[Sorcerer] Contacting/Summoning Object Demons
The Dragon Master:
How does this play out?
It's fairly easy to picture the other kinds of demons being contacted and summoned, but how does this play out with object demons?
As an example: Blek'ruth, Possessor Demon, color- upon being called Blek'ruth appears as a swirling vortex surrounding the Sorcerer. As compared with: Bulc'nath, Object Demon, color- a demon bound into a gun long ago. But how does the contacting play out? What about Summoning? Would contacting be related to the lore roll to recognize Bulc'nath as an object demon? Or is it more a matter of getting Bulc'naths attention?
I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around this one, and I know that if I don't get it straight in my head on of the players of my one-shot will attempt just this.
The Dragon Master:
I was wondering through other pages and found, I think, what I was looking for in this post. I've only gotten into the first part of the second post, but I already am seeing what I was looking for. I'm going to keep reading it, but I think that is what I'm looking for. Apparently my Search-Fu is weak at 7 in the morning.
The Dragon Master:
Turned out not to be quite what I was looking for, but I still think I gleaned some useful information from it. More importantly, I think I figured out the main disconnect relates to the difference between the stages. So let's take the Bulc'nath example and see if I have it straight.
Bulc'nath: Object Demon, Handgun, Need: To be quenched in blood, Desire: Corruption
Contacting: This is where you first communitcate with the demon, creating a relationship. It might be thought of as a phone call to establish, well, contact.
In this case: Darrell is wandering through an antique store. Across the room he spots an antique revolver. The way the light shines on the still bright chrome draws him in, and for a moment, his heart flutters.
Summoning: If Contacting is a telephone call, then Summoning the first face-to-face meeting.
In this case: Darrel walks over to the glass enclosure in which Bulc'nath lay. A successful lore roll tells him this is something special. He must have it. The proprietor says he doesn't know how that particular gun got there, but it is most certianly not for sale.
Binding: Seems like this is where you prove to the demon that you can meet it's Need.
Perhaps Darrell waits till the proprietor leaves and punches through the glass to grab the gun and run. Perhaps he pulls out his blade and kills the proprietor, grasping Bulc'nath in his blood covered hands. Either way he leaves with the gun.
I'm still trying to figure out the others (how do you punish a gun? how do you banish a ring?) but will post my interperetation later today. In the meantime, am I hitting the mark? Am I even on the same continent as the mark?
The Dragon Master:
For this next bit, let's try LoTR, and The One Ring.
Punishing: The only thing I can think to compare this to is an argument. At the end of which, if you won, the demon grudgingly accepts your stance. Though I can't figure out a visual/scene to demonstrate it with an object demon.
Banishing: This is the ultimate in rejection. The Sorcerer, who brought the Demon to our realm against the will of Reality itself, is saying that the Demon has no place here.
In this Case: After a rollercoaster ride, including a glimpse of just how far he can fall, and how much he has to loose if he does, Darrel decides to get rid of Bulc'nath. He tries to thow it away, or to give it away, but it always finds it's way back. Determined to be rid of it, he takes a hammer and starts beating it to pieces. But the battle isn't really in the smashing of it. It is in his conscious descision to destroy Bulc'nath, and in the internal battle (perhaps increased by a power or two of Bulc'naths) to do so.
LoTR: Frodo takes the ring to the Mountain of Doom, and fights the whole way over whether there's a better way. All of this might be seen as a ___ which provides him with bonus dice to the actual banishing. The heat of the Volcano isn't enough to destroy the ring. It is the conflict in the Volcano where Frodo fights against it's influence on him and decides the world is better if this thing doesn't exist that allows for it's destruction. (yes, I'm taking some liberties here to make the point).
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
I think you are in fact in the same ballpark of confusion as Hans was in the thread you referenced, but not in the exact same way. Unfortunately, there seem to be layers of confusion involved, so I will proceed in steps.
1. The first issue that's tangling you up is the relattionship between an Object, which is a demon Type, and whether the demon has been Summoned. In your Bulc'nath example, you are presenting a contradictory case: the demon has already been Summoned, and yet you're talking about performing a Contact and a Summoning. This is nonsensical; Contacts and Summons are only performed on demons which are not Summoned - or to be more literal, which do not (yet) (or any more) exist. To be clear: Contacting does not telephone an existing demon across space. It establishes communication with an un-Summoned, arguably non-existent demon.
2. That example also uses some problematic language: the idea that the demon was Summoned and Bound into the form of a gun. That is perfectly OK as far as it goes, but it represents a derived, interpretive application of the game-mechanics. It would be just as perfectly OK to say that the demon was a gun to start with, no "Bound into" required, which is another derived, interpretive application of the game-mechanics. In other words, such applications are necessary to play Sorcerer, but choosing one of them does have consequences for details and uses of sorcery later. My thinking is that you, in using that phrase, have traveled down a path of imagination already, but are still under the impression that you're talking about the fundamental mechanics.
We should stop there for just a minute. I'm still working with your first post. (It's very hard to deal with someone who posts, thinks about it, posts again, thinks about it, et cetera, especially when a couple of wrong turns are taken on the way.) Is it clear that your example goes away, and all the confusion with it, when you recognize that Summoning brings Bulc'nath into existence? And if you did find Bulc'nath in the shop, years after it was originally Summoned, that you would not have to Contact or Summon it at all, but could proceed directly to Binding if desired?
Now I'll go on to your second post and, well, it's all a mess based on that misunderstanding. Darrell doesn't have to Contact and Summon the demon at all. It's sitting right there in front of him. Nor, if he was across the city or across the world and tried to "phone" it using Contact, would it work. Contact will only function if the demon is not sitting in the shop, or in fact sitting anywhere at all. It would either never have been Summoned, or had been Summoned in the past but also Banished. That's what Contact is for.
Since you were not, in your terms, in the same continent as the mark, forget all that stuff you wrote about the Ring. Let's work through this bit about Contacting and Summoning first.
Everyone else: I know you are just itching to talk about the Charnel Gods demons and the AI spaceships and stuff like that. Please do not. It will cause horrible problems. Those concepts are handled by derived rules introduced in Sorcerer & Sword, and for the love of God, just hold your water until this material, the core material, has been processed fully first.
Best, Ron
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