Darth Strelok
Intent: To create both a mysterious kind of Force Nexus for the Mandragora to study and grow in power as well as give a setting for certain parts of Maple's story to be set around, as her destiny in the Mandragora starts to become more clear, as IC, she will have an unusual connection to it. Maple will first become aware of it as she trains on Ryloth, coming across a dusty old tome in a cave describing it.
Image Credit: https://www.google.com/amp/comicbook.com/amp/2015/02/26/arrow-a-closer-look-at-the-lazarus-pit/
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Ross Burlingame, comicbook.com. Arrow, CW. DC comics. Tumblr.
Canon: N/A
Links: N/A
SETTING INFORMATION
Nexus Name: Inversion Wellspring.
Nexus Alignment: Other
Location: Deep within a chasm in Ryloth, sealed with incantations
Affiliation: Mandragora
Size: Small - The wellspring is a simple chamber, black and spherical in shape, surrounded by petrified trees. The actual pool of liquid is located at the center.
Accessibility: the chasm the wellspring is hidden in requires climbing gear to reach, as it is set deep in a rock chasm. Mandragora or CIS force users who get their permission from the Mandragora elders may come here.
Security: Mandragora witches are stationed near the chasm entrance to deter unwanted visitors. The actual door access to the chamber can only be opened by someone whose blood is infused with insanity...like Maple.
Description: The Inversion Wellspring is a black, Spherical Chamber with a dark, jet black pool of obsidian liquid that has tinges of green and red lightning dancing off its surface. It is surrounded by dead trees, from which some guess was the source of the strange liquid. There is very little light, save for what lights are set up after its discovery.
NEXUS EFFECTS
Staring directly into the liquid and meditating with open eyes, causes the pool to reveal parts of the person meditating, parts they didn't even know they had. Light or dark, it shows them their ID, and unless the mind is sufficiently prepared they may be rendered temporarily catatonic. Those of strong mind who stare into the liquid, and are strong enough, find that they gain a stronger, more intense connection to their chosen alignment of the Force. Those rendered catatonic by the pool find their connection to their chosen alignment weakened, but their temptation to use the other alignment increases drastically, and the weak of mind may end up completely forsaking their old alignment if the temptation proves too great. Grays who successfully stare into the pool have greater resistance to either side of the Force's call. If they fail, their ability to call on the force at all is greatly disrupted.
Bathing in the liquid can have deleterious effects to ones mind and potentially body, as it seems to be a fusion of both Dathomir, Sith, and ancient Je'daii experiments in the Force. Bathing in the liquid causes one's id to take control for twenty four hours, creating a Force Mask like effect on the bather, which will temporarily transform them into whatever their ID sees itself as. Men stay men and women stay women however, no matter what they end up looking like, in a jekyll and hyde like effect. The effect stops after seventy two hours, leaving the bather a nervous babbling wreck yet addicted to the liquid. While this addiction can be kicked for first time imbibers, albeit with immense difficulty, second and third time imbibers will be permanently compelled to try the pool a final time with a final bathing resulting in permanent inversion, with only intense applications of light or dark energy breaking the Force Mask effect and causing the victim to temporarily revert back to normal for a few minutes, only death can release them at this point. Gray Force users invert randomly if they are bathed in the substance. Only those who bear madness in them are immune to both standard and non standard exposure...but inscriptions warn against letting those known to be mad willingly drink it, for some unknown reason, just as it warns against letting people bathe in it.
POINTS OF INTEREST
The main interest is the dark pool of liquid tinged with lightning at the center.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Inversion Wellspring, as ancient inscriptions from the first Mandragora call it, is a complex, dangerous Force Nexus located on Ryloth. Various archeological testing shows influences from Je'daii who may have come here after their first ancient wars, Sith looking to pervert the sacred place, and Dathomir witches attempting to repurpose it for their own ends.
The Inversion Wellspring is believed to have started off as an innocent meditation area with a deep pool of water infused with resin from the roots of trees underneath. Over hundreds of years, it was used in a way similar to how ancient Jedi would meditate at the waters of lake Naath, attempting to form a rare crystal. Except, instead of creating a crystal, ancient Force adepts would cast off their negative emotions by meditating on the pool at the center. The life surrounding the pool reacted to this and over time as the imprint of Jedi and other light siders left their mark it bacame a small force nexus. It was inevitable it would attract a Sith, who, sabotaging the pool with corrupt Sith Alchemy, the Force collected in and corrupted the pool and its imprints, showing them only the worst things about themselves that they were too afraid to acknowledge. But the Sith miscalculated as he himself was vulnerable to the effects of the alchemy altered pool. His death and madness were both painful and humiliating. During the clone wars, an experienced Dathomir witch and a Nightsister both fought to the death inside the chamber, both corrupting and altering the now deeply unstable alchemical pool with their spells, only to score a mutual kill that ended in both of them falling into the pool and being dissolved, even as they tried to the last to kill one another, their opposite natures in the Force reacting with the pool as they died and completing the pools transformation into what is seen today. Ancient Mandragora eventually found a use for it, to increase their telepathic strength, with some even developing an ability to see the future. But given the warnings left on the chamber walls, it was clear that some very horrific incidents involving this pool were covered up for morale.
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