One man’s useless ritual is somebody else’s key to mayhem
Dan Wurthers was a magickal adept, and social inept, who managed to get a demon to teach him a love spell. Of course, since this was a demon, there was a catch. Dan learned that the spell actually did cause an infatuation in on person for another person. The catch was that it made the caster of the ritual infatuated with the target, not the other way around.
Stan Hardy is a sociopath. He doesn’t care about people, period. But he’s an Entropomancer, and he’s heard stories that if you risk your life along with someone you love, you can get a major amount of power. But he didn’t have anyone he loved…then he heard Dan complaining about his “useless love spell”….
Players are likely to get involved by finding Dan beaten or dead, and his ritual stolen. They may be confused at first about the nature of the ritual…And hey, has anybody seen Stan’s old girlfriend recently?
Nasty twist using magick to love someone and then risking their life.
I wonder though, if he becomes infatuated how does he so readily risk their life? Perhaps a twist would be that after he uses the ritual he ends up unable to allow himself to see his “love” come to any harm or risk.
Suddenly he’s building up small charges like crazy and causing all sorts of noise while doing whatever he can to keep the subject of his infatuation from any and all harm or risk.
All that noise is bound to draw even scarier attention than a misguided entropopmancer.
As is, this is pretty cool. But if that sociopath is a PC … holy shit, that’d rock. I really want to play that character. That’s some drama gold right there. But it feels wasted on an NPC.
Generally, I’d say sociopaths don’t make PCs. On the other hand…a sociopath who uses this ritual might end up being controlled by the target. Ever seen Terminator 2, with Arnold as the “good” terminator? The only reason it doesn’t go around killing people is that the object of its fixation (John Connor) tells it not to. So instead it just shoots to maim…
Of course, that’s just one way it could play out. The sociopath could start risking the target’s life, while telling the struggling target, “This is all for you, baby!” After all, how can he give her what she deserves without some major charges?