Succubus

Succubus
Class	Other — displaced; by most readings of the Daemon class
Dwells	close, and only where it has been admitted
Feeds on	libido; the psyche of the sexually frustrated and the sexually obsessed
Approach	the matching described under Affliction; rarely anything as formal as a bargain
Earliest account	ancient and continuous, in more traditions than we can list
Consensus among us Real, common, and the clearest instance of the matching principle we hold. Whether it is a distinct class or a daemon of one appetite is unsettled. contested inherited

Beings of pure libido. They seek out the sexually frustrated and sexually obsessed to feed on their psyche. inherited

The inherited line is short and correct. What it does not say is that the selectivity in it is the entire point.

The clearest case of the matching

Affliction holds that Others pair with people by kind, not by severity or by opportunity, and succubi are the sharpest evidence for it we have. They are not reported around the grieving, the enraged, the despairing or the merely lonely. They are reported around people whose difficulty is specifically sexual: the obsessed, the frustrated, those fixated on the organs themselves rather than on any person. unverified

A thing that fed on suffering in general would not sort like that. This one sorts, consistently, across traditions that had no contact with each other. contested

Whether that makes it a distinct class or simply a daemon of one appetite — the Varieties section of that entry says there are as many kinds of daemon as there are afflictions — is unsettled here and probably unimportant. The behaviour is the same and so is the mechanism. contested

The invitation

Succubi are rarely described as bargaining, which distinguishes them from djinn and fey and makes them worse rather than better. contested

The grievance holds that nothing from the Dark can take the material world, only be admitted to it — so something is being admitted here, and there is no negotiation, no terms and no moment anyone can point to. What is being obtained is the yes described under Affliction: given continuously, without any recognisable act of agreement, by someone in a condition where withholding it is not available. Obsession is not a state in which a person is choosing. unverified

This is why the entry sits under Category:Afflictions as well as under Others. Everything about a succubus encounter is the affliction mechanism running without the decorative apparatus of a deal. firsthand · Gershon

On writing about this at all

The ordinary account of everything on this page is compulsion, shame, isolation and the ordinary miseries of a person whose sexuality has become the whole of their inner life. That account requires no Other, explains the full record, and is what nearly everyone reading this is actually experiencing. ⚠ warning

The specific harm to guard against here is the one Affliction describes: a person told that their compulsion is an entity is a person given a reason to stop treating it as something they can act on. We have no evidence that framing has helped anyone and some that it has not. contested

How this entry was assembled

Drawn from: The inherited line, the Daemon Varieties material, and the matching principle set out under Affliction.

Compiled by: Gershon.

Known weaknesses: The selectivity claim — that succubi sort by kind where other Others do not — rests on the absence of counter-reports, and absence of reports is not evidence in a field where almost nobody reports anything. We hold no firsthand account.

Wanted: An account of a succubus around someone whose difficulty was not sexual, which would break the matching principle and is worth more to us than another confirmation.

See also

Vrill proposes what is actually being taken: not the psyche as such but the vital force released under obsession, which that entry argues is the substance every class of Other is extracting by its own method.