Darkenite

Appearance:

Darkenite is a dense non-metallic solid that defies examination. It is functionally indestructible, and it can absorb a tremendous amount of energy without being affected by it. Lava doesn't heat it, glaciers don't make it cold, it's hydrophobic, and no known material can mark it or shape it.

Benefit:

Darkenite has no known beneficial properties.

Drawback:

MANY

Darkenite is insanely desirable, and the appearance of a piece can set off a region-wide hunt for the person who has it. Assassins, bounty hunters, paladins, death knights, and the rest of the rogue's gallery of baddies and heavy-handed dudleys come out in force. The resulting chase to the death tends to leave many dead, large amounts of collateral damage, and in a few instances, triggered succession wars, civil wars, or regular war.

Magic interference is a common side effect of Darkenite, and spellcasters can see their magic go awry. Spells miss, elements change, and their mana accumulation and capacity can fluctuate wildly.

Obsession is the most common effect of holding a piece of darkenite, and the bearer will consider themselves the protector of the object, to the point of letting their entire life, goals, and career go. Family doesn't matter, allegiance doesn't matter. Only being the Bearer of the Stone matters.

Possessing a piece of darkenite grants another drawback, Corruption. The longer a bearer has the piece, the greater their chance of gaining corruption. This isn't a function of time or exposure, but experience. A bearer who is injured, or almost killed, has a chance to gain corruption, and then a chance to merge with the Darkenite, a

Lore:

Darkenite has one source, and its supply is finite. The entire supply comes from the corpse of one being; Zul'dox, the Hazencrest Persecutor, the Ruincage Overlord, the Demolisher of Hopes and Dreams, the Dark Lord.

Dark Lords are not quite a dime a dozen, like plucky farmboys touched by prophecy, maybe four for a dollar, or five for five dollars. In that vein, Zul'dox followed the Shadowed Path, attained command of a dark realm, and accessed a dark conduit of great power, and was set up. He successfully burned the Celestial Duchy of Hazencrest to the ashes and broke its paladinic orders like straw. He oversaw the creation of thousands of ruincages, where he placed his magic using opponents and rivals so he could use them as mana batteries, drawing on their power for his spells rather than his own. Armies rallied and marched against him, elves and griffons, men and the great horses, even orcs and their savage mounts joined with the Last Alliance to battle Zul'dox and his host of demons, devils, abominations, and the undead.

Zul'dox was defeated not by the Last Alliance, but by the Triple Axis, an ad hoc alliance of unlikely demigod level beings.

Vemmilek, the Howler of the Wastes is best recorded as a mind-shattering horror, a thing of teeth and claws, stormclouds and winds of insanity, or in other terms, a cosmic abomination. Vemmilek harbored a deep hatred towards Zul'dox as the Dark Lord liked capturing and forging abominations into horrorbound weapons and armor.

Neizo, the Broodmother Behemoth, was a dragon of enormous size and she provided the dame side of roughly a third of the dragons active in Cridhedun at the time, through generations of eggs. She loathed Zul'dox because the Dark Lord routinely enslaved her black dragon offspring, and slew the others to make armor for his elite soldiers and meat for the feasting pits.

Fetelo, the Dominus of the Vaulted Gloom, was a dungeon avatar. The Vaulted Gloom was destroyed by Zul'dox and was looted to the point that all that remained was a burning crater in the earth. Fetelo, assuming her final form as a four armed human demi-giant, carried the fragmented core of the dungeon in her body, and spent decades destroying Zul'dox's forces, ransacking and looting his frontier outposts, and shattering the dungeons he seeded and absorbing their cores into herself.

The Triple Axis waited in the wings until the ill-fated Battle of Bemerdale Trace. The Last Alliance and the host of the Dark Lord met, the battle was long and hideous at it's expense, and many powerful weapons and artifacts were used in the course of the six day struggle. On the seventh day, it was fairly obvious that Zul'dox had won, the Last Alliance was broken, its arsenal spent, and the heroes dead or wounded. The Triple Axis waited until the Dark Lord prepared his ultimatum to the survivors of the Last Alliance, boasting of how he would raise a monument to their sacrifice, being so generous to make it out of their dead, before they struck. The Dark Lord was turned into a curious black stone and shattered.

This is the only source of Darkenite, pieces of his deifacted corpse.

Functionality

Darkenite is what happens when evil, evil, chaotic, and evil destroy each other. The material is inert on a dark matter level. It is immune to almost any form of energy, which means that it can't be worked. It cannot be shaped, sanded, hammered, or anything else. What it can do is merge with its bearer at a moment of crisis, and the bearer chooses violence, evil, or chaos. This is relatively easy, as most crises involved are life or death fights, where the bearer is wounded, and has a moment to internally negotiate with the darkenite in their inventory.

Merging - the piece of darkenite will literally fuse into the bearer and take on the form of an accessory, weapon, or other pieces of equipment. This becomes a fully cursed item and retains the basic attributes of darkenite, including coloration and basic immunities and resistances. It also remains a focus of hunted desirability. These merged items all take on new attributes related to how they formed their first merging bond, and increase these powers as the cursed wearer's corruption increases. Using the powers deliberately causes corruption to rise much more quickly.

Drain, Rasp, and Siphon - merged darkenite equipment has the ability to drain, rasp, or siphon from subdued opponents. Drain requires willpower vs constitution checks and results in the bearer stealing powers, magic abilities, and such from an opponent and adding it to the darkenite accessory and their own abilities list. Rasp is easier and steals mana or other expressions of magic power from a foe, and is a euphoric experience for the bearer but emotionally rape against its victim. Siphon steals life force, or health, or hit points. Gaining health this way is deeply satisfying, while losing health to a siphon is a sanity breaking experience. Siphon victims have to make constitution checks. Pass means they can recover lost health, a fail means the loss of hit points is permanent, and a critical failure is systemic shock and death.

Corruption - at 100% corruption, the darkenite accessory replaces all of the bearer's equipment other than legendary items, and the bearer is reborn as a new Dark Lord. This is not the resurrection of Zul'dox, but rather the Manifest Destiny of the Dark Lord and propels them onto the path of conquest, world domination, and damnation.

Legacy Effects

A bearer of a piece of darkenite can be slain. If too much damage is done, or the cause of death is something that can be really hard to bargain out of, the bearer goes splat. This is how most of the changes of hand go, but as mentioned, darkenite can merge with a bearer and become a new item. While much more difficult, a bearer can be slain. This generally requires high level magic, elite warriors, magic weapons, or dues ex machina moments such as falling from a cliff, being caught in a volcanic explosion, being eaten by a cosmic horror or powerful dragon, etc.

At this point, there is a chance to recover the darkenite fragment. These become evil artifacts, no longer can merge with the wearer, and lose most of their fundamental immunities. Thus, the supply of darkenite diminishes.