Shadow (Character)

Shadow wearing a full set of Archbishop armour (concept)

*Original Bodyak's Books page*

**Shadow** is the name of the main hero in the Mages RPG. He appears as a mostly featureless pitch-black figure with glowing blue eyes. Depending on the player's choices, Shadow can take on many different roles, being loved and respected by his peers or the contrary - being an infamous and universally hated mage. He is the only in-game character that progressively levels up via fights or story-based interactions along with Attributes that are upgraded using Attribute Points by the player.

## Origins

According to the intro of the game, Shadow used to once be a well-known mage from the city of Antel. While fighting a demon from the Underworld, he was mortally wounded. After his untimely death, the mage has travelled to the Shadow Dimension, but was rejected entry by the Gates. He is told that the Gates can not accept his Essence because his soul was shattered a long time ago, and its shards were thrown across the world by the demons that he used to battle.

Since the mage has already given up his physical body, all that is left of him was now just his Essence - a hollow container of pure Shadow Energy. This is where the mage took on his new name of simply Shadow.

## Involvement

Shadow appears on the outskirts of Antel, his first goal being to reach the Citadel in order to get some advice from the Keeper of Magic and restore his abilities. During their conversation with the Keeper, Shadow confesses to have betrayed his master in his previous life by ignoring the latter's teachings as well as breaking the Magus Codex several times in order to achieve his goals. As punishment, the Keeper decides not to restore Shadow's previous abilities, but to instead give him a Starter Amulet of choice that uses either Light or Dark magic in accordance to the spinning "wheel of fortune" (As the game progresses, the player can obtain more magic Amulets to learn more magic types and skills).

The Keeper's advice to Shadow is that he must return to those places and realms where he has fought strong magical and demonic entities in order to redeem his soul shards and then come back to the Citadel for a ritual that would piece it back together.

The Keeper also warns the mage of the fact that since his body is now pure Shadow Energy, the demons he seeks to fight would be much more eager to obtain even a portion of it and will be several times more aggressive and dangerous to him, since just a single drop of Shadow Energy has so much destructive power.

According to the Keeper, Shadow can not die in this form, the most he can get is exhausted from battling. However, fights with demons are extremely dangerous as they have the potential to "eat" away souls and life energy (this fact also explains the mechanic where regular fights, when lost, can be replayed, but boss fights, when lost, deliver a "game over" to the player along with loss of progress if they don't save beforehand).

Shadow's first target is a local DJ from Antel known as MC Magicman.

## Trivia

* If the player unequips any Glove-slot items from their inventory, then unarmed melee attacks would deal very little to no damage to enemies. This is related to the fact that Shadow is mostly a Spectre-like entity that doesn't transfer much momentum via physical contact.