Hagen Patterson, trained as a chemist, has a secret: he is also an alchemist, seeking the key to understanding the human mind and body. Hagen is obsessed with brewing potions, quite aware that his obsession results from the fact that he feels he has to live up to his name. Hagen: the antagonist from Richard Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" operas. Hagen has never met his father and his mother Emma refuses to tell him anything. What Hagen does not know is that his father has been watching over him all his life. He is a demon possessing Emma. When Juliana, Hagen's unrequited love, teases him beyond endurance, Hagen decides to make her his. He asks his teacher for more powerful potions, and, after he has proven himself worthy, receives several, among them a love potion for Juliana...