I've gotten a few questions about the mechanics in
Champion Zeon, and in response I've written up a rather long-winded explanation of a number of things, most notably flash, shadow-pulse, blood rituals and the drin races. I will keep this spoiler-free, but as a consequence some of the information herein may be incomplete, or even deliberately wrong. Ha.
This is very, very long. Did I mention I'm a pedantic windbag? No? I'm a pedantic windbag. Read on.
The Drin Races
Sephe'drin: these guys are your basic demon. Big, scaly and evil-looking, with horns, four arms and wings suitable for short-term flight. Their plates and scales are usually black, dark red or dark blue, but some have random other colors as well. There are as many sephe'drin females as males and they are just as strong, which makes it difficult for human observers to tell the sexes apart. Incidentally, the name
sephe'drin came from the word
seraphim since these guys look like the classic demon answer to the usual angel archetype. It wasn't until I had named sephe'drin that I extended the name "drin" to be the name of all demon races.
Kesh'drin: the largest of the demon races and also the least-numerous. They have the lower bodies of spiders and the upper bodies of men and women. Their skin is hard and chitinous and thus looks rocky, which is why the characters in the book occasionally describe them as being statue-like. Rather than cities, they live in massive hives that look rather like anthills, and typically they're built near natural sources of heat like geysers or volcanoes. Kesh'drin vary widely in size, from little worker drones maybe a foot across to huge bastards the size of a dump truck. There are only a few females; they act as hive queens and almost never leave them, which means virtually all the kesh'drin out in the world are males.
Hashar'drin: tall, pale, gaunt and hairless. They also lack eyes, and instead have dark, sunken eye sockets. Hashar'drin have a natural affinity for shadow-pulse but are more likely to use it for craft or industry than the other drin. However, hashar'drin also generally have quick reflexes and make excellent swordsmen as well. They have natural heat-vision, which is a product of evolution and is one of the few shadow-pulse abilities in the world which did not come from blood rituals. Hashar'drin are also technically mammmals, and as such the females can easily be distinguished from the males, even by a human observer.
Amal'drin: they are the shapeshifters. Their bodies are short and wiry, and are covered in glossy scales of two or three colors. Instead of fingers and a thumb, amal'drin have three flexible, tentacle-like digits which endow them with considerable manual dexterity. As such, amal'drin are well-represented among Ghuluin's craft masters. Their heads are rather strangely shaped, almost like upside-down triangles, with their chins tapering down to the level of their chests, and their eyes are completely black, with no whites. Amal'drin females vastly outnumber the males, and the males are literally of animal intelligence, so the females keep them essentially locked up in pens like livestock when it isn't mating season. Since romantic relationships between male and females are impossible, the concepts of love and sex in the amal'drin mind are completely distinct and separate. This gives them (unfairly) a reputation for promiscuity, though after taking their shapeshifting ability into account, it has also given them quite the exotic reputation, which stretches even into human lands.
Saa'drin: human-shaped but with fly-like eyes which are bulbous and faceted. Their fingers are rather bulbous as well but are still nimble. Rather than scales, saa'drin have a leathery skin with natural camouflage patterns, and the strong ones often enhance this ability through blood rituals. Like hashar'drin and sephe'drin (and theoretically humans), they mate in pairs for life, and although they are not mammals, the females can be distinguished from the males as though they were. Saa'drin are gangly and flexible, and when standing naturally have something of a slouch, which makes their posture look lazy and their gait like a swagger.
The royal family. So, they don't really have a name in the drin tongue (apart from "the royal family"), though I confess I sometimes think of them as "uber'drin," although this term will never, ever make it into the books. Lesser drin tend to think of the royal family as creepy and clone-like since they look and act virtually the same, but the royals have a strong tradition of scholastics and philosophy so intellectually they are anything but identical. Although they are not the only drin race with soft skin, they are the only ones with hair, and hairstyle is one of the two ways the royals distinguish themselves from each other. The other is by their features borrowed from the lesser drin, such as sephe'drin plates or amal'drin scales; these features are not cosmetic, but are permanently part of their bodies and cannot be changed short of shapeshifting. All of the lesser drin races have features represented among the royals, though saa'drin and kesh'drin features are exceedingly rare because, frankly, they're not as pretty, and that's something the royals care about. And that's all I'm going to say about them for now.
Flash
Flash is one of the two "magic" systems in the Conspirator Saga, and is light-themed (whereas shadow-pulse is electricity-themed). Flash is usable only by humans, and only by a relative few humans at that. Almost all flash-capable humans become champions (of which there are about two thousand in the world), but some become templars or monks or shamans, etc, depending on what country they're in. Many are flash-capable but don't even know it because they haven't encountered a champion who can test them, and although it's not impossible to teach oneself spontaneously how to use flash, it is pretty rare.
All flash effects are instantaneous to create, and none last more than a second or so. Effects which appear to be persistent are in fact a series of short-lived effects pieced together like the frames of a film. This is how dazzle effects work, as well as the wave-shell, which is essentially the same ability but used differently. Thus, a wave-shell is just an instant effect which makes the user invisible, chained together with dozens of others per second to create the illusion of a persistent, fluid invisibility.
There isn't much subtlety with flash; what you see is generally what you get. Most champions fight with visible attunements on their weapons, which allow them to slice more easily through things like armor or shadow-pulse hardening. Different colors in a flash effect have different uses, although there are only a few and the colors are still largely interchangeable. But, to wit: violet is the hottest but is hard to make; green is good against stone and heavy things; blue is good against metals; and red, though the easiest to make, is best at cutting through unprotected flesh.
A flare-strike is just an instant beam-like attack which burns a hole in something or (if you're Zeon or one of his friends) completely vaporizes the target on occasion. Flare-strikes are usually used horizontally, along the path between the user and the victim, but there's nothing to say they can't be created vertically or at weird angles.
Blast-shells are just bursts of light that knock things back. This also creates some heat as a side-effect but it's not even enough to set paper on fire.
Angry fireflies is what Zeon calls the attack that creates a multitude of red lights which zip down and into the target area. This is useful against groups, or against defenses like the smoke shield which are built around deflecting one powerful attack at a time.
Solar fog is a rectangular or circular region of intense heat. It won't outright kill any but weaker enemies, but it'll probably ruin your day.
A cleave-plane is actually two effects of opposite polarity. Shortly after they're created, they attract each other and fuse into a plane-shaped effect which is searingly hot for the single instant in which it's there. Commonly used as an area-of-effect attack against kesh'drin or sephe'drin, since they're so much taller than humans (which makes it easy to place the cleave-plane so as not to hurt any humans between them).
A starfire effect is a sphere of searing heat which explodes out from a single point, but unlike an actual explosion, there's no pressure or shock front, just heat and light.
Flickering is just an instant coordinate translation. It requires line-of-sight and preserves momentum.
The nimbus shield is not a persistent effect, but rather something the user attempts to use against every incoming attack. However, because it's extremely sensitive to timing, it generally only works once in a while, even for a master. If you assume shadow-pulse effects are made up of AC-style oscillations, then the nimbus shield only works against effects in the highest or lowest possible waveform state, which is why timing is critical. The actual flash of light from a nimbus shield is just a side effect, but that's where its name came from.
Clever readers will note that three of these abilities have strange properties with momentum: flickering, the nimbus shield and the blast-shell all work by manipulating the substratum. The nimbus shield, for example, sort of folds the substratum inside-out for an instant (for lack of a better term), which makes a spherical, momentum-canceling barrier. As such, these three skills can only be used by people who are
extremely strong with flash.
Flash effects can also be stored in devices for later use. This preserves the "flash effects are instant" rule because the effect doesn't start until it's triggered. Anything a flash-user can do himself, he can also place into a device, and while Zeon and Kuganao are the only individuals in his group who can make flash devices, it is a teachable skill. But it's teachable in the sense that quantum mechanics or assembly language are also "teachable."
Zeon's resonator is a flash device, of course. Think of the resonator as a signal repeater for flash effects. It doesn't make them stronger, just increases their range. Zeon's resonator is large enough to make his range quite a bit longer than that of his friends. Resonator strength is a function of its size and the purity of the materials it's made from.
Flash artificers can also make amplifiers, which don't affect the range of a flash effect but do make it stronger (or, in theory, weaker). With one, a flash-user can make stronger effects than he could otherwise, but only up to a point; anything stronger than that and the amplifier is likely to incinerate the user. Amplifiers are therefore seldom studied or used, but their strength does follow the same rules as for resonators regarding size and the purity of materials.
Some flash devices can be reused. The rules are a bit hazy, but in general anything which
creates an effect, such as a flare-strike, can only be used once (even if it doesn't destroy the device holding it), but something which
modifies an existing effect, such as an amplifier or resonator, can be reused.
Shadow-pulse
Unlike flash, shadow-pulse is almost infinitely versatile and can do just about anything. But while it's very good as a tool, it's less useful as a weapon, because in order to, say, attack something with fire, you first create the shadow-pulse effect, which in turn makes fire as a secondary effect, and the fire, not the shadow-pulse itself, is what burns your foe. So there's an efficiency loss. But despite that, it's still very powerful and the drin often use it as a weapon.
Also unlike flash, shadow-pulse effects can last for hours or even years, given enough strength. Most often this is used in the creation of lights or heating (or the semi-permanent fire on a Blood Lord's sword).
With the exception of rare anatomical abilities like hashar'drin heat-vision or amal'drin shapeshifting, all shadow-pulse skills are fixed abilities the user acquired via blood ritual (more on rituals below). If you are a drin officer given a vial of ritual blood by your superior as a reward for exceptional service, you can use that blood however you wish. Generally you would use it to confer upon yourself an ability like "set guys on fire" or "let me use a smoke shield." The power of these abilities can vary, but stronger abilities can't be used as often as they are wearying to the mind of the user. You could therefore use the blood to "make me super-fast for like ten seconds," and you could perhaps use that ability once every few days. Alternately you could give yourself a much smaller but permanent boost to your speed, or power, or toughness or what have you. This is how Blood Lords have gotten as strong as they are now, but since the benefits accrue so slowly, it's not practical for anyone who doesn't have a huge supply of ritual blood at his disposal.
Note that the above are all fixed abilities; learning shadow-pulse in this fashion does not allow you to perform arbitrary, open-ended tasks with it. Shadow-pulse users who want to do that, such as craft masters or high-ranking drin warriors, can use each vial of blood to build what is referred to colloquially as "utility."
Utility is nothing more than the ability to use shadow-pulse as a physical force, such as to lift or move things, or to heat things up. But with these bulding blocks and sufficient power, a shadow-pulse master can do amazing things. All shadow-pulse healing, domination and crafting are built on utility, as well as tricks which, while useful, would be difficult to obtain via fixed ability, such as making effects to eavesdrop or communicate over long distances. Projections (illusions) are another common task for utility masters. It's even possible to use utility to create damaging attacks, but utility is so expensive to acquire (in terms of blood) that you'd be much better off acquiring a fixed ability to do the same thing. Utility can be, however, used to fashion mental attacks, and this is complicated enough that it cannot be learned as a fixed skill.
Just as with flash, wielders of shadow-pulse can create devices which use it. Unlike flash, however, most shadow-pulse artifacts burn out after a single use, though if there is a mechanism by which the device can draw power from its environment, it might use that power to re-trigger itself. A common example of this is the vials which store and preserve ritual blood; the act of corking the receptacle creates heat through friction, and the heat is just enough to re-initialize the latent preservation effect within. There are drin craft-masters who have become quite wealthy just from crafting vials for blood. It's a valuable skill, as improperly-preserved blood can drive people mad if they use it.
Apart from blood vials, perhaps the best-known shadow-pulse artifact is the bloodgem. Bloodgems are crafted from high-quality
ezgaram gems, which can only be found in a few places in Ghuluin.
Ezgaram gems have a unique property which allows them to store entire utility effects inside, to be activated when the gem is shattered. The most common uses for bloodgems are for projections (to carry on a long-distance conversation) and travel, though a craft master can put just about any effect into a gem... for the right price.
Most importantly, the effect stored in a bloodgem is rendered instantly, even if it took quite some time to prepare when the gem was originally crafted. Because of this, some effects literally cannot be used unless invoked from a bloodgem; a prime example would be for instant travel, as the work to create the effect can take as long as an hour, and you
really don't want to be transported somewhere if it means you're going to spend an hour being disintegrated or floating in the substratum. Not to mention that even this couldn't be done by one person alone, as starting to prepare the effect would incapacitate you and thus render you unable to finish it; if you were fortunate, this would merely kill you.
Blood Rituals
Blood rituals work on sacrifice. They're a way of sacrificing of oneself or one's domain, and condensing it into the physical medium of blood so it can be used by another (or yourself) to gain something of approximately the same "value," which is kind of a fuzzy, subjective way of putting it. But the basic act goes something like this: I sacrifice something of myself, such as my ability to experience humor, by cutting myself and letting the blood drip into an appropriate receptacle. Now, the blood that's in there can be used by someone else (or even me) to gain something of equal or lesser value to what I sacrificed, minus maybe 10% because the rituals aren't 100% efficient. Bear in mind that the laws governing blood rituals, and deciding value, are fairly stupid and can be manipulated.
Most often, what is sacrificed is the victim's entire life, and this is the most potent ritual that can be performed. Generally, when the drin take over a human town, they'll kill the men outright, then threaten the children until the women agree to sacrifice their lives via blood ritual. Alternately, victims of both genders will simply be tortured until they agree to give up their lives via blood ritual in exchange for the mercy of death. The war is therefore an industrial thing for the drin; they swallow up human towns and turn them into short-lived blood farms. Note, however, that although the drin will often kill human children (what else are you going to do with them after everyone else in the town is dead?), they won't generally torture them.
A special case of blood ritual is called a suicide burst. This is when the victim sacrifices the remainder of his life in exchange for a phenomenal but short-lived burst of speed and power, after which the ritual will kill him. Alternately, I could use the blood from
someone else's life in this same fashion and that wouldn't kill me, and there are drin who keep around extra vials of blood just in case, for this very purpose. Suicide bursts are the shadow-pulse equivalent of suicide bombers, and are one of the leading causes of death for Blood Lords, since they're too strong to be killed outright in battle.
Blood rituals must be voluntary. This means I can't walk up to you and cut your arm, then use that blood to gain power. It's your blood and your power, and you're the only one who can give them away. But "voluntary" is a pretty loose term, and even includes those who've been tortured or manipulated into it. Blood acquired in this way is treated the same way as any other plunder: it's sent up the chain of command, at which point the commanders will use some and distribute the rest among their subordinates as rewards. The drin have laws and customs governing how much blood must be sent up to one's master; any less than that and you'll be suspected of hoarding it and aiming for your master's position, which is likely to get you killed. There is therefore a constant supply of ritual blood flowing up and down through the strata of drin society.
All power and abilities gained through blood rituals come through the mechanism of shadow-pulse. Thus, contrary to what human laypeople assume, most drin cannot use shadow-pulse; generally only officers and higher will have acquired ritual blood and thus gained shadow-pulse abilities. The exception is for special units like the Flamecore, who use explosive bursts of fire as we would use artillery. But a corollary to this is that unlike flash, humans and drin can use shadow-pulse with equal potential. It's just that in human lands, the sheer number of blood rituals that would be required to make someone as strong as a Blood Lord would raise some eyebrows, to say the least.
In Conclusion
I did mention I'm a windbag, right? Anyway, feel free to post questions in the comments, or tweet me directly at
@MThomasLeigh. If your question warrants an answer longer than a sentence or two, I'll probably just make a blog entry about it.
Reminder:
Champion Zeon is available
here.
