Powered by a Forsaken Child: Difference between revisions

 

{{quote|'''Dr. Orpheus''': It's [[Trope Namer|powered by a FORSAKEN CHILD!?]]

 

A piece of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that doesn't work unless you pay a really ghastly price... or have someone else pay that price for you.

 

{{examples}}

* Subverted in ''[[Inuyasha]]'', when Inuyasha obtains the red Tetsusaiga, an ability supposedly obtained by killing the guardian of the demon-bat caves. The guardian turns out to be a small half-demon child, Shiori, being forced to put a barrier around the caves. Inuyasha has to save her but won't kill her, at which she willingly gives him the ability by having him break open the crystal ball that created the barrier.

* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS]]'' has the Saint's Cradle, a massively overpowered [[Cool Starship]] that can only power-up when commanded by a direct descendant of the Saint Kings of Ancient Belka. The problem? The last Saint King died over a hundred years ago without any heirs, so their bloodline is effectively extinct. So what is a [[Mad Scientist]] to do? Why, {{spoiler|clone the last Kaiser, infuse said clone (despite her being ''a six year old little girl'', the one pictured above) with a [[Lost Technology|Lost]] [[Magitek|Logia]], [[Cold-Blooded Torture|torture]] her until she is under his complete control, then make her activate the Cradle, despite [[Painful Transformation|how utterly]] ''[[Painful Transformation|painful]]'' [[Painful Transformation|the process is for her]].}} The problem with ''that''? {{spoiler|Little Vivio just had to go and get herself adopted by not one, but ''two'' [[Action Mom]]s. Each of whom is a [[Magical Girl Warrior]] [[Person of Mass Destruction]]. And they are ''[[Mama Bear|not happy about their adoptive daughter's treatment]]''. And just to add to the fun, their good friend is ''another'' magical [[Person of Mass Destruction]] and is in command of a military unit, and other friends of ''them'' are also very powerful [[Action Girl]]s and [[Magical Girl Warrior]]s.}}.

* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'': {{spoiler|Rip out the souls of pubescent girls and fill them up with grief until their souls shatter, all to [[Totalitarian Utilitarian|stave off the heat death of the universe]]}}.

** This is subverted in the case of Negi himself. Magia Erebea is literally powered by the body and soul of a forsaken child. The subversion lies in the fact that the child in question is also the (voluntary) user of the technique.

* In ''[[Reborn]]'', the first generation of the Gola Mosca were powered by Dying Will Flames.

* In ''[[Noein]]'', the only thing protecting La'cryma from the encroachment of Shangri-la is a quantum computer powered by the humans embedded within it.

* In ''[[Vision of Escaflowne]]'' [[The Abridged Series|Abridged]], Emperor Donkirk became ruler of Zaibach by inventing a machine like this, one that turns blood into oil. As he put it "Cutting out the middle man"

* In the original ''[[Blue Drop]]'' manga, the [[Human Aliens|Arume]] use their own children as bomb disposal units. They also use synthetic ones, but the "sacrifice" of the Arume children is more "beautiful" in the Arume's way of thinking—even though the synthetic children are [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|full-blown sentient beings in their own right]].

* Most of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' revolves around figuring out what makes the [[Human Resources]] work best, since live human beings are ingredients to creating certain powerful artifacts. Later in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003 anime only), it's revealed that {{spoiler|alchemy itself draw its power from the souls of humans from a parallel universe-- ours, in fact}}.

** Similarly, in ''[[Mai-Otome]]'', the [[Virgin Power|Otome]] usually can only use their [[Powered Armor|robes]] after linking themselves to the life of a master.

** Also in ''[[Mai-Otome]]'', {{spoiler|Rena Sayers's dead body}} is the Predecessor of the Valkyries. {{spoiler|Whether or not she was brought back to life and is merely in a comatose state is open for debate.}}

** Meta-example: Several of the crude images flashed up in End of Evangelion were drawn by abused children. Evangelion is itself powered by a forsaken child. It's that kind of show.

* In ''[[Naruto]]'', members of the Uchiha clan can only get the [[Deadly Upgrade|Mangekyo Sharingan]] by killing their best friend. The Anime has not revealed how Kakashi got his (which looks quite different), but the Manga reveals that {{spoiler|his eye used to belong to his best friend, whose death he feels responsible for even if he ''didn't'' do the deed.}}

** Jugo {{spoiler|can replace injured organs and body parts by absorbing those of other people}}. However, he's a nice enough guy that {{spoiler|he restricts this to [[Human Resources|people who are already dead]] and even then only in emergencies}}.

** Impure World Resurrection resurrects one dead person as an undying slave of the technique's user, at the cost of a live person used as a medium.

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' features a scientist who tried to tap the psychic energy of hundreds of children, apparently draining them and leaving them in a deep coma.

** There seemed to be a some sort of explosion caused by an overflow of psychic energy, dissolving the children's bodies, trapping them forever in the Wired. The scientist comments how no matter what he does, bringing them back to real world is impossible.

* ''[[Romeo X Juliet]]'' eventually reveals that Neo Verona's prosperity (and continued existence) is contingent on {{spoiler|the willing sacrifice of the daughters of House Capulet, who become integrated with [[World Tree|Escalus]] and bound to it for eternity. This does not sit well with Juliet's boyfriend Romeo, who fights first Juliet and then Ophelia to save her from her cruel fate; in the end, however, Romeo dies after defeating Ophelia, destroying Escalus in the process. Juliet saves Neo Verona by becoming a new Escalus, with the implication that the cycle of sacrifice that sustained Neo Verona in the past has finally been broken}}.

* ''[[Digimon Savers]]'' has the [[Sarcasm Mode|good]] [[Complete Monster|Dr. Kurata]], who removes the hearts of digimon in order to transform them into his [[Mecha-Mooks]], the Gizmon. It goes further {{spoiler|[[Despotism Justifies the Means|when he starts collecting digimon life energy to resurrect the Demon Lord Belphemon.]]}}

** Maybe Powered by a Forsaken Child to you, but dolphins are complete [[Jerkass|jackasses]].

** Before this there was [http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/x/man-003.htm the MAN-003 Patulia], a Mobile Armor that required a Newtype (in this case, {{spoiler|an [[Ill Boy]] artificial newtype named Caris Nautilus}}) to operate its wired beam cannons. Said newtype was rescued before the machine could consume him.

** Let's not forget how another newtype ( {{spoiler|an adult [[Girl in a Box]] named Lucille Lilliant}}) was sought after to force her lend her massive newtype powers to those who found her {{spoiler|and her capsule}}. The Lorelei arc was focused on the Freeden crew finding said newtype first and saving her.

* In the non-canon crossover between ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ]]'' and ''[[Space Runaway Ideon]]'', Neo Zeon planned to use ''seven-year-old Princess Mineva Lao Zabi'' and her Newtype powers to reawaken Ideon. All it did was piss off the mecha and force Amuro Ray and Judau Ashta to save her and put it down.

* ''[[Project ARMS]]''. Pretty much literally. Almost every Egrigori experiment uses a child as the test subject. Most prominent are the {{spoiler|Keith clones which were implanted with the first ARMS, many of which turned into monsters as a result}}, the Chapel children who were given drugs while in the womb to make them super smart and work as scientists for the group, various mutant and psychic children taken to be soldiers, and Alice who was on the research team and {{spoiler|whose dying body was bonded to an alien lifeform and became a computer controlling the Egrigori}}. There's also the other ARMS teens, who were specially genetically engineered to be soldiers to take down the Egrigori.

* A short anime called ''[[Kakurenbo|Hide and Seek]]'' had kids being hunted through an empty city, and when they were caught, {{spoiler|they were plugged into a generator just like every other group of children to play the game before them, presumably so the lights would lure more children to come and play.}}

** Its also strongly implied that {{spoiler|the last child will have to [[And I Must Scream|"seek" the next group of children.]]}}

** Then again Broly was a psychopath, anyway. While his father's use might fit this trope in the pure technical term, he was actually sparing the universe of Broly's might, rage and pure [[Ax Crazy]]-ness.

*** Actually, it was implied that he actually destroyed far more planets in the South Galaxy while Broly was under his control than Broly himself did when he was not controlled.

* In ''[[Bleach]]'', Aizen nonchalantly reveals that {{spoiler|he fed his Hogyoku with souls of Hollows and Shinigami alike. He implies this is one of the few ways to awaken it/make it evolve. One of his victims was actually a pre-teen [[Action Girl|Rangiku Matsumoto]], who had a good part of her soul stolen to power it up.}} Also {{spoiler|Hollows like to eat human children or ''hollow children'' as much as anything else.}}

* Taken as literally as possible in ''[[Sword of the Stranger]]''. The antagonists want to sacrifice Kotaro, an orphaned child, to make their emperor immortal. {{spoiler|They don't quite manage to carry out the sacrifice, of course, so we never find out whether it would have worked. [[Squick|They do, however, paint their entire gigantic altar red with chicken blood as part of the ceremony.]]}}

 

* A [[Marvel Comics]] crossover storyline had the villainous Secret Empire capture [[Mutants]] to drain their greater-than-normal psychic energy to power weapons and vehicles to take over the U.S.

** The events are later revisited in the short prose story "Firm Commitments", [[Lower Deck Episode|told from the point of view]] of a scientist who discovers the immense [[No Conservation of Energy|thermodynamics-breaking]] potential of Mutant neurons, gets involved with events far greater than himself, and has his life ruined as a result.

* [[Dr. Doom]] permanently sealed his position as truly evil rather than arrogant [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] when he tracked down his first love, convinced her he had abandoned his technology and evil ways, then {{spoiler|sacrificed her to demons in order to boost his magic powers as a complement to his genius tech}}. {{spoiler|The demons then gave him a cloak made from her flesh, ''which he wore''.}}

** Well it ''would'' have been permanent had not every writer after these events [[Canon Discontinuity|pretended they never happened]].

* Blue Mountain, home of the Gliders in ''[[Elf Quest]]'', featured doors and ornaments that were maintained and controlled by rock shaper elves. Once free-willed elves, these rock shapers were so deeply sunken into meditation or mental numbness that they were oblivious to all but other Gliders' commands to open or close.

** Actually, some of the text from that part implies she {{spoiler|''owns'' at least one abortion clinic, and generates power from that. And considering that this is NYC, imagine how many she ends up sacrificing and how much extra power that gives her. Here's a hint - In Queens alone there are almost 20,000 a year, and only 10 places to get them.}}

** This is oddly similar to ''[[The Dark Knight Strikes Again]]'', where Flash himself is used to power an entire city, by essentially running on a giant hamster wheel all day every day.

* [[Dark Empire|Emperor Palpatine]] did this to maintain his immortality. To be exact, he dreamt of conquering the entire universe and drawing on the Force from every individual for the sole purpose of keeping himself, and possibly [[Heel Face Turn|Darth!Luke]] alive for all eternity. And yes, [[All There in the Manual|all Sith are obsessed with immortality]].

** The use of someone's life force for energy is also the principle behind the energy weapons and rockets built into Bunnie's robotic limbs. One enemy (the Iron Queen), who usurped control of her robotics, tried to use this to kill her via overexertion.

* In the ''Mystique'' comic, there's a mutant who can control all machines and gets plugged into a giant device that requires her power to run. She's a little girl, of course.

* ''[[Incorruptible]]''. The Superman analogue goes quite insane after {{spoiler|a living entity spreads itself by turning kids into skeleton zombies. 'Supes' caused this by negligence}}. Oops.

* In Mark Waid's ''[[Empire]]'', Golgoth {{spoiler|has Endymion(essentially this Universe's Superman) hooked up to a machine that drains his blood and turns it into a hyper-addictive drug}}

* ''[[Secret Six]]'': In the Villains United miniseries, the team is shown invading a power plant in a Southeast Asian dictatorship. A boy emitting solar power is hooked up to a machine siphoning the energy. They break him out, but leave him in the Mirror Dimension, on orders to make sure he is no longer a threat to American interests.

* In the 2008 ''[[Guardians of the Galaxy]]'' series, the alien Universal Church of Truth powers its technology with "Belief Engines", generators that draw on the faith of its legion of worshippers. At least one of their starships is shown carrying storage banks full of the faithful, kept in stasis and wired directly into the ship's power systems.

 

* ''[[Aeon Natum Engel]]'' has a Patrone system being both using and used by Special Services sorcerers.

* In ''[[Rainbow Factory]]'', rainbows are made out of {{spoiler|foals who fail their flight exam. Specifically, their ribs are broken, and then they are mutilated in what is essentially a giant meat grinder.}}

 

* ''Arcade'' features a video arcade named [[Meaningful Name|"Dante's Inferno"]], where a new virtual reality arcade game called, boringly enough, "Arcade" is being tested. If you lose, you're trapped inside the game and die. Turns out the game is Powered by a Forsaken Child.

** The boy was abused and, eventually, killed by his mother. The game designers decide it's a good idea to take a few thousand brain cells from the body and use them in the game.

** In [http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/X-Men.html the original draft] for the movie, Magneto actually wanted to use ''Wolverine'' instead as a sort-of living antenna to amplify his powers, apparently due to his Adamantium skeleton.

** And in the second movie, Stryker's mind-control serum is derived from chemicals secreted by the brain of his ''own son,'' Jason; though still alive and still capable of using his impressive [[Master of Illusion|powers of illusion]], Jason's been given a lobotomy to make him more pliable and is confined to a wheelchair- complete with a shunt in the back of his head used for collecting the fluid.

 

* In ''Black House'' by Stephen King and Peter Straub, the "Big Combination" is a gigantic city-machine powered by the slave labor of abducted children, and their collective screaming can be heard over the roar of the machinery from miles away.

{{quote|From outside comes the clank of the Big Combination and the screams of the children who march, march, march on their bleeding footsies, running it.}}

* The Wamphyri in the ''[[Necroscope]]'' series use humans to build their warships, chthuluesque warbeasts, homes, plumbing, etc.

* David Mitchell's ''[[Cloud Atlas]]'' contains a sinister example.

* [[David Drake]] has two separate examples in one book, in ''Cross the Stars'':

* The [[Expanded Universe]] ''[[Star Wars]]'' novel ''The Truce at Bakura'' involves a race of aliens who steal sentient minds to operate their weapons.

** Oh, it's much worse than that. The entechment souls both powered and controlled the systems they were hooked up to, leading to [[And I Must Scream|unbearable misery as your soul was sucked out to power the guns you were forced to fire.]]

* In the [[Dark Tower]]'s ''Wolves of the Calla'', it's revealed that the bad guys' captive psychics are being fed a substance to boost their powers. That substance is withdrawn from the brains of kidnapped twin children, one from each pair, leaving them mentally slow, unnaturally big and doomed to die young.

* ''[[Dracula]]''—and most other vampires since him—have to drain the blood, or life force depending on variation, of living people just to survive.

* Employees of ''[[The Pilo Family Circus]]'' are paid in bags of mysterious powder that, when melted down and drunk, can grant wishes. It's later revealed that every grain of this powder was once part of a human soul, extracted from the Circus' audience.

* Subverted by [[Alastair Reynolds]] in the short story ''Weather''. Conjoiner drives include living, thinking human brains as an integral component, to calculate reaction pathways—but Conjoiners consider this a high honor and an enjoyable experience (so long as the drive's working right.) It's something akin to a challenging video game.

* In the ''[[Otherland]]'' series, the network is {{spoiler|quite literally powered by a forsaken child. And not the whole thing either. Just his brain and its incredibly strong [[Psychic Powers]].}}

* In ''The Black Wind'', a novel by F. Paul Wilson, the titular "Kuroi Kaze" or "Black Wind," a hideous black cloud that kills all living things, is powered by a child's death. Preferably a "mixed heritage" child (i.e. a child of mixed race.)

** More precisely, it was another member of his expedition, Marrim, who made the request.

* In the [[Nightside]], Forsaken Children are fairly standard-issue sources of power for villains. In ''Nightingale's Lament'', for example, John Taylor discovers that {{spoiler|the Nightside's electrical grid is running off energies from a murdered man's spirit, who'd had solar powers in life. As he'd also been a close friend of John's, Taylor sets the spirit free, blacking out most of the Nightside.}} Passing references to ambulances powered by human pain are used simply ''to set the mood of the neighborhood''.

*** Not only that, but hundreds of years ago {{spoiler|Himmelmann, the town's protective deity, was himself a child sacrifice by and for his tribe. He achieved his godhood by being raised in complete darkness, never knowing light or love, till one night when he was six he was taken out, pierced by swords, and his body smoked over a fire. The sacrifice he extracted for his continued protection of the town was one child every winter. Somewhat averting the full trope, none of the townspeople actually knew of this, and considered the missing children to be lost and perished in the woods, or 'winter runanways'. Anyone who figured it out had an unfortunate 'accident' before they could tell. }}

* In Simon R. Green's ''[[Deathstalker]]'' series, the Darkvoid Device turns out to be one of these... powered by {{spoiler|Giles' own son.}}

* In ''[[The Laundry Series]]'' by [[Charles Stross]], many of the Laundry's weapons are made this way. Standard issue Hands of Glory are sourced from political prisoners in China (they tried using chimpanzees for a while, but there was less bang for the buck and animal rights activists got involved). The construction of the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Violin that Kills Monsters]] required the torture and murder of twelve innocent people. (They investigate the feasibility of making more like it, but "Just owning the necessary supplies probably puts you in breach of the Human Tissues Act of 2004, not to mention a raft of other legislation.") The ritual for binding the [[Humanoid Abomination]] codenamed TEAPOT calls for the blood of babies.

* This is given chillingly realistic form (if you ignore the economics of it) in ''[[Never Let Me Go]]'', where the characters are [[Cloning Blues|clones]] kept to provided [[Walking Transplant|transplant organs]], and are so [[Conditioned to Accept Horror|conditioned]] that [[Internalized Categorism|they don't even think to fight the system]].

* Many forms of [[Black Magic]] in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' rely on torture and death to power them, with the Darkhallow in ''Dead Beat'' being perhaps the most extreme. It involves the sorcerer {{spoiler|killing enormous numbers of people (in this case, the entire population of Chicago) with necromantic energy, then consuming all the ghosts in the area to achieve [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|godlike power]].}}

* The heroine in Lynn Flewelling's ''Tamir Trilogy'' is hidden from a King Herod style massacre of the innocents by a [[Gender Bender]] spell powered by sacrificing her twin brother at birth, an act of necromancy so horrific it has consequences that last for years and eventually causes all of the witting participants to meet untimely and grisly deaths.

** The "gods" of the series, the Returned, each need to consume one breath per week or they die. The donor is often a child since their breaths are considered better than that of the elderly.

* From ''[[Mistborn]]'' by the same author, [[Blood Magic|Hemalurgy]], one of the three core magic systems, works on this principle. Its use involves trapping a portion of someone's soul in a metal spike and then sticking the spike into someone else, endowing the recipient with superhuman abilities via the stolen life-force (what, exactly, is transferred depends on the kind of metal the spike is made of and where it's placed on the recipient's body). Oh, and so far as we know, it's not possible to do this without it being fatal to the unfortunate "donor".

* One ''[[Animorphs]]'' book has a controller who's discovered a way to avoid returning to the pool every three days. He eats his fellow Yeerks, killing lots of human controllers to get them.

 

* "[[Stargate SG-1]]" had tretonin, a drug that granted the user perfect health-but had a side effect: the drug destroys the immune system, rendering the user dependent on the drug forever. The SG-1 team, after beginning negotiation for some of the drug, learn that the drug is actually created from the offspring (read babies) of a Goa'uld queen the Pangarans discovered in a stasis jar. normally this would not be so bad considering the Goa'uld are the series' [[Big Bad]] and they are parasite that force there way into human's brains and take over their bodies while most likely applying eternal mental torture to the host mind, but much later, after the Tok'ra (the rebel faction of the Goa'uld who were allies with Earth) are brought to help analyze the drug, it is discovered the Goa'uld queen is actually the Tokra's long lost queen (and their last hope of reproducing as their number are dwindling and she was the only known Tokra queen). Naturally the Tokra object to such treatment of their queen.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' had an immortality drug that required killing people to manufacture it.

* The ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episode "Doublemeat Palace" leads the viewer to believe Buffy has encountered a ''[[Soylent Green]]''-type situation—only to move on to a more realistically plausible, but equally strange-feeling twist.

** The Season 8 comics have {{spoiler|Buffy's new bonus powers.}}

** The First Slayer herself is essentially a forsaken child forcibly infused with demon energy by magicians. Essentially true of all slayers.

* HBO aired ''Cosmic Slop'', three short supernatural stories hosted by George Clinton. One story was about a fleet of aliens arriving to earth and offering to solve all of the world's current problems. In return for all of the people of African descent who do not pass the 'paper bag test'. Did they get their price? In a heartbeat!

* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Revelation of the Daleks", Dalek creator [[Mad Scientist|Davros]] offers to help solve a galactic famine problem. How convenient that he's set up shop on a cemetery planet...

** The child shows his um...gratitude to them in a similar way O_O

* The Attic from ''[[Dollhouse]]'' is first introduced as a classic [[And I Must Scream]] scenario. What it actually is, however, is much worse: {{spoiler|It's a super-computer with human brains as processors, where each "component" is [[Lotus Eater Machine|locked into an infinite loop of their worst nightmare]] in order to keep the brain running at adrenaline-inspired top speed.}}

** He gets [[Laser-Guided Karma|proper justice in the end]] - he falls off the stairs to his death. Since he's an organ donor, his own brain serves to cure one of his victims.

* In one episode of ''[[Sliders]]'', the characters stumble upon a village with its own [[Fountain of Youth]]. Which is the excretions of a gigantic mutant worm...whose primary diet is people.

* An episode of ''[[The Worst Witch]]'' has Sybill turning a torch into a magic lamp that will grant any wish. The catch is however that it'll absorb energy from other things to grant each wish. When it runs out of plants to absorb, it starts to drain the girls and the teachers instead.

* An episode of ''[[First Wave]]'' had [[The Chosen One|Cade]] stumble upon a Gua-run hospital, where they were helping some people... by giving them parts from other people's bodies. None of this was altruism, of course, but merely just another experiment.

 

 

* All Arcane (non-[[Badass Normal]]) powers in ''[[Deadlands]]'' work this way. The setting has it as an explicit rule. The soul involved is inevitably your own.

** Except for [[White Magic|Blessed and Shaman powers]], which only require adherence to your religion and (in Shamans' case) proper rites. You still do the sacrifice, but it's voluntary and only involves limiting yourself.

* The game ''[[Fairy Meat]]'' (a spin-off from the [[Knights of the Dinner Table]] comic) involves characters eating parts of ''each other'' to regain health.

* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', Urza collapsed Serra's Realm, killing everyone inside, to activate the powerstone core of the skyship ''Weatherlight''.

*** Nuts to all that. The ultimate archetype is [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=184651 Necropotence] which allows the player to trade life for more magical power and knowledge (i.e. draw cards). This card was so powerful it has been banned or restricted in most formats.

** During the Invasion block, when Urza led a group of planeswalkers into [[Mordor|Phyrexia]] to destroy it, he powered the bombs he planned to use with the soul of the planeswalker he [[Batman Gambit|expected to betray them.]]

** ''[[Spelljammer]]'' has the Lifejammer helm, a magical device that allowed ships to travel through space by draining the life energy of creatures placed within it. Also, Death Helm, which does much the same, but the victim enjoys it and doubles as the pilot.

** Too many examples in ''[[Ravenloft]]'' to mention them all; perhaps the nastiest was Azalin's Doomsday Device, powered by the stolen souls of his murdered enemies and the ''collective life forces of every living thing in Il Aluk'', greatest city in the game setting.

*** Continued in later editions, with slight modifications. In Third Edition, permanent magic item creation requires spending XP. Note that XP and levels in this game represent life-force: many vampires and similar creatures literally drain your levels when they feed. And other than this, mechanically XP are replenished by killing things.

** In the ''[[Dark Sun]]'' setting, use of arcane magic, by default, drains life force from the environment around you, killing plants and leaving the soil infertile for years. Widespread use of such magic led to the world of Athas becoming a desert wasteland. Magic users who embrace this are called Defilers; those who learn to use magic without harming the environment are called Preservers. The Sorcerer-Kings are the greatest Defilers, and can use up lifeforce of beasts and sentients in great quantities. The respective advantages and drawbacks of Defiling vs. Preserving varies from edition to edition. In the original campaign book, Preservers advanced in power more slowly than Defilers (they need to learn more). In fourth edition, Defilers can drain life force from their own allies to empower their magic.

** The Imperium of Man has the [http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astronomican Astronomican], a giant psychic beacon essential for warp travel. Originally powered by the Emperor's immense psychic strength, the device is later powered by the souls of ten thousand psykers trained for the purpose. The Astronomican's extreme psychic energy requirements cause the psykers' deterioration and death in only a few months. A constant stream of sacrificial psykers is therefore required to power the Astronomican.

** Although at least the psykers who power the Astronomican are trained, and see the giving of their lives as their last and greatest duty. A similar process of soul-draining is used to feed the Emperor, and their compliance is... not so necessary.

** It's also implied that the longevity treatments that allow even [[Puny Humans]] with enough wealth or ranking to live for a few centuries are made from children. Even sympathetic and otherwise ''heroic'' characters are known to use them, just to show how [[Crapsack World|fucked up the setting is]].

*** Depends on which type of juvenat treatment it is: they apparently range from synthetic/cybernetic organ replacements and plastic surgery to chemical treatment using exotic compounds (often harvested on [[Death World]]s, which ''also'' implies death toll, though mostly either as high-risk high-payment jobs or as a replacement for death sentence) through to (implied) fetal stem-cell therapies. There is one variant noted in the early fluff which involved cloning a person, [[Applied Phlebotinum|applying some phlebotinum]] to cut-and-paste said person's soul into the clone, then spending a couple of decades (re-)teaching it skills and brainwashing it to think it was the original. Sure, it runs afoul of the Continuity Problem, destroys the soul of an innocent and wasted 20 years back in school, but hey, what with the other treatments out there, this body's good for another 2-3 centuries or so...

** Perhaps the most literal case in the setting is the phylactery-womb, the device that the Yozis use as the staging point and storage device for Infernal Exaltations. Her name used to be Liliun once, and she was {{spoiler|a daughter of the Scarlet Empress, traded over as part of mommy's botched deal for immortality}}. Now she's been twisted and violated in a number of senses, left barely lucid and babbling, just so that she can serve as the perfect receptacle for the Infernal shards.

*** Her Dad, however, has never stopped trying to find her, and when he finally does? Well, the Dad happens to be part of The Realm...and he hired one of the Anethema (A Lunar Exalted, which the Immaculate Faith teaches are evil monsters) to get his daughter out of Hell. He was willing to [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|throw his lot in with creatures he THINKS are insanely evil, who he's fought against his entire life...Just to get his little girl back]] Betcha' the Ebon Dragon didn't see THAT coming!

 

** At some point shortly before the beginning of the game, a plasmid has been developed that will allow someone to destroy the sea slug from within, yielding a considerably lesser amount of usable ADAM but rendering the girl a normal human being again. {{spoiler|In most cases.}}

* In ''[[Breath of Fire]]'' 4, [[The Empire]] has a long range "hex cannon" that's powered by torturing people to death, and does more damage the stronger the connection between the victim and the target. Normally this is used as a weapon of mass destruction powered by prisoners of war. {{spoiler|And when the one used to power it is a girl named Mami...}}

* In most versions of ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', dwarves will occasionally enter a "Fell Mood" - leading them to kill a nearby dwarf, [[The Simpsons (animation)|process his carcass]] in the nearest Butcher's Shop, and turn it into an artifact. This being [[Dwarf Fortress]], nine times out of ten it's something like a dwarf-bone scepter decorated with an image of a dwarf-bone scepter in dwarf leather.

** ... adorned with hanging rings of dwarf bone and menacing with spikes of dwarf bone.

* Heroic spirits in ''[[Fate/stay night]]'' agree to fight in the Grail Wars because they believe it will grant them a wish, usually to let them live a second life or fix a past mistake. However, {{spoiler|a defeated Servant is actually drawn into the Grail where it is turned into pure magical energy, and the 'winning' Servant that touches the Grail is ''also'' subject to this. This is what powers the Grail. Only the last remaining Master really gets a wish.}} However, very few of the main characters actually know this while competing, possibly only [[MacGuffin Girl|Ilya]] and [[Complete Monster|Zouken Matou.]]

** {{spoiler|Gilgamesh and Kotomine}} have another (and very literal) use of this trope going straight into horror, no questions asked. {{spoiler|Shirou wasn't the only survivor of the fire ten years ago - all the other orphaned children have been imprisoned in the basement of Kotomine's church for the last ten years, [[And I Must Scream|unable to move, deprived of all their senses, being kept alive only by the barest thread and only barely recognizable as human]] so that Gilgamesh may take mana from them.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'''s Dark Knight Cecil and the Fake King have a few shadows of this. The former's Dark Knight Armor is aparently powered by Cecil's own Spirit (it actually reduces the stat), while the King's ''first mission'' is to destroy a town to gain power.

* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'''s [[Magitek]] and Magitek Knights come from draining a still-living Esper, and siphoning its power into weaponry and human soldiers such as [[Psycho Prototype|Kefka]] and [[Heel Face Turn|Celes]]. The very [[Green Rocks|Magicite]] that the player characters can equip and use in order to [[Powers as Programs|learn magic and enhance their skills]] is actually the crystallized remains of a dead Esper—to the point that many living Espers [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|deliberately reduce themselves to Magicite]] either to strike back at [[The Empire]] or to assist the party members, but the latter never show any regret for using the crystals.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'''s World of Ruin is created by 3 statues sacrificing, well, everything.

** In a similar vein, and with a similar refusal to stop using the Powered by a Forsaken Child [[Applied Phlebotinum]], in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', {{spoiler|it turns out that Guardian Forces actually carve out a space in their hosts' heads for themselves, destroying memories in the process.}}

*** Additionally, the final Guardian Force, Eden, has an ability called Devour, which enables Eden's host to eat his or her opponent in order to gain various benefits from HP to stat increases - although depending on the opponent, the effect could be negative instead. Either way, the game cheerfully acknowledges the rather [[Squick]]y implications of this: the animation for the ability involves cutting to a [[Relax-O-Vision|screenshot of a serene landscape,]] over which is played the very loud, messy slurping and smacking noises of the target being messily eaten. [[Evil Laugh|Bwahahaha.]]

** The Fayth are on call for the summoners at all times; {{spoiler|whether they're pulled from their slumber every time a summoner needs help, or deprived of rest completely like those on Mt. Gagazet, it sounds like a pretty miserable way to pass the centuries.}}

*** {{spoiler|''The entire game'' is the Fayths' [[Gambit Roulette]] to free themselves.}}

* In ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', [[Mega Manning|learning blue magic]] involves "absorbing" the "essences" of monsters. [[Never Say "Die"|Translate the euphemisms yourself.]] Furthermore, it's dangerous to do this, as a blue mage grows gradually less human as they gain more spells. It's implied that any character who actually ''does'' pursue the path of blue magic is amoral and ambitious. {{spoiler|It is revealed that at the end of their life they transform into [[Eldritch Abomination|soulflayers]]. }}

** Now consider the fact that likely ninety percent of the Player Characters have unlocked Blue Mage as a job class. Now consider that roughly half of those have likely spent any amount of time leveling it.

* This appears pretty often in ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' V. The Necropolis Town has a building that can convert living units into Undead. There's an adventure map building where a Hero can sacrifice units in exchange for experience. The Demon Lord Heroes' "Consume Corpse" ability removes dead creature stacks from the battlefield to replenish mana. The Stronghold faction introduced in ''Tribes of the East'' ''owns'' this trope though. First, there's the "Slave Market" town building that lets you sell units for resources (ironic, given the Orcs' history as oppressed slaves). The Wyvern Upgrade, the Pao-kai, can consume dead creature stacks to heal and ''revive'' their own numbers. Their strongest unit, the Cyclops, can use Goblins (the weakest unit) as food and ''ammunition'', making the poor saps ''literal'' cannon fodder. The Shaman upgrades, the Sky and Earth Daughters, are both able to sacrifice Goblins to replenish their own mana. In fact, this is the only way the Sky Daughter can use her [[Shock and Awe|"Chain Lightning" ability]] since she doesn't start battle with enough mana to use it. Her in-game creature description ends with this little gem: "Because of this, they are greatly feared by their opponents - and by Goblins". Not to mention that the Cyclop's description mentions that the Orcs bought the Cyclops' allegiance by offering them their favorite food: Goblins. Yeah, Goblins are pretty much the Stronghold's [[Butt Monkey|Buttmonkeys]].

* In ''[[Neopets]]'', Caption Contest #214 featured [http://www.neopets.com/games/caption/caption_archive.phtml?place=214 this alarming image]. Knowing TNT, though, it's probably a joke.

* In ''[[Overlord]]'', your armor and weapons are forged with fires fueled by the deaths of your minions, [[We Have Reserves|not that you care.]]

* In ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'', {{spoiler|the Nameless One's immortality is fueled by other people's lives. To be more specific, whenever he gets killed, the force keeping him alive casts about the Planes, steals someone's life force, and forces it onto the Nameless One}}. Naturally, the people this happens to aren't terribly happy about it: {{spoiler|they compose the [[Living Shadow|monstrous shadows]] that stalk you through the game}}.

* In the ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'' expansion ''Mask of the Betrayer'' the player is afflicted with a curse that makes him or her hunger for spirits, and able to choose to increase his or her power by eating said spirits. In addition to being obviously morally questionable, spirit-eating on a regular basis also has the downside of increasing the player's hunger to the point that he or she requires multiple spirits per day just to keep from dying.

** Though it is part of the advertising campaign for ''Quake Wars''. In spite of its Soylent origins, the advert that features it is rather hilarious.

** You also see dismembered humans powering certain devices around the Strogg factories, as well as one powering {{spoiler|the Makron}}, and they are also ''alive'' and at times trying to escape. Most of them appear to be heavily drugged, a state in which they're probably better off.

* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]: Digital Devil Saga,'' in a rather disturbing version. Your characters (and, by extension, your enemies, who have the same power) get stronger by ''[[I'm a Humanitarian|eating other people]]''. Which they do. With frequency and sometimes gusto.

** Other demons, to be more exact. Killing humans actually gives you no Atma and you can't use Hunt skills on them either. It's definitely as per the above as far as the backstory is concerned, though.

* In ''[[The Sims|The Sims 2]]'', a [[Man-Eating Plant|Cowplant]]'s milk can grant the drinker an extra five days of life, at the price of one human life a pop. Sims can roll wants to "drink" their enemies.

** [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]] if there has ever been any. If you want to be especially evil you can feed your entire neighbourhood to the Cowplant, making your own Sim immortal by eating the souls of children, so to speak.

* In ''[[Starflight]]'', it is revealed that {{spoiler|the fuel used to travel in hyperspace is actually alive.}}

* ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'' features Exspheres, a form of [[Magitek]] symbiote mass-produced by the villains that empower their wielders with superhuman abilities and can be used to power Magitek devices. {{spoiler|They are eventually revealed to be powered by the soul of a living being that has been killed slowly and painfully in the process of activating the Exsphere for use. What's more, those belonging to a few of the main characters turn out to contain the lives of their loved ones, and two more had "different", experimental ones that were stealing ''their'' lives.}} The heroes must use them anyway, because the villains certainly won't stop doing it.

** Cecily and Cathe. Just...Cecily and Cathe.

* ''[[Fable]] II'' features Reaver, who is as close to [[Complete Monster]] as is possible to get while being voiced by [[Stephen Fry]]. First, {{spoiler|his eternal youth and good looks were put in place by sacrificing the entire population of Oakvale, albeit by accident.}} Second, {{spoiler|continuing to have those good looks comes at the price of tricking someone to give up their own youth and beauty.}}

* In ''[[Galactic Civilizations]]'' there is a chance that any particular planet that is being colonized will have something special on it that lets the player choose from three options: Good, Neutral, and Evil. Many of the evil options (and some of the neutral options) are of the Forsaken Child variety. For example, a life form on the planet links people together to create a psychic network that gives a huge improvement to science production on the planet, but the people must permanently enter the life form's pods (signified by a reduction in population). The options are: (Good) Cordon off the area and allow NO ONE to enter.(Neutral) Hook up only the infirm and the elderly. (Evil) Excellent! Hook up a random selection of the population.

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'''s Scourge qualifies for horrible often enough, but the creation known as Thaddius fits this trope specifically, being made up of the souls and bodies of women and children slaughtered in conquering Lordaeron.

** The Lich King's sword "Frostmourne" can absorb the souls of those it slays to power up, or to turn the slain into Scourge, controlled by the Lich King.

** And then, there's {{spoiler|[[Rise of the Horde|the little draenei boy sacrificed by the Shadow Council to open the Dark Portal]]}}.

* While by no means a required facet of gameplay, ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series allows such behaviour. In ''[[Morrowind]]'', soul gems can be used to eternally trap the souls of defeated monsters, and the resulting soul can then be used to fuel a magical weapon. However, ''[[Oblivion]]'' lets you take the same concept [[Moral Event Horizon|that little bit further]], with the use of "black soul gems", a variant favoured by Necromancers that allows the trapping and fusing of human souls. In fact, human souls create the most powerful enchantments in the game. Not that every magical item could be eternaly fueled by an innocent animal's soul such as elks, foxes or even rabbits is any comfort.

** The Shivering Isles takes this a step further with Dawnfang/Duskfang. To start with, it's a magical weapon and so must be recharged with soul gems. What's worse, it changes damage type with the day/night cycle (fire by day, frost by night), and each time it switches it can become (for the next 12 hours) a stronger version of itself... if the other form was "fed" 12 souls. So in order to keep the blade perpetually in its Superior state, one has to let it claim 24 souls EVERY DAY * and* make sure the enchantment itself is charged with souls. Add that to the rather disconcerting toothy maw of the blade, and one begins to wonder what sane hero would willingly carry this on her person.

*** You find it in the Shivering Isles, also known as the Realm of Madness. [[Fridge Brilliance|What did you expect?]]

* In ''[[Metroid Prime]] 3: [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Corruption]]'', you awaken after an [[Curb Stomp Battle|unfortunate encounter]] with [[Evil Twin|Dark Samus]] to find that your weapons, your suit and your ''body'' now run on [[Toxic Phlebotinum|Phazon]].

* ''All'' of ''[[Pathologic]]'''s healers' techniques involve this to some extent.

* In ''[[Lost Kingdoms]] 2'', it is strongly implied that the artificial Runestones {{spoiler|are made from people's souls.}} You only find this out if you go back and check {{spoiler|Sol's body in the Royal Tower, Lower}} [[Multiple Endings|without meeting the requirements for the Good ending.]]

* In the third ''[[Thief]]'' game (''Deadly Shadows''), {{spoiler|the Old Gray Lady has killed an orphan to use her shape as a disguise. Garrett restores the orphan's soul to her body, which destroys the disguise and advances the plot.}}

*** {{spoiler|Those horrible high-pitch distorted screams you heard all mission? That was David ''desperately pleading'' with you: "Quiet! Make it stop!!!"}}

* [[BioWare]] also had this trope runnning in ''[[Jade Empire]]''. {{spoiler|The Emperor has ordered Death's Hand and the Lotus Assassins to hire slavers to raid "insignificant" villages. These villagers are brought to the Lotus Assassin base and killed by some kind of alchemical acid, leaving behind a [[Soul Jar]] that's used to power the terracotta army they're building}}.

** That's just an extension of the worst act. {{spoiler|The Water Dragon's mutilated body is kept as a trophy in the Palace. Its power is siphoned by the Emperor to grant him strength and vitality. The Dragon's blood is water, and so its body was carved open, allowing a flood of water to pour out of the Palace and into the Empire's rivers and lakes.}}

** Also, a defeated blood mage will offer to magically increase your strength and endurance in return for his life, {{spoiler|all it takes is sacrificing the lives of all the elf slaves you came to free}}.

* The Soul Reaver in the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|drains the souls of enemies]] in order to power itself up. However, the whole reason it can do this in the first place is that a maddened, ravenous spirit is trapped inside the blade... {{spoiler|a spirit that just happens to belong to the protagonist of two of the games.}}

* The Angelic Rifle in ''[[Baroque]]'' fires bullets that contain {{spoiler|the Littles, which are living incarnations of pain extracted from the Absolute God and look like winged, misshapen human babies.}}

* Nearly everything in ''[[BlazBlue]]'' is Powered by a Forsaken Child. The Magitek that the world is so heavily dependent on for its survival relies on seithr, [[The Corruption]] created by the [[Eldritch Abomination|Black Beast]] that made it necessary in the first place, {{spoiler|and the Beast itself was an attempt to gather the souls needed to create a magical superweapon that went horribly wrong}}. The Nox Nyctores that several characters use in battle {{spoiler|were also created by sacrificing thousands of human lives to create each one.}}

** {{spoiler|On the subject of Nox Nyctores, nasty bastard though he may be, Relius states that it is possible to use fewer souls to make a Nox Nyctores, but the reduction is highly dependent on the quality of the souls used. A focused soul is higher-quality than a scattered soul, and a multilateral soul higher quality than a unilateral one. By that logic, a focused soul, pointing in multiple directions, is of the highest quality possible, and could very well be used to make a Nox or "detonator" on its own. [[Fridge Horror|That should explain a lot more about his "obsession" with Makoto...]]}}

* The Garland device in ''[[Hellsinker]]'' is powered by four dead children buried beneath it. {{spoiler|To get the best ending, you must face Garland, then defeat the spirits of the children, who have taken a great interest in a cat and insist on bringing it into battle.}}

* ''[[Alice: Madness Returns]]'' has the [[Complete Monster|Dollmaker]] power the infernal train with the bodies of insane children, which reaches horror levels when you realise the very deliberate pedophilia subtext in that level.

** And those system generated passwords? Hyron employees keep complaining in internal email how ''creepy'' they sound...

* In the original ''[[Suikoden]]'', the Rune that Governs Life and Death works like this - it's pretty powerful even at the worst of times, but it grows stronger by devouring the souls of people loved by the wielder. Friends, family, 's all good. He doesn't have to kill them directly, but nor does he get to choose - the Rune itself seems to employ some form of [[Winds of Destiny Change|probability manipulation]] to bring about the death of the loved ones so it can grow stronger. On the bright side, it's literally the most fearsomely powerful Rune that has ever appeared in any of the games, so hey, at least you got something OUT of all those tragically dead family-members and close, long-time friends...

* In ''[[Ico]]'' {{spoiler|this turns out to be the fate of all the enemies who have been trying to take Yorda from you throughout the game. Near the end you return to the chamber where you were sealed at the start, and this is the first place where enemies don't appear from teleports, instead appearing from the exact same sort of coffin you were sealed into. In essence, all the enemies you've fought and killed were innocent kids who were sealed just because they had horns.}}

* In ''[[Alundra]]'', it's no coincidence that you gain new items whenever someone dies: {{spoiler|Jeff is able to craft new weapons thanks to the spirits of deceased villagers who wants to help Alundra.}}

 

* ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' features a rather humorous example: Black Mage's [[Kamehame Hadoken|Hadoken]] is [[The Power of Love|powered by love]]. No, just sit there and I'll rephrase it. Every time BM launches a Hadoken, he siphons love from the Universe and twists it to highly destructive ends, making it create an explosion that ''consumes'' love (the divorce rate rises, for example). Not that he cares, but Red Mage [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/11/27/8-bit-chronicles-3-of-3/ seems to.]

** The Hadoken was also received by BM after sacrificing several orphans.

* In ''[[Geist Panik]]'', Nob says that human blood acts as a magic grease that all runes and magic use to some extent.

** He also says that orphans' blood works best.

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', Torg's magical sword Chaz is powered by the blood of the innocent. He's only able to make much use of its full power when in a [[Sugar Bowl]] dimension being invaded by sadistic demons, so that there's plenty of such blood being spilled by others.

* In ''[[Looking for Group]]'', {{spoiler|Cale has to kill an innocent child to save the city of Kethenecia}}.

* In ''[[Spacetrawler]]'', the construction of the eponymous spacetrawlers is implied to involve horrific abuse of Eebs, and when the details are eventually revealed, they're every bit as bad as implied: {{spoiler|an Eeb is trained to telekinetically gather space debris--by injecting them with a drug that causes debilitating pain if they ever stop gathering said debris. Then the Eeb's body is dissolved, while still conscious, and their [[Brain In a Jar]] is placed in the spacetrawler.}}

* ''[[Narbonic]]'' includes a time machine with the drawback that its use requires all the energy of the universe. Dave Davenport figures out how to use the time machine by having it comsume all the energy of a parallel universe. He assumes they just don't want to live as much as the people in his universe do.

 

* The {{spoiler|Ceremony}} in ''[[Lonelygirl15]]''.

 

* In an episode of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', Doctor Venture's family is trapped one by one inside his latest invention, a simulator known as the "joy can" that grants the user's [[Lotus Eater Machine|fondest desires]]. One of its vital components was the heart of an orphan. Doctor Orpheus's disgusted response became the new [[Trope Namer]].

** In a different episode, Richard Impossible, patriarch of a [[Fantastic Four]] expy, averts [[Reed Richards Is Useless]] and uses his brother-in-law's pyrokinesis to power his tower. That same brother-in-law can feel his own flames, and Impossible gets called out/congratulated by one of the series' most effective villains for doing the most evil thing he'd ever seen.

* Starscream's clone technology of ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' involves the use of protoforms, which can be described as fetal or pre-natal Cybertronians.

* In ''[[Argai the Prophecy]]'', [[God Save Us From the Queen|Queen]] [[Big Bad|Dark]] gains and maintains her immortality by stealing the youth of several maiden throughout time and keeping them in eternal slumber.

* ''[[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack]]'' features a boat powered by angsty children. ... The children are also used as canonballs.

{{quote|Ow! D'oh! After lunch, can I whip you?

No.

* A driving part of the plot of ''[[Sheep in the Big City]]''; the reason [[Big Bad| General Specific]] wants to catch sheep is to use him to power his Sheep Powered Laser. Fortunately for Sheep, Specific is [[General Failure| just too incompetent to succeed.]]

 

* The Aztec 52-year cycle. The gods needed human sacrifices to be strong enough to keep the world from collapsing and the sun to keep rising.

* Research has proven that blood really does make good mortar. Specifically, it makes cement stronger and lighter. (United States Patent 4203674)

* In many parts of Africa, albinos are believed to contain magic power; and are often killed by witch doctors who believe that using their body parts in their magic can bring wealth and longevity. [[wikipedia:Persecution of people with albinism|See this article]] from [[The Other Wiki]].

* In several regions of Africa, particularly southern Africa, it is commonly believed that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. As expected, rape of children is a huge problem, and the incidence of children infected with HIV is rapidly rising. (An additional problem: any baby born to an HIV-positive parent will carry the virus unless the mother is treated with expensive drugs.)

** Europe had much the same problem after syphilis was introduced.

* Industrialized farming often has conditions that would spark public outrage if the same were done to cats and dogs. Animals often spend their entire lives crammed into the smallest space they manage to shove them in. Chickens have their beak partially cut off, because the bird's natural instincts is to peck at one another when overcrowded so they would spread out and give each other more room to breathe. Geese are force fed trough a tube to fatten them up. Even seafood is not immune, as farmed fish and shrimp are subject to the same kind of crowded conditions as poultry and livestock, and lobsters are often killed by being boiled alive.

* Forced labor.

* The bird trade. Most pet exotic birds were taken from the wild, for this reason (along with habitat destruction) many species of parrot (almost a third) are in danger of extinction. To make matters worse, the majority of birds die during capture and even more die afterward, which means that more are caught to compensate. Despite the high mortality rate, profits are still higher than breeding the birds in captivity, though captive-bred birds, while not having to undergo the traumatic capture and transportation, have their own issues. Regardless of where it came from, the end result is usually an unhappy bird cooped up in a cage most of its life.

* Many opponents of stem cell research cite this, as embryonic stem cells, the most versatile type of stem cell, can be harvested from undeveloped human embryos.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Power At a Price]]

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]

[[Category:Power Source]]