Today I have been considering the Shadow in my Campaign.
The Enemy is Darkly Sorcerous, and Reality Warping.
The Enemy Amplifies the voices of the Shadow Held, Crushes Autonomy, and Grinds down the willful.
For Darkly Sourcerous I figured I will use that as the basis for it’s powers. Ancient rituals, blood magic, etc. No fireballs or lightning. The powers on display I want to be subtle and that flows straight into Reality Warping.
So I felt like I could apply this in a lot of reality warping ways.
– Powerful enemies can bend time and space in limited ways
– Powerful enemies are able to manipulate light and wind and other elements in limited ways
I imagine this being showcased in battle scenes and gives me ways to carve out little moments in the combat where time slows, or seems to jump around. Disorienting shifts in the environment, similar to when Frodo wears the One Ring. Everything goes all inverted and warped.
Also, lands coming under sway of the Shadow will start to warp and twist.
– Sounds and colors become distorted and warped.
– Physical objects feel off. Soft things feel prickly electric, solid things slip from the fingers, your eyes cannot seem to focus on other things.
Trying to work these themes into what the shadow does.
Amplify the voices of the shadow held. I thought this made a good battle showpiece as well. Women set up as beautiful weapons their voices like that of the Siren and Banshee.
Then back in the clan lands, perhaps particularly weak people are starting to talk peace. Sought out by Agents of the Shadow, they begin to speak out and people are starting to listen!
Crushing autonomy, I am thinking that some of the voices of the Shadow Held also subvert the cause of the Unification. In the Fundamentalists/Traditionalst They insist that the clans MUST return to the old ways. That the clans are losing because they disbanded and are not fighting the ways that the gods intended. Radicals under the shadow will propose increasingly severe changes that take choices away from people. Like each craft must wear assigned colors. No symbols of the old clans are allowed anywhere and all punishable by increasingly draconian punishments.
Grinds down the willful. I think I am just going to represent this as the result of each of the things above always happening in the background. No sooner does the Watch Commander deal with the Molthas representative who is angy at a slight from the Richti rep, but now the Fundamentalists are demonstrating in a nearby village and it sounds like revolt may be in the works. Just a complete and constant slew of small petty problems that must be addressed immediately that keep interrupting the business of getting the war dealt with.
Wow that was a mouthful . . . what do you think? Any ideas you might get rid of or throw in there? Comments would be appreciated.
Leaving myself a reminder to comment later
Also, if I am completely missing the point, please point it out. XD
Nope! More I just want to share my usual take in those options
Gah, your other post reminded me that I wanted to come back to this.
So my attitude for approaching is/does is that IS defines the genre and provides the default color for my descriptions, while DOES serves as the default set of tools that the Shadow relies on.
Darkly sorcerous and reality warping are personally my favorite go-to’s, the ones I’ll use every time when I’m running con games. It makes for lots of really unsettling sorcerous narration – creepy spell effects and terrifying magic effects. Reality warping is also fun because it means I get to mess with the PCs by playing tricks on them to make them doubt themselves – which is thematic, because women, femmes, and nbs constantly question themselves over sexism, because it’s so often impossible to know the intentions behind something that SEEMS sexist, but maybe had other explanations.
I’ll hit this pretty hard with male players, especially, because that experience of self-doubt and questioning reality is something that the majority of cisdudes don’t have experience with. Something that I’ve found really effective (that dudes have responded positively to!) is using (consensual!) borderline “gaslighting”. For instance, I’ll target a PC played by a man and narrate how they see something strange, unsettling, or alarming when they are by themselves, but also throw in several “I mean, you’re tired and your eyes are playing tricks on you, probably” or “you might just be imagining things”. Then when I ask them what they do, if they hesitate I do an aggressive smash cut to another player: “cool, we’ll come back to you. [Character name]! [frame entirely different, very mundane scene]”.
So that’s the approach that I take. I want to stress that this isn’t the “correct” or “orthodox” way to tackle those elements! I am VERY much a GM whose GM style is trolling my players, and that might not work for every GM.
That “Trolling my players” is very much thematically how I was thinking too. Reality Warping to me says that the rules of reality no longer work quite the way that the PCs are used to. That the Shadow and it’s servants can use those new rules to keep the PC’s off kilter and guessing what is and is not possible.
Thank you Anna, I appreciate your input and perspective.