Within you there is darkness. It is a seed currently, a harmless curiosity. But already you can feel it sprouting, growing, an ebon vine breaking the seed’s soft shell, crawling slowly in all directions through your soul.
Even this early, you feel how this will end. The energy calls to you, beckons you to harness it as you meet your challenges. That dark energy will at first be an option, something that you can choose to do. But you will choose it more and more until no choice exists but to surrender.
All that will remain is the darkness. Whether or not you take its offer, it will take you over.
Description. In this horizon, one player or several have been infected by an evil entity. The entity seeks to corrupt the adventurers, replacing their personalities with the entity’s. Can the players resist the entity’s corruption long enough to seek help, or will the entity overtake the adventurers? The Darkness Within is a Horizon appropriate for heroic tier characters.
Powers. A character engaged with The Darkness Within gains access to the following powers:
Soulblight
Darkness Within Encounter
Necrotic
You draw forth the energy from within you and channel it into your attack.
Free Action
Trigger: You hit with an attack.
Effect: You deal 2d6 extra necrotic damage on the attack. In addition, you may spend a healing surge. If you do, the target is also dazed if it does not have resistance to necrotic effects.
Dark Wind
Darkness Within Encounter
You set the evil energy to work to revitalize you.
Minor Action
Necrotic, Healing
Effect: You can spend a healing surge to gain temporary hit points equal to your bloodied value.
Advancement. The Darkness Within advances at the following conditions:
- Extended Rest. Each extended rest, there is a chance that the entity advances. Roll a 1d6. On a roll of 1-3, The Darkness Within advances.
- Use of Dark Wind. If the player uses Dark Wind, The Darkness Within advances.
- Use of Soulblight. If the player uses soulblight, The Darkness Within advances.
- Necrotic damage. Once per encounter, if the character takes necrotic damage, roll 1d6. On a roll of 1 or 2, The Darkness Within advances.
Stages. There are four stages separated by three advances apiece.
Stage One. (3 advances) The Night Seed. You suffer a -2 to all charisma-based skill checks.
Stage Two. (6 advances) Encroachment. You gain vulnerable 5 necrotic.
Stage Three. (9 advances) Black Blood. Each time you would gain hit points, you gain half that amount. This does not apply for hit points regained through dark wind.
Stage Four. (12 advances) Darkness Triumphant. the character has been completely taken over by the darkness. The character alignment turns to evil and becomes an NPC.
So there it is, a horizon in play. What do you think? Would you like to see more horizons and if so, what do you want to see? Let me know.
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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Well written! Catches the feeling of the ‘downward spiral’ without necessarily making the character any less fun to play. It would be a a great alternative to Sanity points if you were going to play a CoC/DnD hybrid.
That’s fantastic! I will have to steal it sometime in the future.
I’d like to see your take on redemption from this darkness. It seems anticlimactic to have this whole process undermined by Remove Affliction.
I would be interested in a Far Realm madness version of this. I’m sure I could just use this same one, but reflavor darkness for physical mutation and necrotic for psychic damage. But a Madness horizon could have many more interesting manifestations.
Is there an article introducing horizons as a concept? Are they always supposed to bring a PC to a breaking point? For that matter are horizons as you are conceiving them all bad?
Sorry for the double post, but I should also say, Very inspiring! I really enjoy the 12 stage advancing. I’ve always thought disease tracks were too short and discrete for my liking. I’m sure Cured-infected-Incurable works for some people because of simplicity and lack of bookkeeping, but I am continually drawn to long-term character struggles, whether emotional, physical, or moral. Horizons seem to meet that need directly. They are more than a more intricate disease track, adding the fun aspect of artifacts, where certain triggers cause advancement, while also offering the Cursed item lure of giving in to the ‘disease’ to gain significant power boost, which then becomes increasingly addictive. Way to capture addiction in mechanics!