Inspired by the Mask of the Sorceror thread...

What if:

Humanity is connection to the world, in a very real sense.

Sorcerors are people able to sacrifice that connection to the world in exchange for power.

Demons are sorcerors who have lost all their connection to the world.

The basic mechanics work near-perfectly. Each time a sorceror deals with a demon in a way that potentially brings it closer to the world, that sorceror potentially loses some Humanity.

The twist?

When sorcerors reaches 0 Humanity, they cease to exist in the world. They can, however, be contacted as Demons.

When a sorceror loses Humanity in a Demon contacting/summoning/binding, the Demon has a chance to gain that humanity point (haven't considered a mechanic yet). This doesn't give the Demon any actual Humanity, though. Instead, it reduces the Demon's power. When the Demon reaches 0 power, it exists as a shade of its former self and if a Sorceror who has bound the demon willingly sacrifices 1 Humanity, the Demon may become a (1 Humanity) Sorceror again.


Stuart

Hi Stuart,

H'm, at first I thought you were providing a fairly humdrum consequence for 0 Humanity, and not too hard to implement. But your last couple of sentences suggest something very unusual.

Are you suggesting that as the sorcerer loses Humanity, the demon loses Power as well? This would imply that demons would, personally, try to keep sorcerers from losing Humanity.

That's interesting - the rituals that bring and bind the demons would actually weaken the demon. Demons would simultaneously want to be present and bound, but would, after that, not encourage either further sorcery or mundane Humanity-reducing acts.

Is that what you were after?

One more thing: what non-sorcerous acts would typically call for Humanity checks?

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Yes... I think that's what I was after.

Basically, the idea attempts to add a bit more complexity to Demon-Sorceror interaction. Does the Demon want to regain its Humanity? Is it willing to pay the price for that? Demons (under this definition) will almost invariably be horribly conflicted.

I think if I were to use this system I might say that the only Humanity-reducing acts involve acts of sorcery. Part of this is that the definition lends itself to such an interpretation. Another part is that it isn't clear whether a bound demon would have a shot at gaining that Humanity.

Alternately, Humanity could be lost by losing other sorts of connections to the world - cutting off ties between close friends and family members, changing your name, becoming reclusive, etc.

There strikes me as being some potential here. That doesn't mean there aren't kinks to be worked out. Thoughts?

Stuart

It strikes me that what you're describing here is a reversible version of the dynamic in Disney's Aladdin: "Ultimate cosmic power, itty-bitty living space." As a sorcerer (yes, they call them that in the film) moves toward greater and greater power, he becomes less and less human, eventually becoming a an all-powerful genie -- who's suddenly confined to a little lamp and obeying people.

To put this in a more serious vein, that means the dialectic of humanity and power is also an issue of will: humans may be weak, but at least they have Free Will. Once you have really high power, you stop being able to exert your own will.

I guess the one thing I'd add to this dynamic, and I'm not sure how you'd do it in Sorcerer, is that the demon really wants to swap with the sorcerer. The demon badly wants to be human again, since (like Dr. Faustus' Mephostophilis) it's seen just how bad Hell is (or Over There, or just not being human), and it knows that in order to become human it's probably going to have to trick a sorcerer into becoming a demon and switching places. In order to accomplish this, it's going to have to be quite an effective and obedient slave, but it's also going to have to tempt the sorcerer to use more and more power (and lose humanity). That would really up the ante on the sorcerer-demon relationship. In addition, you might note that Mephostophilis pretends to be Dr. Faustus' friend, even warning him against selling his soul, as a reverse-psychology trick. In the present context, we might suggest that the demon is in effect borrowing the sorcerer's humanity to get the sorcerer to trade it in for power. When the sorcerer finally goes to Hell (becomes a demon), the borrowed humanity becomes real, and the demon becomes a sorcerer again. And then we find out if he's really learned anything....

Hm... this is a bit different from the concept I had envisioned based on the book... but intriguing nonetheless.

As a semi-side note, the sorcer-becomes-genie thing reminded me of a story I did once about a modern vice cop who intercepts a package meant for a prominent mafia don and finds nothing less than a ring housing a real djinni.

The cop uses the djinni's powers to bring down the don, and being a decent guy, lets the djinni convince him to use his final wish for it's freedom.

The djinni forgot to mention one little item. The only way to release a djinn is to take it's place.

Djinni goes free. Cop gets sealed into ring. Ring gets picked up by mafia don's misanthropic nephew. Hijinks ensue. The heroic cop must learn in a hurry the demonic art of twisting his masters' wishes against them.

Cool idea? I thought so too... I don't know how it gets resolved though, I never got that far.

Part of the tension in this idea also comes from the fact that demons who intend to become sorcerors again will have... issues with each other.

I mean, say I am a demon at power 1. I have a shot of becoming a Humanity 1 sorceror.... but I certainly don't want to stay at humanity 1.

So how do I increase that? Yeah. I banish demons.

(Note: Banishing demons, under this sub-system, would likely increase their power. Also, demons don't like that.)

Now, the thought is that all of this potentially serves to make demons interesting... and given the continuum from Sorceror to Demon and back, there doesn't seem to be a prima facie reason to not play a character who becomes a Demon.

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

Couple references:

1. The Sorcerer's Soul has pretty complete rules for shifting human-to-demon and vice versa.

2. The mini-supplement Hellbound has a whole bevy of rules-tweaks and Humanity concepts that allow fascinating shifts across Humanity 0 and back.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

I remember something like that in Soul (which I recently picked up, but have really only skimmed, so far). I'll need to check it out.

Stuart