Ego

**Ego** is a shapeshifting monster that appears to reside within Callum Zidane's heart as a living avatar of his curse. While most of its specifics are currently unknown about the creature (though it is believed to have a connection to the demon Joy), it's presumably wholly malevolent and wants to kill Callum by any means necessary.

## **Description**

### **Appearance**

Ego's size and shape are wholly dependent on the form that it takes. However, there are a few consistent visual indicators among all Ego forms and Ego-corrupted creatures, which include:

* The body being fully blackened.
* Large antlers where the creature's head would be.
* Red lines coursing across the creature's body.
* A red hexagon with branching lines near the top outlining the creature's right eye.
* Black hexagons.
* A generally "synthetic" appearance.

**Ego-Callum's** appearance is a drastic change, doubling in size and taking on more of a crocodilian-esque shape.

**Ego-Snapdragon's** shape is functionally identical to the original creature. However, the creature develops a red metallic eye that's outlined with the red hexagon.

**Ego-Karma** resembles the familiar in general appearance, but grows significantly in size, and is unique in design in that her red hexagon appearance was more along the lines of a growth. In addition, due to Karma's resistance in fighting the corruption, it was not able to fully overtake her appearance, with her pure white scales resembling something more like a Dalmatian rather than going pitch black.

**Ego-Ankheg** maintains the same shape and size, though its coloration changes to be consistent with other Ego creatures, and it develops the same eye mark and antlers.

### **Personality**

Ego is violent, erratic, and fully focused on its goal to kill Callum. Its reasoning for doing so is currently unknown. If Ego cannot reach Callum, it apparently pursues whatever living creatures are nearby, corrupting or killing them.

Callum has confirmed that a consistent trait in Ego creatures (including his own Ego form) is being put into a state of manic euphoria.

## **Story**

### **Pre-Campaign Backstory**

#### **Background**

Ego was apparently born with Callum. While specifics are currently unknown around their background, Callum has apparently killed Ego around twenty times prior to the events of the campaign.

### **Campaign**

#### **Sanctum of the Verdant Trickster**

After defeating a Snapdragon and collecting its heart, it began to get corrupted by Ego, who manifested itself in front of the group as the *Ego-Snapdragon*. Despite their advantage in numbers, it was an uphill battle, with Callum getting downed and nearly dying before being stabilized by Walker, who noticed the tumor in Callum's heart as they did so. The group was rescued by Astryd Ansirah, who healed Callum and prepared to banish the monster. Callum, feeling re-invigorated, decided to help Ansirah subdue the creature by transforming into Ego-Callum, much to the horror of those around him. After banishing Ego, the group fled to Ansirah's home, where Callum revealed his conflicting connection to the monster.

#### **Karma's a Bitch**

Back at Ansirah's hot spring, Callum revealed that he is constantly in pain because of Ego, despite his rather upbeat demeanor. Echo would later contact her patron in private, asking if she knows anything about Ego. Her patron says she may have, but requires more information, tasking Echo with obtaining Callum's necklace. She constructs a plan to obtain his necklace, and is successful in doing so, though she does so by the skin of her teeth, handing it off to Karma to transport to her patron. However, electing to keep half of the antler for her own observations, she snaps it in half. This prompts a dark essence to reach out of the antler and corrupting her familiar into *Ego-Karma*. Callum revealed that he didn't know how to save her, prompting Echo to mercy kill her familiar as he breaks off a piece of the antler. Callum would later store this within Ansirah's vault, not wanting it to get stolen, and would reveal to Walker that handling any parts of Ego can be *incredibly* dangerous.

#### **Temple of the Chroma Claw**

While Ego did not make a direct appearance in this arc, Callum told Echo and Walker about his background as the son of Mane Vikas Zidane. Due to a successful persuasion roll by the former, Callum also disclosed the demon that Vikas is aligned with: Joy, the same emotion that's brought out by Callum's Rage.

## **Character Information**

### **Abilities**

Ego's prime characteristic are its antlers, which have the capacity to drain the life force of a targeted creature.

Ego appears to primarily rely on corrupting its surroundings to determine its form and abilities. This corruption can be spread to living creatures, though the consequences for this are currently unknown. If left unchecked, Ego has the capacity to "level a village," and has apparently done so. In addition to this, Callum has noted that Ego's capabilities can create permanent ecological dead zones, which contain corrupted creatures far more dangerous than the average post-Fluxx monsters.

Callum mentions that one way he checks for Ego is to check for traces of death and decay in nearby flora, as Ego apparently causes living organisms to die wherever it goes.

Ego can, to some degree, communicate in Deep Speech.

Any traces of Ego are apparently still very dangerous to handle, and can corrupt living creatures, as seen when Echo broke the antler on Callum's necklace, resulting in the corruption of her familiar. Callum later confirmed this was the case and has happened before. However, it appears that Callum has some degree of immunity to the handling of Ego's remnants, or knows something his companions do not about handling them.

### **Weaknesses**

As confirmed by Astryd, Ego appears to be repulsed by the light, or at least radiant damage.

### **Corruption**

Ego's ability to corrupt everything around it is one of the monster's prime characteristics. While the corruption has only applied to living organisms during the events of the campaign, Callum has suggested that Ego has the capacity to corrupt nonliving things as well.

Any items that are held by an individual being corrupted by Ego are merged into their person, as seen with Callum.

There is no indication as to what triggers the spread of Ego specifically, as it appears anything in the presence of Callum is inherently at risk of being corrupted. However, tampering with the physical remnants of Ego-Callum or another corrupted creature appears to be a reliable way of summoning the creature, as its essence lives on in the remnants and finds something new to spread to, nor does it require the presence of Callum to successfully trigger.