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 a DNA scan of said bodies will match that of a living human - 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…