He’s what parents and children fear most… seperation

Attributes: The Child-Snatcher is what parents and children fear – the stranger from the outside who tears apart families, who takes children away from their parents forever. The Child-Snatcher is what parents cannot protect their children from, whether the children need that protection or not. Sometimes the Child-Snatcher is a random force, but not always – he can also serve as an agent of punishment, either for parents or for children.

The Child-Snatcher himself stands apart from family and society, a force not explicable and accountable. As an incarnation of nameless and almost irrational fears, the Child-Snatcher works hard not to be part of the social bonds he destroys. To a casual glance, the Child-Snatcher archetype looks pretty evil, and most of the time it is. But the Child-Snatcher can have a good side: the social worker who takes a child away from abusive parents and into care channels the Child-Snatcher as surely as any murderer – parents and children fear separation, but their fears don’t always reveal what’s best for them.

Taboos: The Child-Snatcher can never have normal familial relationships or friendships. Any contact (especially loving) with family is taboo, as is developing a friendship. Relationships make the Child-Snatcher accountable and understandable… and that is not what the archetype is about.

Symbols: The bag of sweets, the whip, the cage, the social-worker’s clipboard, long nails, being very clean or very dirty. Many of the accoutrements of the Masterless Man or the Pilgrim also crop up around the Child-Snatcher, for it is often an itinerant archetype too.

Masks: The Pied Piper, Lilith, Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang’s Child-Snatcher, the Bogey-Man.

Suspected Avatars in History: King Herod may have channeled the archetype during the Massacre of the Innocents. The organizers of the Children’s Crusade may also have been avatars.

Channels:

NOTE: For the Child-Snatcher, ‘children’ qualify as anyone 15 or under. The ‘rightful guardians’ of a child are always include their parents. People who have adopted them, or foster carers usually count too. As for more informal or temporary arrangements… they might count, they might not.

01-50: The Snatcher can make himself appealing to children through the use of a fetish. This might be a flute, a bag of sweeties, or a social worker’s clipboard. Whatever it is, a child confronted with the item will trust and follow the Child Snatcher if he can make a successful Avatar: Child-Snatcher roll. The effects of this channel are broken as soon as the Snatcher does anything hostile to the child, his family, or anyone he cares about.

51-70: The Snatcher now becomes intensely forceful and persuasive when dealing with his target’s rightful parents and guardians. Whenever the avatar tries to cajole, intimidate, or otherwise use his persuasive skills on such people, he may substitute his Avatar: Child-Snatcher skill for the one he would normally use.

71-90: Whenever the Snatcher picks a target, he may designate one of his skills as his means for getting this child. Whenever he uses that skill in the process of the snatching, he can substitute his Avatar: Child Snatcher skill for it. For example: a social worker needs force a child’s abusive parents out of his way, so he designates his ‘Struggle’ skill. A darker avatar wants to make the sleeping drug he laces his candy with especially powerful, so he designates his ‘Making Sleeping Drugs to put in Candy’ skill.

91+: The children the Snatcher takes will remain ‘snatched’ for as long as they are a child. A child placed in social care will remain there until it’s an adult, and no lawsuit will rescue it. A child hidden in a dark cave somewhere will be trapped until it comes of age (at least). A child that’s killed (and so remains a child forever) will never be found.