Shadows

[hfm_mods]

Freesia City is being overrun by shadow monsters from another dimension. The scarce NPC citizens have nicknamed them 'Nox' for the sake of having something to scream about while they're running away, but there doesn't seem to be any more useful things known about them other than the fact that they feed on negative things like fear, despair and hate.

Spatial rifts will on occasion appear in places around town, in the form of creepy black bits of torn-open space. From these will pour nasty, sludgy black monsters - the Nox themselves - and this will continue until someone can get close enough to blast it to bits with their magic. It's pretty straightforward. Feel free to play around with the idea, too - players are encouraged to have their characters find creative ways to close the void.

These shadowy rifts will, for the most part, open at the discretion of the players. Game-wide events may involve bigger rifts than usual, or subtle changes in dynamic, but in between events you're free to plot to have your characters encounter small Nox rifts at any time. Just make sure everyone involved in a thread is cool with it - people might be trying to establish some other plot or character development. Be polite and ask first!

Nox can take any form they wish, but this form will always be pitch-black and slightly gooey - and, more often than not, will have creepy all-white glowing eyes. They're nasty and eldritch and not very nice to look at. They can also change form at will, which means taking to the skies or jumping into the river may not shake off shadowy pursuers. Shadows can simply grow inky wings, or a raggedy mermaid tail. All in all, it's best to destroy them rather than run from them, and close the rift they came from as soon as possible so that a district is not overrun.

Mentally (if this is a term that even applies to these creatures), Nox are a hivemind. That is, if your character is in the subway and the Nox finds them, they may whisper of what is going on above ground where a rift has opened. Nox will often lie, but that doesn't mean they never tell the truth. To some extent, Nox can also make educated guesses about your character in order to coerce them into making a deal, or take the inky shape of a loved one or mortal enemy to toy with their emotions. Nox can also hide in your character's shadow, not that it's particularly hard to notice when your shadow is inky-black and has glowing eyes.

Nox can be destroyed the same as anything else, but they are most susceptible to the magic granted to your characters by Lux. The touch of a kind of magic other than shadow will pain them a lot more than, for example, having a gun shot at them.

If left alone, the bits of smashed-up shadows floating in the air and trembling on the ground can begin to regroup and form back into autonomous shadow monsters. However, once a rift is closed, they will fade and dissipate very quickly. It seems as though proximity to their own shadow dimension is what keeps them together, and without a link to their main consciousness, they will fall apart.

The shadows in the subway, having mashed themselves together into a roiling black collective of hundreds of different monsters, don't need to be near a rift to stay solid - but they can't exit the subway, either. There must be something about the darkness down there, because this doesn't happen anywhere else.

Lastly, the dark magic from a shadow deal can't harm Nox shadows. Light magic, on the other hand, is exceptionally potent against them.

Click here to learn more about making shadow deals. Also, feel free to contact a moderator or leave a comment on the FAQ post if you have extra questions.