RPing Shadow Abilities
Hello friend! Are you a Shadow Priest in game? Or Shadow Adept/Shadow Fiend/Actual Shadow? I have been RPing my Shadow Priest for roughly three years now and I have had my share of experiences with her talents and abilities in RP situations. I thought I could share what I know, and maybe give you ideas you can use with your RP too!
This is by no means the only way to RP Shadow, Void, or Shadow Priest. What makes RP so amazing is that everyone can come to their own conclusions on how they RP anything, especially when it comes to magic and other ambiguous stuff. But I also know I’ve had a few folks ask me how best to RP Shadow for their new priest so I want to share my take!
-General-
First thing to know about Shadow? It’s -not- kinetic. Unlike Arcane which is energy transferred, or fel which is chaotic or destructive energies, Shadow is entirely based upon the nature of existence. This is partly why I adore it so much. All other magics exist, and can be quantified based upon power. But Shadow is entirely metaphysical in that it is, in essence, the nature of nonexistence. This is what makes it so potent, because we as living things exist. And we can not comprehend what it is to not exist as hard as we may try. So imposing the Void upon the mind is often what breaks it. And it is that very madness that many Shadow users eventually succumb to.
To put it simply, when an arcane wielder kills, you might see burns or broken bones upon the victim. If a fel user kills, expect to see decay or burns as well from the raw destructive and chaotic energies. Shadow will leave the person’s body entirely intact, but the mind will be in various states of discord or perhaps even total nervous system shutdown. That is how you know a Shadow user struck. You see bodies with no apparent injuries.
So we touched on the overall. What about abilities in specifics? I’ll offer you some of the in game abilities and how I have RPed them. I encourage you to explore though! Feel free to use the way that I RP them, but also search for your own methods as well. That’s part of the fun, Shadow lets you put your own twisted flair onto your character’s talents.
Mind Blast
Have to begin with a personal favorite. Mind Blast is a very potent ability but also one of the more ICly devastating ones. Mind Blast is exactly as it sounds. You, the Shadow user, are taking a person and collecting their worst moments. Their horrid memories, their worst pains ever experienced, their deepest fears and their biggest failures. You are taking everything they hold as negative and harmful, hence the ‘cast time’, and then you unleash it upon their mind..all at once. This is more stress then even the strongest individual can withstand, and most people will either mentally shut down or go into a cardiac arrest from the sheer weight of the overload. Mind Blast is a -lot- of fun, and though I have only ever used it on two player characters, both times it was the death of the other character.
Shadow Word: Pain
Another personal favorite. This staple in any Shadow Priest’s arsenal is both fun to use and, depending on your RP partner, fun to react to. Most people I have seen RP it as attacking the nerves. As if you are causing them to send pain signals. This is one way to do it, and as always I encourage everyone to find what they most enjoy, but this is not how I have been doing it. Shadow, like most things, attacks the mind. The nerves themselves are left entirely out of the equation, but you as the Shadow user are in fact causing a massive mental hallucination. You are going for the mind itself, and feeding it sensations of pain from being skinned alive or being burned. The reason I choose this method is it is far more focused and simple. Why attack every nerve in a person’s body when you can instead just trick the brain into false pain signals? This gives you one target, and allows you as the user to titrate how severe or mild the person’s pain is. I have done everything from paper cut levels of pain to full skin-on-fire agony. Play around with it!
Dispersion
Some Priests swear by this ICly, like myself, others choose not to touch it. I adore it because it allows my character to move around with ease and be anywhere despite magical barriers. The essence of Dispersion is to separate it from Blink or other teleportation talents. When a mage blinks, they are fading to energy, and that energy is tunneled forward before being reconstituted. Even teleportation is similar in that you ‘tunnel’ by connecting two points through a tear is space-time. Fel gates work the same, a point A to point B tunnel. But Dispersion in my opinion is a -lot- more fun. You are not ‘teleporting’. You are in fact ceasing to exist. You draw the Shadow up to consume you, and as we talked about, Shadow and Void is the essence of nonexistence. Thus you are swallowed up and entirely stop existing. The key is, when you ‘emerge’, you are beginning existence again. You did not ‘tunnel’ or create a tear. You just stopped being, and started being somewhere else. This is also how Shadow users can replicate their form into mirrors. Because they can not only disperse themselves into nonexistence, but they can draw many ‘thems’ from that same ether into existence. Fun times!
Mind Flay
A real crowd pleaser, this one. I’ve used it IC on a number of occasions and it always gets great reactions. Mind Flay is, again, a lot like it sounds in terms of RP. To flay is to peel away, so now apply that definition to mentality. Boom, you have Mind Flay. With this talent, you are invading another’s thoughts but not directly assaulting them. Instead, you are ‘peeling away’ at their thoughts. I usually RP it that as the victim thinks of anything, my character ‘steals’ it. As memories come up, she claims them. Friends? Gone. Face of wife/husband? Erased. Children? You can’t remember them. Essentially you are ‘peeling away’ at what makes them a person. Their talents, their memories, their knowledge, you are flaying it all away layer by layer. In the end, you leave a husk. Alive in body, but dead of mind. What’s brilliant is that you as the user can choose when it ends. If you want to just erase their knowledge of their kids, you can, and leave them with no memory of the people they once loved but otherwise they are fine. Experiment here, it’s a blast.
Shadow Mend
Another fun one. Other talents like Druidic magic or Light mends wounds by knitting flesh or even accelerating healing. Shadow Mend is strangely different. You are not ‘healing’, you are simply making the wound not exist. This replaces the wounded area with a broken replacement as reality tries to ‘fix’ what is now no more. The issue is that while the wound is gone, it leaves behind the painful memory of that injury that can not be taken away. And because it was never healed properly, the wounded area can remain in pain for months before Light or other treatments can true mend the area. This is why Shadow Mending should be used as a last resort ICly.
Conclusion
These are just some of the more common talents, and ones that I have used often to great RP success and fantastic reactions. Some of the others like Mind Control or Void Eruption are a bit easier to RP and pretty much do what they say in the name. Still, explore your own way to RP it!
In the end, have fun! Shadow is a fantastic canvas to really add some personal flair, and while one user may interact with Void in one way, another user may have a totally different experience. With madness, there is no ‘set way’ to go about it. So I hope you at least enjoyed reading, and have fun!
Shadow keep you.
