Darkness

magicphenomenon

Overview

Darkness is caused by constant overuse or draining of essence. Small cases leave corruption: blackened ground, dead patches, brittle soil, and places where life and usable essence have been drained away. When the damage keeps growing, it becomes darkness that can swallow fields, forests, towns, and whole regions.

People also use corruption, essence corruption, and darkness corruption for the damaged land, air, bodies, or creatures left by darkness.

Appearance

Darkness takes forms such as dense blackness, purple-black haze, black rain, blackened ground, lifeless soil, dark storms, and walls or curtains that hide the sky and horizon. In darkened areas, the air can taste metallic or acrid, visibility drops, and the land can feel nearly empty of usable essence.

Effects

Darkness drains essence from life and can hollow out people, animals, plants, land, and air.
It can make breathing difficult, hide landmarks, erase distance cues, and make travel dangerous.
Strong darkness can harm memory, thought, and sense of self, especially inside the Land of Darkness and its storms.
Darkness can turn humans, animals, and some dead bodies trapped in it for too long into darkness creatures.
Transformed creatures include corrupted bears, wolf-like umbral stalkers, harbingers made from people, ebon wraiths from corrupted dead, and hollowed former villagers.
Strong mages who turn into darkness creatures can remain dangerous enough to use magic.

Darkness Storms

Darkness can gather into fields, walls, veils, and storms. Spiral shard wielders can shape, contain, compress, release, or redirect it.

Jorhan controlled enormous amounts of darkness through the spiral shards and kept much of it within Xalmyrra for millennia. His storms and veil pressed on memory and thought as well as land and air. A compressed darkness storm can strike with black and purple lightning.

Aldar later creates a smaller cycle-like darkness veil around Cyndarel.

Survival artifacts

Darkness repellers are portable artifacts used to move through the Land of Darkness. When powered with essence, a repeller emits a low whirring sound and unfolds a massive golden dome of protective light that holds back surrounding darkness and corruption.

Lirien carries a repeller during travel with Aurion through the gloom to reach Brynor. After that journey, Brynor's expedition from Dravemir brings one into the Land of Darkness. Mirael carries the device, channels essence into it, and keeps the dome around the group during their journey toward the temple. During the expedition, the repeller is kept in hand, at Mirael's side, or in a cart casing during difficult terrain and rest stops.

The repeller protects the party from open exposure. Brynor's group relies on route markers, supplies, long-range light, enchantments, and mental protection against the region's hazards. After Astheron takes Lirien away from the group's repeller, he uses a cosmic barrier.

History & origins

The earliest known pattern begins with essence overuse. Mages who drain too much from the world leave blackened, barren patches of darkness that can resist regrowth for months.

In the Malverand Empire, magic overuse spreads darkness and corruption. Arcanis's essence cores and essence towers store magic, but the machinery can drain enough essence from the environment to blacken land. Malverand bans draining inside populated places such as Maraveth and moves some tower production toward essence-rich regions.

At Morozkaya, Barachiel's first spiral shard transformation drains essence from millions of people, the land, and the air. Black rain falls, life withers, and Morozkaya is left ruined. Afterward, Barachiel uses the shard to move corruption away from Malverand and restore damaged land.

Much of the corruption and darkness purged from Malverand ends up south of Xalmyrra. Jorhan gathers, moves, compresses, and shapes it through the spiral shards. He contains enormous amounts of darkness inside Xalmyrra's storms, veil, and cycles.

After Jorhan's hold breaks, the Land of Darkness recedes and Xalmyrra is freed from its long confinement. Darkness remains active. It returns around Velundra and threatens Thalassai. Aldar and Lythariel contain, redirect, or reverse parts of its spread.

Removal and Reversal

Darkness can fade when essence overuse stops and life returns to the area. If people keep overusing or draining essence, the damage remains active.

Mages with both darkness and life magic, such as Lythariel, can reverse darkness more directly, turning corrupted ground back into green land. Eira also uses darkness and life magic this way before losing both schools.

Divine shields, cosmic barriers, fire, lava, sun essence, and repellers can hold darkness back or clear parts of it for a time. These protections let travelers and cities survive exposure, but they do not heal the land.

Spiral shard wielders can move, compress, redirect, or shape darkness. That can protect one region, but it can also move the danger elsewhere.

Secrets and Mysteries

Jorhan's spiral shard maintained much of the darkness and the Xalmyrran cycles for millennia. Breaking his hold freed Xalmyrra and made the Land of Darkness recede. Darkness returned around Velundra and Thalassai. Eira's shard-created darkness and life magic, along with Lythariel's continued life magic, provide a rare path for reclaiming corrupted land.

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