Shadow Deals

[hfm_mods]

CURRENT DEALS
Edward Nygma/The Riddler - unriddling - Dealed During the Nox Carnival.

CONTENTS
What is a shadow deal?
What does a shadow deal look like?
How do I have my character make a shadow deal?
How does a character break out of a shadow deal?

What is a shadow deal?

The shadows are tricky, and will use whatever method they can in order to claw their way to victory - which includes recruitment. Sometimes, a character that may be feeling vulnerable or powerless will be offered a deal by the shadows. The exact way it's offered may differ - they'll do anything to get a character to agree - but the basics of the deal are always the same: trade away your current magical power, and replace it with much stronger shadow powers instead.

What they won't whisper to you is the fact that agreeing to being possessed by the shadow collective will result in eerie whispers in your brain, and eventual total corruption. Characters who have made shadow deals will lose interest in their original goals, no matter how rigid they were, and become more aggressive and engage in wanton destruction of the city and its inhabitants. Arguments and disputes will turn sour far more quickly, until shadowed characters begin starting all-out battles with people they would normally consider friends. A will to defend the city will turn into a will to break as much of it as possible "so that the shadows can't have it" - though of course this is flawed logic, your character will just be unable to see the folly of their ways. Shadow deals will change you, and it will always be for the worse.

Players are encouraged to play around with how their character will react to the pressure to make shadow deals and how the deal will affect them. Characters' mental strength should be taken into consideration, but part of the fun is working out how easily your character will succumb or how long they will hold out. A shadow deal will not immediately make a character decide they hate their friends - but it will start eating away at things like guilt or hidden resentment, and eventually they'll lose sight of their original morals.

Shadow powers will be more or less the same strength for everyone. They're about twice as strong as regular powers (save for light-based magic, which is about evenly matched). To defeat someone under a shadow deal, other characters will have to either work together or be very cunning.

What does a shadow deal look like?

Characters who have just made a shadow deal will at first seem just as normal as ever. Their appearance will be the same, there won't be any lingering 'bad aura', and aside from a quicker temper or a bit of aloofness, they won't seem any different to anyone else until they actually use their shadow powers.

But this will change. The more they argue, the more they pick fights, the more they use their newfound shadow abilities - heck, even if they sit in a room alone regretting what they've done, the shadows will start to take a stronger hold on their mind. It's different for everyone, but the main physical symptoms include a faint black shimmer in the air around them, inky-black ichor dripping from wherever they use their powers - most commonly their hands or mouths - and, eventually, the shadowiness will take over their whole body until they look like a shadow monster themselves. Underneath, they'll still have their body, but if the deal has progressed to this point, their mind is firmly in the grip of the shadows and it will be very hard for anyone to get through to the person they used to be.

How do I have my character make a shadow deal?

Comment on this post, with a link to any relevant ongoing thread and a quick little explanation of what's going on and which character is to make a deal (or has already done so, if you're threading). We'll make a note of it on this entry, and once your character is listed here you're officially free to have them go terrorise the neighbourhood and slowly succumb to corruption. Have fun!

The reason we try to keep track of shadowed characters in this way is due to the nature of the dark magic that comes with shadow deals. It's quite powerful, and can unbalance the game. Shadow deals are a fun way to play, but we do also have some vague semblance of a plot, and they're implicitly tied in to that. Some times may be better or worse for making deals than others.

How does a character break out of a shadow deal?

There are a few ways!

The first, and generally most straightforward method, is if your character is killed while under a shadow deal, whether by other characters or by an event or their own folly. Characters will always will be resurrected "clean" (though they'll probably suffer from extra headaches in addition to whatever other weakness they should be enduring due to their death count). Their powers will go back to whatever they were before they made the shadow deal. Killing someone with potent shadow powers, however, may prove quite difficult...

Another method is the good old tried-and-true method of 'snapping them out of it' - though it's a little more complicated than that. Your character's friends will have to do everything in their power to remind them of who they used to be before the shadow deal. This could mean taking them to a favourite place and confessing their undying love, or forcing them to listen to a lengthy hero speech about how good always triumphs, or making them a sincere offer to help them that they can't help but take to heart. For a group of friends, it might just mean hugging it out. None of these methods, however, are tried-and-true. What works for one character may just make another angrier.

If other characters can manage to drag your character all the way to the top of Lux Spire, through whatever method, they also have the option of dunking the character in the cleansing waters of the fountain there. This will 'wash away' the corruption without killing them, though it's not a pleasant experience. This method is a lot harder to pull off, partly because of the height of the spire itself and partly because those under shadow deals will instinctively try to stay away from the tower as much as possible. Water taken from the fountain by other means will just turn back into regular water - you'll have to bring the shadowed character to the fountain, not the other way around.

The final method is an unlikely one. Lux himself is powerful, but elusive. On rare occasions he may show up for a game event, and in that case characters may enlist his help. One touch from Lux and a shadow deal will be broken instantly. As a side-effect, a character touched by Lux may also notice that their powers now default to the light element instead of whatever they were before the shadow deal.