Shadow Mages

A long time ago, an 8th type of Elemental Mages existed, who were called Shadow mages, and who could could control darkness and shadows, an element perhaps even more mysterious than any other. However, around 500 years ago, they went extinct, and as far as the world knows, have remained so since.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Mana Core

Because shadowmages control an element that is naturaly devoid of any mana, their cores grew stronger than that of any other type of elemental mages, in order to compensate for the mana deficiency, which is a similar situation that Ice mages face, but again since they can learn to absorb mana from water, they still have an advantage that shadowmages do not. Despite this, they usualy ended up a bit weaker than other mages, and could only cast small amounts of mana at a time. However, their stronger core allowed them to have a fast recovery time, which they were renouned for.

Ear Shape

It is known that as a general rule for elemental mages, the higher the strenght of their abilities, the longer their ears will grow to be. Since shadow mages tended to be weaker than most other types of mages, on account of their element not having any mana, their ears were the smallest of the 8 types, and grew to be long about half as long as Firemage.

Eye Colour

Their eyes follow a similar patern, but only for the younger mages, as unlike their ears which only have a window of about 5 years to develop and grow to their conplete size, the eyes continue changing colour for of the mages life. As such, while it may take a bit longer than it would for other mages, their eyes will also shift colour. Shadow mage's eyes are pitch black with hints of purple around the iris.

Magic Abilities

Overview

Shadow mages controled a very peculiar element. This element has no mass, and no real quantifiable quality to it, and is best described as being an absence of light, and nothing more. However, this means that these unique qualities allow for unique abilities, not seen in other types of mages, or at least, in a much milder form.

Shadow step

Shadow step is a similar ability to Light Sprint, an ability of Lightmage, and which consists of limited teleportation, or hyper fast flying (Scholars still debate among themselves what it really is). The difference is that shadow step has a bigger range and doesn't require the mage to have a straight and continuous line of sight of the target, like Light Sprint does, making it more versatile. The move is also much quieter than Light Sprint, as it seems the darkness that cloaks the the mage absorbs sounds, which is yet another oddity of this element.

Void Sphere

A dangerous ability, which is somewhat similar in apperance to a Firemage's fireball ability, but not in effects. While the process of creating both is simple enough and consist of simply concentrating and crushing ones mana into a ball in their hand, a void spere does not explode upon impact like a fire ball. Instead, the act of crushing shadows together creates what is called void. Void is a liquified form of pure darkness, which consumes other matter upon impact, vanishing it, and leaving nothing behind. The amount of matter it consumes always matches the volume of the sphere, which is no more than around 5cm in diameter.

Void Bomb

This ability is an extreme version of the Void Sphere, which was rarely ever performed because of its dangerous effects. Click here to see more.

EXTINCT

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Humans

Lifespan

Around 80 years

History

The history of shadowmages is shrouded in mystery, and this is not about to change anytime soon. That is unfortunatly because they were the primary target of the Sokralist cults and the meager amount of archives that had been collected which contained knowledge of their history as well as their abilities, were lost during their infamous attacks on Tohorys, as well as during the fire at the great library of Kalosanthar.

What we know is that the vast majority of shadow mages by the end of the Second Age resided in the city of Tohorys, in south-eastern Enaskia. That city is said to be almost as old as the city of Solthar to the north, and was said to have always been inhabited by, and even founded by, Shadowmages. During the first and second age, it had become tradition for shadowmages born outside of the city to move there. A census done by the Esnian empire in 303 Bc put the city's population at 10k, and about a third of them were shadowmages. A few dozens lived in a couple of larger cities in Darnia and northern Samaria.

After the massacre perpetrated by the sokralist cultists in Tohorys in the year 224, the shadow mage population was drasticaly reduced. The 100s of so Shadowmages left in Darnia got together and decided to flee. 3 of the 4 boats they took from the city of Mersan sunk into the sea off the Dead Coast in a feak storm. The last boat, containing about 100 sailors, arrived in the City of Neyaken, in Kingdom of Syrkania in Syrkania. The group would join the local shadowmage community, composed of a few dozen or so individuals. In 147, the cult would find them out and kill most of them. The group's few survivors would slip and scater throughout Continent of Enaskia to hide.

While this would bring the Shadowmage population in Enaskia close to zero, thousand more lived throughout the world, forming numerous groups in Osian, Arros as well as Mahador and Samaria. However, for some reason that remain entirely unknown to this day, soon after the attack in 147bc, shadowmages worldwide became ill with a virulent sickness, which symptoms resembling the blight, despite never coming into contact with it. Thankfully, unlike the actual blight the mysterious sickness was not contagious to other people, but it was deadly for those affected. By the end of the year, every single shadowmages in the world was dead, thus brigning their species to extinction. Since then, no other shadowmage has been born thru a so-called Celestial gift, at least, as far as we know.