Sortie / Orientation / Who are you?
"You, little whiff, are a demon, like me." As she speaks, the sphinx offers an unreadable grin full of brown-stained, uneven teeth. "The difference is: I am not allowed to manifest in time, as I am a gatekeeper. While you are not allowed to manifest in flesh, as you are an invader.
"Instead, you are manifesting as a miasma, an incorporeal presence, an imperceptible stink of debasement and foul corruption. Once you go through that door, no one will see you. You will only be able to interact with the world through influence. You will be bound to your host, nearly powerless, but able to nudge and befoul those around you in subtle ways. Your mere presence will heighten people's basest instincts, making people ever-so-slightly more primal and prone to ruin. Beyond that, you can reach out to spur them toward deeper depths. It's not mind-control; you are no puppet master. In fact, free will is a pretty important part of this whole endeavor. But if you only stoke the fires, it's not your fault if when humans choose to burn one another with them...
"You get my drift,” she offers with a playful wink.
"Anyway, it can be tough to complete your sortie without a body, but not impossible. Once upon a time, they let us manifest in the flesh, horns and tails for the straightforward types, though your breed tended toward the incubus and succubus thing. Then the rules changed. For a while there was a compromise, we could still incarnate as whispering goats and black cats, witch’s familiars and the like, but for the last couple of hundred years even that’s off the list. Now it's all about ‘influence,’ subtle touches and the incitement of latent emotions and drives, nothing more, not even whispers. Makes your job tougher I guess, but rules are rules, even for us."
You...