Modern/supernatural/horror/SOMETHING interest?

[Alphariusthemad]

I've had the vague seed kicking around for years, developed it on Gaia, and naturally - that being Gaia - only got one person. Hopefully it'll do better here, once I can decide what forum it belongs in.

To condense from the much more TL;DR thing intended for use as the actual thread's first post:
It's the modern day, at the surface level. Unbeknownst to the public and the media, there are people who know how to summon... things about which litttle is really known, other than how to control them, usually called demons because of what myths most summoners were familiar with before becoming summoners. There's at least two great summoner cabals at war underground, one mainly trying to stop the other from secretly taking over the world, and a government division with scrub summoners trying to learn more about the phenomenon.

Anyone interested in signing up and going crazy? (IC only, we hope)

[Maneki Neko]

From your description, I'd probably put it in "Supernatural" myself, but honestly, if you feel it belongs in some other forum, there's nothing stopping you. Of course, you could also use the Full-Featured gaming system and you wouldn't need to worry about which forum it went in. Depends on how you take to the FF system. ;3 (Welcome to WTF, by the way!)

[Alphariusthemad]

Yeah, Supernatural was what I initially had in mind, as it seems to be the Modern Fantasy type forum - funnily enough it was the subtitle that had me wondering, due to long built up preconceptions about what would be expected of the same subgroup defined by werewolves and vampires.

OK, here's the more TL;DR version:

Throughout mortal history, there have been summoners, hiding in the cracks of society, desperate and dangerous. There are more of them today than ever before, largely because there are more of everyone today than ever before, but they still hide; few dare to wield power over society, even from the shadows, and none dare to openly reveal their craft. Yet.

The summoners are so called because they know how to summon... things, about which little is truly known, to this world. To this day, no one really knows much about these summons - most commonly called demons, although some pretentious Summoners insist on other terms - but there are three absolutes that seem to hold for them all.
- A demon cannot affect this world until it has made a Pact, binding it to this world through a human's will. So long as the human is faithful to the pact, the demon is physically unable to break it.
- A demon has a Need, which must be fulfilled periodically to keep them bound to this world. The details vary, but generally the more powerful the demon, the more dangerous and/or horrible its Need will be, and/or the more often it will need it fulfilled.
- A demon, to put it simply, has powers which defy the normal rules of reality. But for this fact, no sane person would summon them, and most Summoners at least began as sane people.

However, there is an additional price to be paid - and one that is observable in this world, with verifiable means. Between their powers, their Needs, and simply their personalities, any demon you summon will tempt you to feed your most selfish and, in the long run, self-destructive desires. How great a price this is, of course, depends on your ability to resist, but a price it is, and no one is incorruptible.

But enough about the summons; you should have some warning about the summoners.

While there are many tiny cabals, three have become more famous than any others among those who Summon.

The Order of the Black Tower, said to have been founded in the 1200s, seek two ends: mastery of summoning, and mastery of the material world. They hunt down people with the drive to become summoners, destroy their lives to make them desperate enough, then offer them the forbidden fruit. In this way, their strictly hierarchical, strictly paranoid power structure, where advancement is strictly through overpowering and murdering the summoner above you, has spread its tendrils across the world; though their obvious internal strife holds them at bay, and though they are far from ruling the world from the shadows, the breadth and depth of their influence is frightening even when you account for how cripplingly factionalised they are.

The Church of the Broken God, formed in the 1930s after some Black Tower members had an epiphany, and recently recruiting mainly through the Internet to create a large, vaguely benevolent, but poorly funded and motivated (by summoner standards) group that is easy to underestimate. They believe that summoned demons are the pieces of the Broken God, and that when all the pieces are summoned and united the Broken God will grant eternal ecstasy to humanity. Beyond that, the details vary even from member to member, and are the subject of many a flame war on their forums; however, they're perceived as about as idealistic as summoners get, and are the main reason for the Black Tower's repeated failures.

"Division 42", a mysterious and highly funded organisation, reminiscent of the MIB. All evidence suggests they are as hilariously lacking in actual sorcerous knowledge as they are possessed of terrifying determination to acquire it, and even more terrifyingly bottomless reserves of lawyers, guns, and money to acquire it with. "All evidence" is not much, even in the archives of the comparatively organised Tower, but no one seems to question that the rumours of their most unsubtle actions - most notably the assassination of an Archduke of the Black Tower.