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Art Symposium: Shadow Magic

Tags: #Broken Gallery 
  • Member
    July 23, 2013

    Wow! Fantastic work, D13PLZ! I love the impression that I get from this and when you said "warlock" it just fits so well. Love it. Thanks for your submission!

  • July 23, 2013

    Hm, okay, I'll bite.  To the right is a piece from a series I did depicting the concept of the Hanged Man in tarot.  However, I felt the imagery and concept applied itself well to the theme.  Accessing the Shadow Realm in addition to the multiple possibilities of yourself is no mean feat.  In order to reach your other selves, you must give up your current self.  You must surrender the idea of a singular, present identity in order to possess all identities.  The danger in this is that the caster risks losing all sense of self--the self is sacrificed to the caster's self in order to attain this power.  In short, "I make a sacrifice of myself to myself in order to gain knowledge and power."

    Additionally, if the caster is not careful, I'm fairly certain that they could easily lose control of their multiple potential selves such that one would come to dominate and the potential selves would thus be lost, as they no longer have the potential to exist.  It's a very precarious line to walk, and requires utmost concentration and self-awareness...

    But still, the door is there.  You need only look within yourself to find it.

  • July 24, 2013

    I have a character concept I discarded a while ago that might actually work with this. A more talented build crafter than I is needed to bring out this one's potential.

    Ideally I was going to create a bound weapon master. This character would wield all bound weapons and have all the necessary perks to bring out the max damage possible from them. In addition he'd wield ward's sort of in the fashion of a spectral shield, and alteration spells to form a sort of spectral armor.

    TL;DR: Imagine bound weapons as manipulating your shadow into the shape of various weapons. Imagine wards as manipulating your shadow to take the shape of a shield, and imagine flesh spells as being your shadow overlapping your corporeal form to bolster your physical defense.

    P.S. I don;t have pictures at this time, but I hope this advice helps.

  • Member
    July 24, 2013

    I never thought of it this way! Your rendition of that aspect of shadow magic is great - there is tremendous power to be found within shadow magic but it comes with a cost and you most likely will not be the same after resorting to it. Your work shows that perfectly!

  • Member
    July 24, 2013

    So he would have perks in three combat schools (One-Handed, Two-Handed, Archery) and three magic schools (Conjuration, Restoration, Alteration)?

  • July 24, 2013

    Aye. You can see why this requires a more talented build maker than I to create. Though, I imagine I wouldnt max out any of these trees. That would be a crazy high leveled build.

  • Member
    July 24, 2013

    What's interesting is there are great builds posted for each of the bound weapons  Each of them is quite powerful, imagine combining them... 

  • July 24, 2013

    What you lack in raw damage you could make up with versatility. I think it might work with Kyrielle's concept as well.

  • Member
    July 24, 2013

    I found this image of a Drow Shadowsmith in the Tome of Magic sourcebook for D&D 3.5. I thought it was particularly relevant to your mention of binding shadows to weapons in the Lore post!