks like a pregnant woman; its master is the fetus it carries.

Both demons were originally Summoned by a man who currently has no demons Bound to him. Both have been "taken over" in terms of Binding by their respective symbiotes.

The man has Lore 4 or 5; the fetus sorcerer and the pregnant-woman sorcerer have Lore 1. All three or any two are player-characters.

Other than that, I toss it to y'all. Develop it. How did this messed-up situation get started? What's going on? When does play begin? Go!

Best,
Ron

That is a sick little scenario...

Playing the Fetus-sorcerer would be interesting, though it would stretch the limits of my ability to believe, as what would make a fetus sophisticated enough to exert the neccessary control over its demon to actually be involved in play.

The other two would be easier to buy, and easier to play.

My first idea...

The Two demons are mother and daughter. The two Lore-one types are the same...

The Lore 4 guy is the father of both children, the human one literally and the demonic one also literally, as he attempted to summon it via coitus with the mother demon.

How did they get switched...I'll have to think on that one.

Jake

Yuck!

Sounds super icky... how about some more detail? Relationships, situation, color etc...

All sorts of disturbing things can be done with Abortion as Exorcism here...

talk about steping on some sensitive toes...

Ugh!

I suppose Dr. Forecep-stein will be back as well for this one. How could he miss it? This could be a series of scenarios with him in it. In the next we'll have a demon fetus being born pregnant with a human child. Then one with a male pregnant with a demon that can only come to full term in a most bloody fashion. Ooh, and then there'll be the one where the demon is trying to get back into the womb. Or the reverse earth-mother demon that takes the sorcerer back into the womb at binding.

Are you trying to outdo Kult, Ron?

Any chance we can get a scenario that isn't meant as a demo, or intro scenario, but yet also isn't focused quite so much on the squick factor or pregnancy?

As for practical advice, the two demons in question in the proposed scenario can't be coincidental. There must be a reason why the sorcerer summoned them both at the same time, or that they both arrived simultaneously. The "logical" thing (in sort of a Yin/Yang fashion) is that the demons will try to sacrifice their respective sorcerers in a ritual intended to join them so that the combined demon can become Immanent, and exist in the world sans sorcerers. Or the sorcerer who summoned them might know that they can be combined, and this is all a rather elaborate summoning and binding.

The happy ending for the pregnant and fetus sorcerers would then be that they banish their demons, and then the mother takes the human baby as hers (probably killing the summoning sorcerer in the process). But I don't want to play before we play. As a demo, play should start right at summoning of the two demons, and they should come to full term by the end of the session. The summoning sorcerer should be sorta obvious from the start, though the other sorcerers may not know precisely what is going on. For longer play, there should be a lot more discovery.

Mike

taking a stab in the dark, so to speak:

the summoner and his barren wife are successful: she is now with child, in a manner of speaking.

but something has gone terribly wrong. the fetus-demon was accompanied by another demon -- a deformed version of the summoner's wife, also pregnant. the fetus in its belly is actually the wayward soul of a sorcerer who was cast out of his own body and expelled from our world many years ago, and found himself on the dark side.

the summoning sorcerer only meant to summon one demon, demon A. demon B, and the sorcerer-fetus within, were not intended. to complicate matters further, the demon-mother attacked the summoner and his wife, then fled.

they've learned that the fetal sorcerer is none other than klaus reinhart, a sorcerer of infinite cruelty and great power. he hijacked the summoning, so that he could return to earth and extract his revenge.

so the summoner, who's at least partially responsible for reinhart's return from exile, must defend himself and his wife from reinhart, who wants to silence them before they can spread the word that he's back on earth. and, ultimately, they need to find and destroy him before he "hatches."

start with a bang: screeching horribly, the demon-mother smashes through a window and lurches down the street, butt naked.

afterwards: frankly, i'd go nuts with the splatterpunk. the phrase "strangled with an umbilical cord" comes to mind.

-- rafael

deadguy wrote: the fetus in its belly is actually the wayward soul of a sorcerer who was cast out of his own body and expelled from our world many years ago, and found himself on the dark side.

Mike Holmes wrote: The only thing I'd change is to let the player of Reinhart decide what he wants to do. He can kill the others, or join them, or dominate them, whatever. Still start with the summoning, but allow for it to go any which way.

Again, though, this seems about demo length. One series of decisions made in a short time about a narrow set of circumstances.

Fetus Sorcerer - A very old fetus. She was aborted and kept alive by some terrible biomedical sorcery in the 1940's. As the decades passed she absorbed the magic and grew into a sorcerer. She somehow caused a demon to completely inhabit a pregnant woman (possibly the demon nestles in most of the woman's skull) and now resides in this demon-mother. When the sorcerer is about to be born (gestation period can be totally variable, we're talking strange magic here), the demon seeks out another pregnant woman to live in and take in the sorcerer with it.

Pregnant Sorcerer - The voluntary mother of the fetus sorcerer. She was devastated by both her permanent inability to conceive following the abortion and the loss of her child. She was aided by her lover/husband (below) to summon a demon into herself. It keeps her perpetually young and able to conceive. Depending on the sorcerer's whims, the children may or may not know about their circumstances. The children may even be demons themselves.

Man - An old man now, he is/was the lover of the Pregnant Sorcerer and the father of the Fetus Sorcerer. He is kept alive by a combination of strange magic and medical science (Possibly some variation on Lovecraft's Cool Air).

---

Sorcerer PC's: The Pregnant Sorcerer and Old Man.
Setup: They live on a tropical island with one busy tourist port, a palatial estate and a great deal of intrigue. You could build quite a relationship map between all those servants and scientists and locals. A dead pregnant woman was found by a fisherman, autopsy results reveal most of her brain is missing. The Old Man realizes the implications and is worried, the Pregnant Sorcerer doesn't know the history but can read the Old Man and knows this is ominous.

Bang: The Pregnant Sorcerer and Old Man are woken by servants. They are hurried to a scene where the Pregnant Sorcerer's children are all murdered and the stench of fermaldehyde and magic is strong.

Rafael,

Shades of The Manitou. Very interesting.

Generally, though -- ick, ick, Ick, Ick, ICK! An amazing symmetry here with enormous squick factor.

Best,

Blake

Hi.

That's a scenario with a high (potential) ick factor.

The presence of the feteus' leads me to consider a premise based around sacrificing the future for the present. From this, the definition of humanity I'd use would be concern for the future (that's a weak way of putting it, can't phrase it better). Humanity 0 would be someone who is greedy and selfish, with no concern for the future, either thiers, or, most importantly, anyone elses. To summon a demon then, one must destroy something with future potential. The greater the potential, or the more likely it was to fufil, the greater the demon.

The woman with the demon in her womb would have lost the ability to bear children. She is young, prehaps 22. Demon A confers stasis upon her, so she will not age whilst she carries it, and it is not in need. If the demons need is not met, it will grow. If it breaks the binding, it will cause the host to enter labour, and become an unbound Passer.

The sorcerer used to have demon A inside him. However he felt it's power growing, the attraction of a demon inside him waning. He summoned demon B, a quite different sort of demon. His attempts to banish demon A were unsucessful, so he thought about Containing it elsewhere. After a few drinks in a pub, he met the (now current) host, and later made her the container later that night.

Fast forward a while. The fetus in demon B is a clone of the sorcerer. He Contained a little part of himself inside the demon, as part of a plan to achive immortality. The fetus can see through the hosts eyes, but dimly, and can spek to it. He can hear things around it but only vaugely.

Kickers: Host of demon A: You realise what it is inside you, and how long it's been there. Then it kicks. Hard. It wants something.
Sorcerer: The binding to demon B drops, and you can't find her, and thus you, anywhere.
Fetus inside demon B: You wake up, in a cold place, separated from the world. You exert your control over the suroundings, until you can see. It's not quite what you expected after going to bed last night.

Play starts.

Possible courses:
Fetus leads demon B to the sorcerer, where he would probably try to work out what happened. Fetus will also likely try to work out where it comes in. Host of demon A upon meeting the sorcerer is likely to either demand his help to banish the demon, or extract vengence, possibly leading to the sorcerer summoning another demon for protection.

Play options:
Host of demon A gets labour pains - feels demon may be about to leave.
Demon A is an entity that would have been the child of demon B had thier furture been allowed to come to pass. Demon B feels maternal to Demon A, and does not want it to be Banished.

At least, that's how I'd set that up.

Blake Hutchins wrote: Rafael,

Shades of The Manitou. Very interesting.

Generally, though -- ick, ick, Ick, Ick, ICK! An amazing symmetry here with enormous squick factor.

Best,

Blake

Squick - verb - to describe something in a manner that gets the describee to say "Iwwwww". To "gross someone out".

Squick Factor - how likely something is, if described, to squick someone.

The term is often used in RPGs with certain Cthulhu scenarios, Whispering Vault situations (and characters), or the entire game of Kult.

Mike

Rafael,

The Manitou was a book and later movie that dealt with a woman checking into a hospital with a tumor on her neck that turns out to be a fetus. The fetus turns out to contain the manitou (spirit) of an ancient Indian shaman reinstantiating himself through her body. He is self-aware, has lots of demon-summoning power, etc. Bent on revenge against the palefaces, etc. etc. Both book and movie had some very interesting sorts of Sorcerous concepts, in particular a sort of Electric Ghosts kind of climax.

Not deep, but pretty cool.

Best,

Blake

Okay, here goes another scenario:

The man wants to bind a demon that is born of a human woman (I have no interesting motivations for this). He seeks and romances a woman and marries her. One night he summons a demon that can transform itself into his likeness, and substitutes the demon for himself in bed. She is impregnated with the demon's spawn (Demon A). Unbeknownst to the man, the demon is also impregnated by the union with the wife. Instead of returning to the demon plane, the demon remains but now in the form a woman (Demon B). The wife and Demon B are the parents to both Demon A and the fetus carried by Demon B (sort of makes them twins separated at conception). Play starts when two events happen: (1) the woman learns that the babe inside her is not her husband's; either through medical records, or by disturbing memories of the conception similar to Rosemary's Baby; and (2) the man recognizes Demon B as the original demon he summoned.

I can't say where it would go from there.

Julie

OK, my Sorcerer inexperience is getting in the way here - what are we talking about in terms of "physical" entities? I mean, the Parasite-demon is physically in the pregnant woman sorcerer, as is the fetus sorcerer. But the Passer-demon is seperate, right? So it isn't *actually* carrying the fetus that is its' master - correct? The pregnant woman sorcerer carries the fetus sorcerer.

If I've got that right . . . the male sorcerer (PC #1) decides he wants a kid. He's got the Parasite and the Passer bound to him, finds an appropriate woman (PC #2), knocks her up (add love and/or marriage to taste), and discovers that the kid (challenging-to-RP PC #3, or NPC) has incredible potential as a sorcerer, but it will not survive its' birth. As a result, he concocts a ceremony to "bind" the Parasite to the fetus, so that it will survive birth (this ceremony might be the means by which the woman learns of sorcery - he needs to teach her a little to complete it). During the ceremony . . . things go wrong. The fetus thinks its' parents are trying to kill it, and reaches out and binds the Passer (possibly already jealous of the woman and child our sorcerer is now spending so much time and energy with) to protect itself. In the confusion, the woman binds the Parasite to herself rather than the fetus (or maybe, *also* to the fetus in some odd way, so that if she ever banishes the demon the fetus aborts).

The game starts. We have a fetus using the Passer to both protect mom so that it can be born, and to protect itself from dad and mom doing anything to it, despite the fact that they may be well-intentioned. But unless something's done, it'll die during birth - probably using the Passer to kill dad and who know who else in the process. Big sorcerer dad has no demons now. Mom has her first.

If we want to really put the time pressure on, the ceremony needed to happen right before birth, and mom is in labor. Or she's due in a week or three. Or a different tack - she's entered an odd eternally-pregnant state, now hates dad, years pass, fetus gets more intelligent (easier to have fetus as PC), then dad comes back with a plan . . .

I'll see if I can come up with some good Needs, Desires, Telltales and the like over the weekend.

Gordon

Hey,

Um, no, Gordon, the Passing demon is carrying a human fetus sorcerer. The human woman sorcerer is carrying the Parasite demon fetus.

The definition of "Passing" isn't violated by this idea.

Carry on, carry on.

Best,
Ron

Squick Factor Warning: details from real, life-and-death squickiness are described herein.

Strangely enough, I am reminded of an episode from my home state of New Mexico that could have torn from the middle of a session coming from this thread's basis.

I think it was in the late 70s or early 80s. A mentally ill woman (to understate the case) kidnapped a pregnant woman, drove her to a remote mountain area, and performed a caesarian section with a car key.

Since the perpetrator was not a medical professional, her victim died. The child lived, and was placed in foster care, where a followup article found she had grown to a thriving young girl a few years later.

It's a glad thing that someone literally born to such horror can nonetheless develop into a happy, well-adjusted person, and I hope she's continued to be well to this day.

Of course, the thing I wonder is: where did that car key end up? From a mythopoeitc, not to say sorcerous standpoint, it would be one hell of a potent object.

A Token like that could lead to a nasty cascade effect of demons-born-to-humans and vice-versa. Or perhaps it's actually an Object demon that can change its form, whose duty on earth is torment four intertwined souls in this specific way for eternity.

Yick.

--JB

Ron Edwards wrote: Um, no, Gordon, the Passing demon is carrying a human fetus sorcerer. The human woman sorcerer is carrying the Parasite demon fetus.

(Inspired by Hyperion by Dan Simmons)

A (male) master sorcerer in search of eternal life has two apprentices, at least one of whom is female. The master summons a powerful "fountain of youth" demon, which appropriately takes the form of a fetus and must be bound to the female apprentice.

The other apprentice is rejuvenated first (as a test case) when the female apprentice betrays them (to a rival?) and disappears with the youth demon. The "rejuvenated" sorcerer continues to grow younger -- without end! The master then summons the demon-mother as a host when the apprentice reaches the pre-natal stage. The fetus-sorcerer now has nine months or less before death by conception.

(Inspired by the character Alia in Dune and the X-Files episode "Terms of Endearment" from the sixth season and guest starring Bruce Campbell)

A youthful, would-be sorcerer accepts not being able to beget children as part of his initiation. Who cares about starting a family when they're young? He assumes that it's just mystical infertility but it turns out that he will father demonic children instead of human ones. Now he's older and his wife (and apprentice) is pregnant with ... who knows?

In the meantime, perhaps he now wants children of his own, has discovered the true nature of the price, and has found a loophole in impregnating a passer demon. Or maybe he just keeps a demon mistress on the side. Either way, his demon lover is carrying his (human) child.

The demon lover is of the parasite->possessor->passer variety. Its need is to become increasingly closer to fitting in as whatever it passes for. Therefore its desire is to take the sorcerer's wife's place. If it hasn't accomplished this by the time the child is born, it will settle for "starting over" by "dying" in childbirth and trying to possess the child instead.

The child is supernaturally precocious but has the price of being more vulnerable to demons, i.e. suffers a penalty to all demon interactions. The child is linked to the demon-mother's senses and thoughts but the only "commands" the child can issue are to the demon's involuntary bodily processes. Will the child sabotage the demon's attempts to seduce Dad or encourage them to avoid possession?

IMO, this is the best one so far. Rock on.

Jake

Demon A is a fetus, a Parasite hosted in the body of its master - a pregnant woman.

Demon B is a Passer, looks like a pregnant woman; its master is the fetus it carries.

Wow, now that's heretical. Congratulations, Walt!

Mike