How can a witch repeatedly reincarnate herself without being noticed?

First off, nasty villian.

Secondly, a lot depends on your world. In a modern world, it might be harder to mask, unless she deliberately lives off the radar. In a less advanced world, where communication is slower, she could just move around periodically.

Barring that... she's a sorceress. Can she still cast illusions, or perhaps cloud people's minds so they don't really notice her? Can she alter her appearance from one incarnation to the next enough to avoid obvious detection? (Though her primary stalker would be the demon; she'd need a way to mask herself from it, likely involving more gruesome rituals and magic.)

I think more context needs to be established, especially when it comes to your world. With that said, i think the best approach would be whether she learns to adapt to her surroundings. Also why the unborn child's soul and not say her husbands. speaking of which what does happen to the husbands of these hosts? are they killed off? Can she reproduce asexually with magic? also if the host dies during birth and the unborn child becomes the new host, why couldn't the devil put two and two together and realize that there is no soul to be had over the dead body?

Also with respect, i'm not sure what you mean by villain in this story? are you referring to the sorceress or the demon because if your referring to the sorceress she comes off as at best Maleficent if portrayed by Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. If your referring to the demon, well to put it simply "Demon is as Demon does". Demons scheme. demons tempt. Demons make contracts. that's what demons do since the bible (you can even go back to Gilgamesh for such examples). So in all honesty i would say a 4 out of 10.

i hope this helps.

Sincerley
Waeck

Have you read The Golden Key? It was done very well--- in this case, it's artists that mix magic with art, but one artist outsmarts the usual limitations...

Mirage of Blaze was an anime from 2002, which was based on a set of 90's light novels, that also did it well, despite all the soap-opera gut-wrenchingness of the plot line. Basically, the main characters have been in existence since the feudal period, and they maintain the conflict into the current day. The characters are called possessors, but once they possess someone, the host's soul disappears.

Anyhow, you could probably hunt both of those down without much difficulty, and see how other people have handled the trope.

First of all - what's the sorceress doing to others? From the information presented, she's only affecting herself.

With regards to the soul transfer, do you mean she transfers her soul from the mother body to the baby body at the moment of birth? If so, she's going to be rather powerless for a number of years while the infant grows. And with transfering her soul from the body she currently inhabits, to the newborn, she's not really harming anyone else, is she? Even if she waits until the babe is old enough (15? 16?) to transfer her soul, she's really not affecting the populace at large, so her evilness is relatively minor.

I can see a lot of issues with the transfer to the baby thing - unless she waits until the new body has enough ability to be self-sufficient before she takes it over.

You say she's made a deal with a demon for power and authority, but you don't say what she's doing with that power to make her evil, so unless there's something in that info you haven't posted that is evil, I wouldn't give her more than a one on the evil scale. Taking over another person's body and killing their soul in the process is evil, but it's a minor evil because it doesn't affect more than one person.

Also, if she transfers her soul into a new body, and the body is a baby, the locals will likely only think the mother died in childbirth, so no one would notice anything at all unusual.

Maybe not relevant to your story, but this was handled in chilling fashion in the movie The Prestige.

I agree with Jaymz, a woman dying while giving birth is not unusual. Some might start to wonder if the child of a woman who died in childbirth later dies in childbirth herself, but probably no one's going to figure it out.

Unless the baby is a clone I don't see how the populace at large would figure out what was going on since each version will have a different appearance than the previous one. If the repeated deaths during childbirth seem like a flag then she could set up scenarios leading up to the birth to explain it. (Faking illness or injury, moving from place to place so she's among strangers before undertaking the next reincarnation, etc.)

Death is childbirth was sadly common throughout most of history, and still is in parts of the world today. Much rarer in developed countries with modern medicine, but still happens. There might be a hospital inquiry or postmortem following the "death".

A bigger issue is what happens to the baby. In past eras, the prospects of an orphan or "foundling" could be very bad indeed. Death rates at orphanages and workhouses were appallingly high, even higher than the "normal" level of child mortality, which was bad enough. Does she ensure there's someone to care for her baby-self when she's gone (for example, by marrying well)? What happens if she dies before she has a child of her own? Why doesn't the demon just ensure she comes down with some fatal childhood disease?

In the modern era, a healthy newborn would have no problem finding an adoptive family. Or she might have family on her father's side who would take her in.

I imagine that going through the helplessness of childhood and the hormonal craziness of adolescence would get tiring after a few cycles!

I was wondering how the sorceress would find someone to take care of her infant self too. I presume she has all her faculties intact when it happens and thus has to pretend to be a newborn/child?

If she's nomadic, I don't think anyone would ever find out about it. Same place, people might get suspicious over a few generations.

I think a better way to handle it would be for the newborn child to mature suddenly into an adult through magical means. Then the new reincarnation might kill the father if he's still around to get rid of the evidence.

nyalathotep said:

A ruthless sorceress has sold her soul to a demon in exchange for power and authority. Unfortunately, the price was that the demon wouls get her soul after she dies. Her current goal is to gain immortality, and has discovered a form of it that is granted with the use of a dark and ancient ritual. By using this spell on herself, she can continuously reincarnate herself through her own bloodline by using her unborn child as a sacrifice. The spell ensures that she will have only daughters. At the moment of birth, the witch's soul is transferred into her daughter, taking over the body and killing the original host. In this way, she can gaurantee that she will live on through her future descendents.

This witch has performed this transfer many times and has lived for hundreds of years. How can this be made possible without drawing attention to herself? Also, what do you think of this villain and how would you rate them?

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Bolding mine. You started out saying she was going to sacrifice an unborn child, so I assumed you'd be performing some kind of magical/herbal abortion, but then mention transferring a soul after birth... Is it unborn or born??

But yeah, unless she's got some way to accellerate maturation, or she's doing some kind of shell game to get the soul out of the fetus/baby and back into her adult body right away, you've got a long time of being totally useless and incapacitated to deal with. That's a prime time for a villain who's going to be really cheesed about this work around to kill the mewling brat and be done with it.

I think it really depends upon what type of world your character inhabits. Is she in the modern world, or a fantasy world analogous to another era? Also, do all of her "daughters" grow up to look like her?

I have a character who is sort of like this - he's functionally immortal (ie, can be killed but won't die of old age), and has to reinvent a new identity for himself periodically. He's also got certain properties and businesses that he wants to make sure he keeps, so he has to make his new self the heir to his old self. Before modern times, he basically manages by moving to a new area and re-inventing himself at least a little (though he didn't even always change his name before the 19th century; no one really noticed as long as he moved and stayed under the radar). Now that he's faced with the information age and the internet, he has to be a lot more careful, changing his looks as best he can and laying the groundwork for a new identity years before he's going to assume it. It's starting to become a major problem for him--and a fun plot point for me--because certain people are starting to connect the dots.

nyalathotep said:

What if her soul remained dormant in her daughter's body until a certain age? Like 18 or so. Then it would take over and force her into a passenger like status?

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Well, I think the issue that folks are tripping on is that regardless of dormant or active, she'll be a child for a number of years which is a huge risk. So she'd need some sort of protection in place to make sure that her infant/toddler/child self makes it all the way back to adulthood.

Yep, I agree with Aggy, the big issue is all those years she's pretty much helpless. Demons are evil, that doesn't mean they're stupid. It wouldn't take more than a couple of times before the demon figured out what she was doing, then all it would have to do was wait for her to be a baby again, and she's toast.

Watch The Skeleton Key.... They do this using voodoo instead of magic. They do it to victims with young bodies.

I would go from the opposite direction first. How would the demon know to claim the soul, does it magically go to the demon via the spell? The spell itself is the key. The spell states on death which does not preclude the possibility the witch will, and not unreasonably, attempt to cheat death. Nor does it prevent the demon seeking to kill the witch to obtain the soul. If there are no caveats to the spell then it is not unreasonable that both could happen. I would set out the rules that govern the spell first. Lets assume the witch has then found a way to cheat any of these 'rules' the demon would still be bound by them unless it can find a way to cheat the spell...

The birth idea I think works. The witch would need to put in place various protections to ensure her survival during this time. And I would go with the dormant state, perhaps a period to regenerate her mystical energy or something. Fortunately the demon could not track her down at this time due to the spell rules... or can he... but others perhaps might... maybe she requires a guardian of some sort...

I agree with others on the issue of her being discovered. Death of a mother during childbirth is not unusual and can have genetic links so I think there is a very plausible reason no one would notice repeated deaths in one family. Again, that also could be built into the story, maybe someone gets suspicious...

I think it is a great premise for a villain with lots to work with. 8/10 or higher depending on where you take it. Look forward to the results