Shadow

**Shadow**, or **Enshadowment**, is one of the core elements of the game. Shadow is a malign magical influence that stops people from wanting to oppose your designs. Characters and locations have an Enshadowment value, 0-100%, which represents how influenced they are by the Shadow.

## Sources of shadow

* **Elder Tomb**: The Elder Tomb location, spawned on game start when playing as **She Who Will Feast**, **Iastur**, or **Ophanim** starts at 100% shadow
* **Enshadow**: Enshadow is a Challenge that can be done in any city or coven of witches at 100% infiltration, and brings the location to 100% shadow. This is much easier in covens as they have 0 security by default and only a single location to infiltrate
* **Deep One Cults**: The Deep One Cult modifier creates shadow in its location if it is over 100
* **Agents**: **The Supplicant** for **She Who Will Feast** can have a starting trait that creates shadow in his location. **The Monarch** has two starting traits she can choose from which creates shadow in her location, a general and weaker one or a stronger one restricted to locations in the Dark Empire. There is also a purchasable item that produces 1% shadow per turn in an agent's current location.
* **Powers**: **Vinerva's** power **Black Forest** can be used to enshadow rulers in locations with the Vinerva's Gift modifier
* **Dark Empire**: The Dark Empire continuously enshadows rulers within it
* **Desecrate Holy Sites**: A holy site that is infiltrated and has at least 66% shadow can be desecrated with a lore challenge. This turns it into a desecrated holy site, which passively spreads shadow

## Spread of shadow

* Shadow spreads from location to nearby location, although it does not spread from wilderness, ruins or sea to human settlements. The spread is faster the greater the difference in shadow between the two locations. The ward modifier decreases this spread by a percentage, and the well of shadow modifier increases spread from higher shadow locations to lower ones
* Shadow spreads from locations to the location's ruler if the location has the higher shadow and from the ruler to the location if the ruler has the higher shadow
* Shadow spreads from a location to a hero when the hero rests there, if the location has a higher shadow than the hero does
* Enshadowed rulers spread shadow to the location they rule over

## Removing shadow

* All heroes can do a quest called drive back shadow, which removes shadow in a location based on how low the shadow is in the neighboring location with the lowest shadow
* All heroes can do a quest called consecrate in any non-desecrated holy site which sets its shadow to 0, unless shadow has reached 75% in that location
* All heroes can do a quest to reduce the shadow of another hero
* The chosen one can do a quest to remove all shadow from a monarch and the monarch's location. This also makes the monarch like the chosen one and sets the locations ward modifier to 200

## Effects of shadow

* Rulers and heroes that have shadow are less motivated to respond to threats (their perception of menace is effectively decreased) based on how much shadow they have
* Enshadowment also serves as a counter to Awareness; rulers are less likely to join an Alliance should one form
* A ruler's shadow will decrease their location's security by 1 for every 20 shadow, rounded down
* Rulers and heroes with shadow over 50% contribute to your victory points