I had a big ramble about the importance of the Shells in defining the role of the Dark, and how the antinomian urge suffuses the Qliphoth in the Western magical tradition, particularly Hermetic Qabbalah. Then I deleted it. I don’t really think that a blog on game design is the right place for me to engage in huge tangents on whatever bit of occult lore I’m obsessing over this week—at least, until I get several more posts in.
Instead, I’m going to tie what I was going to write into game design.
We have some pretty core assumptions:
- All Legends follow a Sphere
- That Sphere bleeds of magic through an archetype.
- Lightsiders use their Spheres to find a form of apotheosis
That apotheosis can be as simple as embodying the archetype—becoming a Scion—or as complex as travelling through the Spheres and subliming into the magical field.
The trick here is in the first bullet point. All Legends. Darksiders, too. As the Light has its Spheres, the Dark has its Shells. The Spheres embody the Light, with deep meaning and ways for Legends to really develop. In contrast, the Shells reflect the Dark: they’re hollow, all the same form without the substance.
Take Strength. The Sphere of martial combat. A Lightsider not only becomes a kick-ass warrior, she learns a whole host about what it means to have power—responsibility, dedication, and humility being the main ones.
The Shell of Strength is Golab. That’s what you get if you want to be a kick-ass warrior and not give a shit about what it means. If you approach every situation with force, if you want to be a bully, or if you don’t care about collateral damage, you’re following Golab. Power without meaning. Form without substance.
I’m thinking about this a lot as I write the last of the Shells for the Book of Spheres. Naturally, I’m not creating each Shell from whole cloth. In addition to the notes in the Æternal Legends corebook, I’ve got a whole bunch of research and inspirations that I’m mainlining. What does it mean to live your live without substance? To give in to every emotional whim, to see the imperfections in everything? Darksiders live every day like that.
Each Shell is a fundamentally unhealthy viewpoint, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely invalid. The Shells are still archetypes, and they still have power—and a dangerous Darksider can use them to work towards his own apotheosis. Sure, he becomes a slave to the archetype’s worse aspects, but he can learn from that experience and grow far more dangerous. Think about what life is like for the Darksiders in your games, what part of life holds them in thrall, and what it must be like to hand your life over to an archetype.
-Stew
You know Stew, while I can usually tell your and Malcolm’s posts apart by context, style and subject matter, it would be convenient if you would sign your posts.
Good point. Edited in.
When I ran my AEternal Legends game the main villain was a Troll named Lord Druuge. He had a mundane wife who loved very much when he was a Legend. She always believed in the magical world but died before she could see it.
He followed the Sphere of Knowledge. At her death he twisted this into a Shell. His purpose from that point on was to fulfill his loved one’s wish by re meshing the material and magical world together. He didn’t care about the damage it would cause, just the results.