Shade

## **Visual Description**

In their natural state, Shades appear as an Astorianoid formation of black smoke of various thickness, with the thickest parts accumulating in the chest and head areas. Typically Shades have little to no uniquely defining features aside from glowing facial features, mainly eyes and mouth.

The glow colour a Shade presents depends on their favoured negative emotion to feed from, i.e. fear, anger, sadness, confusion.

When possessed an individual’s eyes will become a milky white and blood vessels on the surface of their skin will turn black.

## **Known Abilities**

All variations of Shades are able to change their body shape at will, with an observed limitation of changing up to 3 times their natural size. However, their natural size can be increased or decreased depending on its access to soul essence.

Shades are able to cause parts of its body to be selectively incorporeal, allowing for movement through physical objects, and inflict physical harm. It cannot, however mimic specific properties such as physical sharpness, unless it has access to soul essence.

With access to soul essence a Shade is also able to inflict direct damage to an individual’s soul vessel, causing essence to leak from the opening, which it may feed off of.

Shades are capable of possessing individuals under extreme emotional distress, those under said distress resonate in a way that the Shade is able to imitate then thread a portion of itself within the individual’s soul vessel to take root. Once inside an individual’s soul the Shade can take complete bodily possession of the individual.

## **Typical Behaviours**

Shades when without a host are either bound to an object or area, depending on their binding type their behaviour differs slightly;

When bound to an object a Shade will only emerge when the object is disturbed by an individual, after which the Shade will relentlessly attempt to find the disturber to usually kill them, during a chase they will possess other individuals in aid of finding the disturber.

When bound to an area a Shade will only emerge if a strong enough negative emotion, or a malicious action is enacted within the area. Once present the Shade will possess an individual, most commonly the one who felt the negative emotion, or did the malicious act, and proceed to kill anyone within their bound area or had been in the bound area recently.

If a Shade is unbound from their object or area they will instinctually attempt to possess individuals of progressively larger soul capacity, killing or feeding off of anyone in their way.

All variations of Shades passively feed off of radiating negative emotions, however they are able to actively feed off of said emotions in a purer form by inhaling soul essence when in close enough proximity to a distressed target. This active feeding may only occur when emerged from their binding however.

## **Reproduction / Creation**

Shades are created through long term saturation of negative emotions and malicious acts, if these conditions accumulate a small area a Shade will be pulled from the Under and bound to an object, if the accumulation occurs in a larger area then the same process occurs, but instead the Shade is bound to the area.

As their nature is to gain power and cause devastation, Shades as a by-product often create more binding spots for more Shades to emerge from if left unchecked for long enough.

## **Weaknesses**

Ideally the best option to deal with Shades is to ensure one cannot bind to the physical world, this can be done making sure that negative emotions are matched with positive ones, or forgiveness.

Some runes are able to stop Devoid from passing its boundaries and may be a temporary solution to keep a Shade trapped.

The only way to banish a Shade is by destroying their binding, or the host they are possessing, however knowing what or where the binding is can only be known officially by the Shade and the last individual it has possessed.

Individuals with high willpower have been able to fight through Shade possession partially but not completely, to unbind a Shade forcefully from an individual safely, a gesture of true love needs to be given by one or multiple other individuals, this gesture can be platonic or romantic. The chance of success of this method working depends on how little soul essence the Shade has gotten to feed on recently.

Another method of stopping Shade possession is forcing the individual to go through severe soul burn, which will force the Shade to leave their body. Once released from the individual the Shade will return to its binding if it still exists, otherwise it will be banished.

## **Trivia**

* Scholars believe that with each possession a Shade takes a fraction of their hosts knowledge and personality, consequently they theorize that older Shades are more likely to capable of conscious thought, as very few Shades have been observed to be capable of conversation.
* Rogue Casters have been known to funnel negative emotions intentionally into objects to create Shade bindings in an attempt to ambush and kill pursuing Seekers.
* Shades are extremely territorial and will fight other Devoid, including other Shades, for ownership of a possession target, which can be used to remove other Devoid.