If there's a magical item that's common in every human
culture's folklore, it's the love potion. People have
tried throughout history to come up with something
that will compel the affections (or at least the lust)
of another. Nobody ever has - at least, nobody
without access to esoteric power, and even they can't
quite pull it off.
Sorcery does offer certain potions and charms that can
superficially do the job, but the effects never last,
the side effects range from severely annoying to
horrendous, and none of them offer real love, anyway.
This last can actually be very important: many
sorcerers are profoundly lonely individuals, and
having a grinning, mind-dead sex slave and sycophant
doesn't seem to help that condition, oddly enough.
And, of course, the worst thing was that there
actually is a reliable, easy to make love potion that
is absolutely guaranteed to work permanently.
Unfortunately, the ingredients needed to make it
absolutely require the hearts and brains of the two
people you wish to have fall in love with each other.
This is a fairly severe design problem.
Dedicated sorcerers tried everything to get around the
ingredient list: sorcerous hearts, homunculi, the law
of contagion. Nothing worked. The only loophole was
to use identical twins of both people: this worked,
mind, but it just meant that the sorcerer would have
to give up the occult benefits of having an identical
twin (there are some, mostly involving the transferal
of injury). All in all, the utility of the ritual was
low, so even Hatiphas eventually stopped offering it
as an inducement to sign on with Hell. There was just
no way to get it to work.
Much time passed. Princes rose and were cast down.
One day, not too long ago, the Demoness of Sorcery was
going through her desk, trying to clear up the backlog
(even celestials have paperwork, especially those
working for Fate). She came across the old
specifications, grimaced and was about to circular
file it when her eye caught the latest digest of
corporeal affairs. The front page had a minor blurb
about the successful cloning of one of the talking
monkeys' domestic animals. Hatiphas looked at the
digest, then looked at the tattered file - and started
to laugh. It wasn't even a particularly nasty laugh -
which, in Kronos' Archives, is a rare thing, and an
ominous one at that.
A short chat with Vapula later, Hatiphas was in
business. After all, what's a clone but an identical
twin with a delayed birthday? Now she's got yet
another irresistible hook - serve Hell, and get the
woman or man you always wanted. All she needs is a
tissue sample from you and your unwitting future love
- something not too difficult to arrange - and pretty
soon you get two little vials guaranteed to provide
you with True Love. Just sign on the dotted line.
It's perfect.
Well, it would be, if Jean were providing the
equipment and technicians (and don't think that Heaven
won't be at least a little tempted to duplicate this
trick, packaged as a voluntary mutual way to regain
the happiness and joy of your marriage, or something).
Vaputech can always be counted on to blow up in
amusingly disastrous ways. Those GMs out there with
GURPS Warehouse 23 are directed to page 76 for a
particularly nasty side effect; those without it
should be ashamed of themselves for not having such a
priceless resource.
Failing that, well, the process does result in two
dead bodies. Perfectly good bodies, so Vapula
wouldn't see why he couldn't use them for his
zombification projects. Or maybe a corpse or two just
washes up on shore. Either way, the PCs will no doubt
scratch their heads over why said bodies have
fingerprints that match living humans - and,
hopefully, jump to a wrong conclusion in that way we
all know and count on fervently. At the very least,
they'll be a little fuzzy over who the victims
actually are when it comes time to Smite...
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EDG <[email protected]>
In Nomine Collection Curator