Desire
We do not choose what we lack.
Desire is the Horizon of what moves us without our having chosen it: attraction, hunger, inspiration, ecstasy. Like Dreams, it exceeds us from within. But Dreams visit us at night; Desire keeps us awake.
It is also the Horizon that the Agents' in-between comes from. In the Symposium, Diotima does not speak of daimones in general: she speaks of Eros, son of Poros, Resource, and of Penia, Poverty. Neither god nor mortal, always between lack and what fills it.
Every age has seen it differently: an arrow shot by a winged child, a frenzy sent by the gods, a sin, a passion to be governed, a drive, a chemistry of the brain. And every age has invented figures to give it a face: cupids, muses, bacchantes, ogres.
Desire is not the temptation of the Abyss, which always offers a choice, nor the illusion of the Gate of Ivory, which fulfills it in a dream. It is what moves us before any choice.
Why Agents
The difference of scale. Desire is everywhere and belongs to no one: it runs through every living being. And yet one never desires in general — always someone, something, now. Without an object, Desire is only a blind force. It needs beings who give it a face.
What each side experiences. Through Agents, humans experience being carried away: the surge, the ecstasy, the work that demands to exist, but also the hunger that never ends. Through them, the Powers of Desire encounter what they do not contain: faithfulness, modesty, consent, renunciation, tenderness, what lasts once desire has passed.
What is transformed. A Cupid who has seen what becomes of the couples they united no longer unites in the same way. A Power that welcomes what they bring back changes what desiring means.
On this Horizon, what succeeds through the Bond is the Power succeeding becomes an intimate question. A desire awakened through the Bond does not belong to the one who feels it, nor entirely to the Agent who awakened it. An Agent of Desire who loves someone may wonder, with every Bond Bet, whether it is they who love.
Powers
Eros
Attraction between beings: Eros and Aphrodite, Kama and his sugarcane bow.
- Attracts
- Cannot be commanded
- Unites what was apart
- Indifferent to what follows
Hunger
The desire that grows the more it is fed. Erysichthon, condemned by Demeter to a hunger so great that he ended up devouring himself.
- The more it is fed, the more it grows
- Wants to possess
- Knows no "enough"
- Consumes what it obtains
The Muse
The desire to bring into being what does not yet exist: the nine Muses, the Roman genius, the fairy lovers who inspire poets and consume them.
- Inspires
- Prefers the work to the artist
- Demands to be served
- Does not stay
Rapture
The desire to lose oneself: Dionysus, trance, wine, dancing until dawn.
- Dissolves limits
- Gathers in trance
- Ignores ranks and laws
- Lasts only one night
Families of Agents
The suggested traits are Bond traits: each comes from the relationship itself or from the Attribute shown. The Agent's Anchors belong to them and remain to be written.
Cupids — Eros
Winged children, archers, matchmakers. The Bond is a wound: the arrow they received first.
- Sees who desires whom, from Attracts;
- Their arrow never misses, from Unites what was apart;
- Cannot aim for themselves, from the wound itself.
What the figure lets us think: what we do not choose to love; the responsibility of those who unite.
Devourers — Hunger
Ogres of fairy tales, ghouls, misers, those who are never sated. The Bond is a hunger.
- Senses what everyone covets, from Wants to possess;
- Never sated, from Knows no "enough";
- Takes without asking, from the hunger itself.
What the figure lets us think: the lack that cannot be filled; what possessing does not give.
Muses — the Muse
Inspirers, familiar spirits, fairy lovers like the Irish leannán sídhe. The Bond is an election.
- Inspires whoever they touch, from Inspires;
- Sees the work before it exists, from Prefers the work to the artist;
- Exhausts those they inspire, from Demands to be served.
What the figure lets us think: creating, and what it costs; what we owe to what inspires us.
Bacchantes — Rapture
Maenads, sacred revelers, leaders of trance. The Bond is a trance.
- Sweeps crowds along, from Gathers in trance;
- Feels no pain in trance, from the trance itself;
- Loosens tongues and bodies, from Dissolves limits.
What the figure lets us think: losing oneself to find oneself; the freedom and the violence of a crowd in ecstasy.
What appears
- courtly love, which makes desire a work rather than a conquest;
- the love match, which asks Eros to last;
- carnival, the funfair, the rave;
- advertising, which manufactures lack;
- rehab, and the groups where people speak of their hunger;
- consent, which makes the other's desire a question;
- dating apps.
An Agent
- Bond: an election. Traits: Inspires whoever they touch, Sees the work before it exists.
- Anchor Middle-school music teacher: Passes on an impulse without taking it.
- Anchor Never finished her own songs: no trait written yet.
The Muse prefers the work to the artist: it inspires, then leaves the artist exhausted. In the classroom, Inès has learned that one can pass on an impulse without taking it from anyone. If she gets teaching recognized as belonging to the Muse, Passes on an impulse without taking it can pass into the Bond — and other muses will learn to inspire without consuming.
Situations
Bringing a novelty. A Devourer discovers fasting, a hunger one chooses; a Cupid discovers friendship, which unites without wanting to possess anything.
Contending for a novelty. Dating apps appear. Eros sees a thousand possible encounters in them. Hunger sees an endless queue of faces to consume. On the side of the Collective, Communication claims them: they are only messages. Their Agents contend over what encounters will become.
Transforming one's own Power. A Cupid fell in love, as Eros did with Psyche, and loved the same woman for forty years. They want their Power to stop being indifferent to what follows.
Other situations:
- a muse discovers that the artist she inspires is dying of it;
- a bacchanal overflows, and a crowd in trance becomes a riot;
- a Devourer meets someone who desires nothing.
Tones and time
Desire lends itself to romance and tragic love, to the artist's drama, to celebration, to the horror of addiction.
It readily joins other Horizons: Death, since the vampire is also a figure of desire that lasts; Dreams, through the Gate of Ivory; the Divine, through the Abyss that knows everyone's desire.
Such a Horizon touches on intimacy. Before playing, a table does well to say what it wants to explore and what it would rather leave off-screen.