One of my PC's has the soul of a demon. Help.

[Midnightmouse3]

So I have this player that has the soul of a demon. Its also his soul but the demon has been dormant for a long time. The PC was created in a Frankenstein-esque sort of way and his soul was bartered for by his parents with some demons. As per usual this deal goes bad and his parents die, yet he gets a soul, and the PC doesn’t know of his true origins (just thinks he’s a street orphan). Now many years later the demon has now begun to surface and wants out. I imagine it as the demon let himself get into this mess because he was hiding from some other demons, but now he needs out. How does he go about it?
The PC never actually had an original soul. The demons soul was used as his own. Imagine it as he needed a boat and had to trade for a used one, little did he know that the original owner (demon) has been stowing away on the boat (soul) the whole time.

I want the demon to reveal himself to the PC, just by talking in his head, but the PC’s body is a prison for the demon. I think the demon would take advantage of the situation and appear to help the PC (give him some minor powers) and then turn on him at the last second. Any thoughts?
We are playing Pathfinder. All suggestions welcome. He is a sorcerer.

[holywhippet]

You could have the demon guide the player, under false pretenses, to somewhere there is another artificial body it is more interested in inhabiting. When it gets there it jumps ship and takes off in the new body. I'm not sure what would happen to the PC, possibly they will start to form their own soul somehow. This might take some divine intervention or some other trick.

[Tommy_Dude]

I am loathe to say this, but you could you borrow some themes from early Naruto. How the demon promises power and then tries to take over Naruto's mind and body during the fight. I'd say.... perhaps treat it like an intelligent magical item or give the demon stats and have opposed Charisma checks for control. (And I was loathe to mention it because I find myself accidentally copying anime themes with my characters/stories lately and it saddens my creative side.)

[goto124]

Does the player know his PC has a demon? If not, the surprise could be taken very well, or very badly. Could go either way easily.

[Maglubiyet]

In the movie Angel Heart, the protagonist is a private detective hired to track down a missing person. It turns out that he, himself, is carrying the soul of the man he is looking for.

A long time ago the man made a deal with the devil for his soul. To try to get out of it, he drove the private detective's soul out and replaced it with his own. The detective's mind remained the same, but it was now inhabited by the soul of the damned man.

Throughout the movie he is surrounded by a series of bizarre murders. It is really his true soul that is taking possession of his body and killing those who might help him solve the mystery. He is a good enough detective to figure out that he's the only one who could've been the killer in many of the murders. The devil is, of course, his employer who hired him to find...himself.

You could do something similar. The PC is hired by a mysterious client (the demons) to find someone (the demon). The demon doesn't want to be found so takes control every now and then and kills witnesses, destroys evidence, etc. The PC has black outs and finds these things when he wakes up.

[Acacia OnnaStik]

I assume the player knows, even though the character doesn't. Was there any discussion of what it might mean when the concept was first floated?

The demon attempting to seize control of the body is the usual course this kind of situation takes. Either through direct struggle of wills, or by bargaining powers for the promise of X amount of time in the driver's seat. Or one and then the other!

To keep the character viable if and when the demon is destroyed/cast out, you could say that in the course of living and doing things, a kind of soul-stuff has grown around the demon-soul, like vines on a trellis, and it's not quite like an ordinary soul but it's enough by now to keep him functioning, albeit probably with some odd side effects. You could make up some quest or other to grant him a Real Boy soul.

[Kane0]

What can change the nature of a man?

[Cikomyr]

What can change the nature of a man?

The more proper question would be:

"What can change the nature of a soul?"

Also, OP, i think you should reevaluate your first idea about the PC having no soul whatsoever beside that of the Demon's, otherwise why would he just be a nascent demon in a growing body?

You could consider, instead, having the PC living possessed since birth. Perhaps both souls being intertwined so much you dont know where one begins, where the other ends.

[Surpriser]

You could consider, instead, having the PC living possessed since birth. Perhaps both souls being intertwined so much you dont know where one begins, where the other ends.

In fact, the PC might not even know that other people don't have this dual personality. He grew up with a second being sharing his body, although the influence was only minor during his childhood, maybe a sudden emotion or strange thought form time to time. Basically, a friendly mentor and guiding spirit. As the demon part slowly awakens, this happens more and more often, including the demon taking over the body (with permission, "Here, let me show you how to do this").
What happens after that depends on the goals of the demon. Does it want to escape? Take over a new body? Bind the PCs other soul to the abyss? Hide from something/someone? Cause chaos and destruction?

[Bronk]

Interesting concept! I'm not sure how I'd go about this, but I can think of a few more ideas.

1: Boom. He's evil now. There was never any real person in there, just an illusion of a personality. Now that the illusion is slipping, his fellow party members can go through whatever checks there are in pathfinder to figure out he's possessed, but if they hit him with a dismissal or banishment or whatever, he falls dead, soulless. If they resurrect him, his original soul might come back on its own, or they might need to take precautions to make sure of it (and his personality would match the one they knew).

2: As above, but when they try to banish the demon, the body disappears as well! The player appears in the abyss, and if the party figures out a way to find him, they can adventure there for a bit and figure things out.

3: In the anime Yu Yu Hakusho (spoiler alert for awesome 25 year old manga/anime series), this exact thing happens to Kurama. He's a very powerful demon fleeing an even more powerful demonic hunter, and he hides by displacing the soul of a baby still in the womb. He still has his memories, but he finds himself with his power drastically reduced and very soon decides that he loves his human family, etc.

So, you could decide whether he's still a demon or just a demon's soul, then maybe your player could roleplay being the demon-in-a-human-body for a while, decide if he/she is good or evil (maybe have his two sets of memories battle it out in the Dream Heart), then get some benefit from it... either a bloodline of some kind, or a PRC like the draconic 'Disciple of Ashardalon' (or the 'good version' that was never statted, but showed up in that one novel series about Myth Drannor and used an eladrin instead of a demon).

[DontEatRawHagis]

I could imagine the demon needing control of the player or of some other body to anchor itself in the material plane.

Maybe the demon wants the player to dabble in golem creation to give him a body. Or perhaps the demon soul tricks the players to cast a reincarnation spell on the player in some way to regain a body it controls.

I suggest the demon seperate itself from the player as having the player dominated to Attack his allies is not always a fun experience.

That doesn't mean you can't have the demon soul affect the player, such as maybe a vunerability to holy attacks and fire resistance.

[Karl Aegis]

A demon's soul is cool and all, but it doesn't really do anything mechanically. You can safely ignore it entirely.

Aren't you playing in a system where a demon's soul is its body anyways? Who thought it was a good idea to stuff a whole demon into what amounts to a walking box?

[Xuc Xac]

Depending on what a soul is supposed to be in that setting, you might be looking at this backwards.

The pc isn't a person with a demon's soul. He's a demon with a person's body. As C. S. Lewis put it, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." It's not a person discovering that they have a demon inside them. It's a demon who is recovering from amnesia and finding themselves in a person's body.

[goto124]

Aren't we crazy sociopathic murderhobo human demons anyway?

[mikeejimbo]

I suggest the demon seperate itself from the player as having the player dominated to Attack his allies is not always a fun experience.

Depending on how cool with PVP your group is, you could just have the Demon player fight the rest of the party. It wouldn't be fun if he were an NPC for the fight, but of he were still in control of the character it could be awesome.

[Sith_Happens]

Who thought it was a good idea to stuff a whole demon into what amounts to a walking box?

Spoiler: The Answer

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[illyahr]

Spoiler: The Answer

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Ya, my mind went there also.