inkedspell | OBSIDIAN SOULS EVENT

Hello Deeries!

Like corrupting your character? Enjoy having magic go haywire? Want to help stop an evil golem-bot turned into a massive magic-eating monster by NOT using magic?

Then maybe you wouldn’t mind helping Sarona with her teensy, weensy, little mistake. That being accidentally giving life to a clone of an otherworldly monster that likes to corrupt and feast on magic.

Here’s how it’s going: Sarona is trying to get around the warping nature of Deerington and assumes it is a form of magic that she can negate. So she’s using something that came with her from her world, an Obsidian shard, to try and cancel out the magic with the new golem she’s making. Her golems are basically robots, just powered and controlled by magic. Sometimes they don’t look very robotic, other times they can get real robotic looking. This new golem, OBI, will be a general helper type, so she can do repairs and maybe loan him out to other people for them to use and make a profit.

What she doesn’t know is the Obsidian shard that she thinks is just some kind of anti-magic rock from another world is actually a piece of a heart of a huge monster that corrupts and devours magic. And by putting it into a body and giving it “life” the shard is going to create a smaller clone of that monster as it feeds on the magic around it.

BIG BAD:
So this is the Soulcarver. It feeds on magic by corrupting it, twisting it and then absorbing all of the energy into itself once it’s been released by whatever being the magic originated from. So OBI's new objective would be going out, appearing some simple golem-bot out there helping people, all the while twisting people who are magical, or use magic, on yourselves so it can then feast on your magic/life force when it's nice and ripe. It grows more obsidian shards on itself as absorbs more magic and can grow to ridiculous heights, but for the purpose of the game, we're gonna keep it under 20 feet.

EFFECTS:
What this means for the game is that if you have magic OBI could potentially infect you, corrupting your magic and twisting you into being a darker, more obsessive version of yourself all while appearing to give you a power boost. OR it could actually give you magical abilities if you never had them before. The more magic you use, the darker and more corrupted it becomes until you feel compelled to release all of that magic at once and potentially die from it or kill others. Soulcarver don’t care, he just wants the magic.

The effects of this boost do not happen immediately, but will activate when you attempt to use magic OR if you are in a situation where your new abilities might awaken for any reason. And then the infection has its hold.

The corruption will make you only care about how much stronger you can become and how magic can Fix Everything you think is wrong. You will become obsessed with your own power and the power of those around you, jealous and coveting of it. And when the magical energy is fully corrupted, the golem will feast on it, absorbing it as it is released into the world, turning itself into something more akin to the actual monster the shard comes from. The more magic it eats, the more it will start to look like the actual Soulcarver. And who knows, maybe some of these corrupted people might even side with OBI because of the promise of more power.

If you don't have magic, you could also be influenced by touching the golem directly and getting a boost as well, temporarily awakening in magical abilities you've never had before so you can then be consumed by it. But people who don't have magic have a higher immunity against this and have an easier time rejecting the golem's influence.

The nature of the corruption could be unique to each person, but the end result would be them being consumed by magic and using that power until they burn out.

ENDGAME:
OBI can be stopped, by having the shard removed and put back into a shielded container. The shard can't be destroyed only broken into smaller pieces that will attempt to reunite again. But this has to be done by someone who is either protected in a way that isn't magic, or isn't using magic themselves. Magic can't be the cure to this infection. It will only make it worse and those who use magic within the direct area of effect around the golem could potentially be infected by the shard's influence ten-fold.

My goal was for this plot to start out slow with the effects being lowkey and then influence getting worse over the course of a week or two before players figure out what's causing the changes to people around them. If enough people are affected the golem would be changing and warping itself faster, becoming more like the Soulcarver itself, stronger, more destructive and hungrier. The golem will not be easy to take down after it reaches a certain stage of its transformation, but it is possible and easier when people are working together.

Just be careful you don’t hack pieces of its body off or they will turn into more Soulcarver!clones and you could potentially have an army of them to take down! If such a thing were to happen, the shard would still be in OBI in the primary monster, not split between all of them.

OPT-OUT:
Of course this is not an event where everyone has to be affected! If you don’t want to participate and your character is magical/uses magic, the assumption would be they were never close enough to be affected, or the magic in their world is different enough it wasn't influenced by the Obsidian shard.

TIMELINE:
I was planning to set things up to begin on Friday/Saturday (3/19 or 3/20) of this coming week with the event lasting a week or two depending on how things go. The ending would be people plotting out how they would defeat Soulcarver!OBI and put the Obsidian shard where it can’t affect anyone anymore.

SIGN UP TO TAKE DOWN OBI:
Anyone is able to get involved in the fight, especially as other players may want their characters to side with OBI or an army of OBIs turn up, but keeping it simple for the takedown to be threaded, the number of people directly take down Soulcarver!OBI is going to be limited 3-5 players depending on interest! If you sign up by Friday I’ll RNG who gets to be involved in that and comment to let you know!