ʜᴄ sᴠɴᴛ ᴅʀᴀᴄᴏɴᴇs
"Feel that? That spark of pure anger. The will to change. In common men and women, it can only lie impotent: sputtering and raging in futility. Grasp it. You... are not common. Our anger is a hammer that can shatter gods." -- KILL SIX BILLION DEMONS
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: A raiment to envelope an aspirant to the mantle of Sith Lordship, with connections to both history and the modern source of his power.
- Image Source: Kotaku; Joshua James Shaw
- Canon Link: The Seeds of Rage
- Restricted Missions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Antherion
- Model: N/A
- Affiliation: Antherion
- Modularity: No
- Production: Unique
- Material: Shadowsilk, Charged Hypercloth, a Seed of Rage, Glitterstim, Organic Tissue
- The Wraps of Rage are composed of several kinds of fabric, as certain materials cannot be exposed to light, and others were too tattered to restore entirely. To avoid a patchwork look, they were layered in protective Hypercloth coating, then Shadowsilk.
- Although only an article of clothing, the Wraps are, in fact, capable of emitting and feeling emotion; they are not sentient. This is due to the corrupting nature of the Seed of Rage, which causes organic, pervasive tissue to grow like tumors in the ground: when harnessed in this, it spread a web of thin, malignant fibers throughout the body of the robes. This tissue is also why the Glitterstim is effective.
- Unlike traditional "Wraps of Frost," these are recovered from an informal ceremony, and were never inked with the traditional glyphs of burial. Over millennia, although power has leached into them, as much energy comes from Antherion's own emotional connection with wearing scraps of his dead father's clothes. He does not let himself recognize this attachment.
- As much composed of poisonous thought as they are of fabric, the Wraps flow as though underwater, possessing qualities that make them seem at time vaporous and liquid.
- Mouthless; Screaming: What is the foundation of the power of the Sith? Anger. In frail mortals, in fleeting beings, anger is something that sparks and sputters and vanishes, inconstant unto death, and then absent for eternity. The Sith are wise because they know that anger is the spark of life, but it even yet fades in them as they march through time to death. The Wraps of Rage not only create anger, they feel anger as though alive. A wielder of the Force can draw upon this anger and bring it into themselves to reach great heights of power in the Dark.
- The Thirteenth Sense: The artifact is a web of dark-bathed glitterstim intertwined with vague nervous tissue -- although it focuses primarily on pulsating with constant anger, it has other uses: a telepath will find themselves able to touch the enhanced object, and use it as a lens to reach into the minds of others. Mental abilities while wearing this relic are enhanced as such that an Apprentice could drive a mundane man to permanent madness, and a Master could lay bare that man's thoughts with a glance and disturb them with a gesture.
[OOC Note] Player characters and their favored NPCs are not "mundane minds." Any writer can choose whether or not, and to what degree, that they can resist this effect.
[*]Waterfall of Endless Ink: The Wraps are constantly growing -- internal processes generate additional matter endlessly, webs of intertwined tissue, fabric, and glitterstim webbing. As long as a single scrap remains, the cloth will regenerate.
Weaknesses:
- Berserkergang: One weak moment is all it takes to let in a dark presence -- there's a reason most beings don't wear them as clothes. If the user's mind is distracted or weakened, or if their defenses are disrupted, they will be overcome by maddening rage, lashing out at everything and anything and descending deeper and deeper into madness until they regain control or burn themselves out.
- No Rest For The Wicked: It is impossible to sleep while wearing the Wraps of Rage. This effect is not unlike a psychic stimulant, as such it is highly dangerous to be dosed with anesthetic while using the artifact.
- Disturbance: The artifact is steeped in evil and power. It cannot be hidden in the Force, and can be sensed from miles away by even apprentices.
- Totem of the Eclipse: While worn, the wielder cannot use powers limited to the Light; such as benign stuns, disruptions, stasis fields, and healing not tainted by shadow.
- Light-Scorned: This artifact loses cohesion and begins to dissolve under the force of intense Light presences. As it is not entirely anchored in the Force, it will not be totally destroyed, but it can be forced into inactive dormancy and withered in size.
- Force Reliant: The Wraps' functionality is diminished or nulled when subject to any animal, mineral, or supernatural effect that disrupts the flow of the Force (Ysalamir, Voidstone, etc).
As far as Antherion was concerned, his father never deserved to be buried on Korriban. He deserved nothing: an unmarked grave, a burial in the vacuum. At the same time, it was Antherion who insisted that his father be honored, who named it as one of his terms when he swore loyalty to the then-Empress for amnesty for his father's cowardice. He had to put on a show, after all, to the Lords of House Koroosi, that he was a dutiful son and bound by traditions he frankly couldn't care less for, to win their trust.
It was one of the first lies his sister saw through.
Now, ages later, both are dead. Both are gone forever from his reach, from his power to dominate and hurt and exploit. Antherion found his father's tomb, emptied of what trinkets he was buried with, when he decided that, in a fit of rage, it was fitting to tear the grave apart with the Force and his bare hands if need be to prove that the past had no hold over him.
The bare bones had turned to dust, but synthfiber filaments yet remained draped on an already-sundered coffin. Tatters of once opulent robes, which Antherion swiftly seized. Unable to ruin ruins, he was determined to wring some sort of value from his venture -- so he did.
The cloak's power was not as full as those mummy-wrappings, it was something of modernity -- so he made due with the artificial. Binding threads of glitterstim web to the fabric as adhesive layers, he created the cloak in total darkness and stitched it together with the Force, never once laying hands on it until it was ready.
For ninety-nine days, it rested, wrapped fast around the Seed of Rage. For ninety-nine days, an acolyte chanted words of blessing and curse over it in the Old Tongue. On the hundredth day, Antherion opened the sealed chamber and found a pillar of twitching flesh on which his disciple was impaled, screaming songs of praise to nonexistent gods.
When he ripped it open, acid trickling down his withered flesh, moaning filling the Temple as pustules filled with air ruptured. he felt as though it was a second birth -- eventually, left naked and twitching, rubbed red and raw by the fluids, he found the robes, infused with the nature of the Seed. Touching them, joy met with anger, and he knew that he could never escape that he was Sith.
