Appearance:
His appearance as his true self is simple and yet difficult to properly define...By all accounts, he is simply a large amorphous glob of shadow, shaping itself to its own whims. But because of that, there's no one singular appearance that he could take with himself. Often times, when people spoke of the malignant king of shadows, all they could say with certainty was that it was akin to a demon: large pitch black arms and claws, and the face of a monstrous beast. Others say he had a face, or something that looked like one, a white mask and hands, and spoke with the deep voice of a devil offering temptations. Others still go as far as to say they did not see him as one entity, but a collective mass of hideous dark demons, a legion of darkness in and of himself.
Summary: From the experiment of a god to the Conqueror of worlds. With his mastery of the dark and his capability to reproduce an army of children at his beck and call, the Shadow King Scotus was an interdimensional threat, travelling from world-to-world, consuming all he visited in everlasting darkness. However, he was stopped by the one thing mocked throughout the ages but had a power all its own that he bore witnessed to: Love. He found a woman he could learn to love and be loved in return. This took to tragedy when that lover died and he retaliated in vengeance, only to die himself.
Anybody ever watched Castlevania? Think Dracula from the Anime, but as a mass of darkness instead of a Vampire.
Legacy: Long ago, there was a God, its name lost to time, who had a fascination with the concept of Life and what could be brought to life and be made manifest and personified. This curiosity led it to bring life to the lifeless, not of the physical but of the absolute, the nothing, the darkness.
But in order to make this a reality, he had to feed life to the darkness, more specifically the very essence of life across the multiverse, what many have come to call "Mana". Feeding Mana to the darkness would allow a fraction of that darkness to come to life, at least in theory. There was just one problem, the God had no dominion over life, he could not create from nothing as his kin could and has. And so he resorted to another way of getting the Mana he required: By stealing the life force that already exists.
To that end, he descended from on high to a universe bursting with life, and convinced it to tear itself apart through warfare, and he would gather the life force extracted from the bodies of the deceased. Among the many who have fought and die that was of note was a man known as the Warrior King, so impressive was his brute force and his sheer will that when he finally fell in battle the god took his flesh with him as he completes his experiment.
Within the great darkness, he offered the life force of millions of soldiers to give it life, the flesh of the Warrior King to give it shape and strength, and knowing that his kin would find what he did and punish him, he took the essence of his own divine soul and offered it as the final sacrifice, giving sentience and power to the dark. As the god faded onto nothing, a giant mass of the dark broke out and took a deformed, wicked shape.
Thus, The Shadow King, Scotus, was born.
While he had the figure of a man, Scotus had the hunger of the darkness and the instincts of a beast. From the moment he crawled out into a human world, he wanted to conquer and consume it onto himself. No logic, no reason, just desire, for the light of the universe was oft too much for him, and so he would snuff them out and return all to a comforting ebony. From the mana he obtained from the millions who died, his body produced an army fragmented from the whole of his dark mass, shadow beasts, unintelligent but unrelenting and monstrous creatures of the shadow, and they spread themselves far and wide.
Their first world was unprepared for such unrelenting forces, it did not take long for them to consume the people, the heroes, the villains, the world, and even the stars themselves. When he was done, all that remained of that universe was a pitch black void - a nest of shadow beasts - and Scotus, unsatisfied, moved to another universe, and then another, and then another.
For a time, a certain phrase cropped up across the many dimensions of the multiverse:
"The Darkness is Coming..." A phrase that, for that time, referred to the Shadow King and his Army. There were signs of his coming shown throughout, stars blinking out of the night sky, shadows that moved on their own, entities lurking in the darkness tempting the unsuspecting to approach them and never return. Heroes of these worlds tried their best to tackle this invader and conqueror, and while they enjoyed some victories over his beasts, they would always fall before their king, and as soon as they were defeated, their world would fall into an eternal black and the Shadow King would move on to the next world to conquer. Worse still, his army seemed never ending - every time they kill a Shadow Beast it would return to him to be born again, and as time passed he created even greater, more powerful and more intellectual monstrosities, which came to be known as the Alpha Shadow Beasts. This cycle kept going for many years, and there were few who did not know the legend of the Shadow King.
Eventually the gods of various worlds had to intervene to fix the mistake one of their own had wrought upon their worlds, calling upon the great race of Dragons to protect the worlds from the Dark, and their nature as magical creatures of wisdom divinity, proved a match against the Shadow King and his armies, to a point where the blood of a dragon was used by Scotus to bring fourth a hybrid that could prove a better opponent for them, the Alpha Beast known only as the Shadow Dragon. They could not completely stop the unrelenting Shadow King, they put him into a stand still, buying time for other worlds to prepare properly and fight against the oncoming black.
The legend goes, that the Shadow King broke through the Dragons, only to be stopped by a Heroine, a queen of her kingdom given the power of Dragons. With the aid of her allies, she pushed through the tide of shadows and reached the Shadow King, and at last defeated him in battle.
The Darkness was stopped, and the Queen of Light ascended to legend and myth across many worlds.
Gravely wounded and defeated, The Shadow King retreated from that world and entered another, maintaining a human form with which to disguise and recover his strength. It was this moment he met another woman, Cynthia, a mere peasant of that world who saw the Shadow King and mistaken him for a gravely wounded human, taking him in and nursing the king of beasts back to health. At first, the King's instincts strived to want to devour this foolish woman, but he lacked the strength to do even that. What's more, he was confused about the kindness of this woman, his form may be human but his internals were not, she had to have known by then that he wasn't human, that he was a beast of the darkness, so why on earth would she continue with aiding in his healing? Her answer was sickeningly simple and naïve to him: She saw a someone hurt, and wanted to help them, not caring if it's man or beast. Still, he was gravely wounded and in no position to do much about his predicament, so without much option, he accepted her nursing him for now, planning on killing her and devouring her village and world once he was healed.
However, the healing took far longer than expected, even in the dead of night the darkness he absorb was meager and weak, the damage done to him was far greater than he thought it was, and he could not shape himself to a large enough form to eat anyone there, so he simply endured his unintended imprisonment.
Eventually, the welcoming nature of the village, and the kindness and almost motherly strict nature of Cynthia herself grew on Scotus, he began to feel strange emotions he never felt before, began to find value in the light of day he never thought possible.
During a celebratory dance of her people by the fire burning at its center, he was taught by Cynthia how to dance, backed by the people of that village and through this dance was this Beast taught how to love the Beauty, and how to be loved in return.
Scotus was a changed entity at that point, gone was the dark emperor who devoured worlds and stars, the monster of the great darkness who commended armies of shadow beasts, instead, for the first time in his life he was simply "Scotus Blackade". (A surname Cynthia gave him as a joke, and he decided to use himself.) He even went so far as to humor the human girl by engaging in a human tradition called "marriage".
But he could never run from his past, and what he was gave tragedy to what he became. The armies of the Shadow King scattered about the multiverse, unorganized but dangerous, and still a major threat so long as the Shadow King continued to exist. And so the Gods and Dragons found Scotus and took it upon themselves to find a champion of that world, a group of heroes, to hunt him down. Bestowed power to finally finish off the Shadow King, the heroes tracked him down to the village and began their assault, believing the village to be enslaved by the dark one. Not helped was that when they came to hunt him down, they protected and defended him. They tried to convince them that whatever he was before he is no longer that, and the heroes believed that, but regardless of action, the Shadow King's existence was a danger, and so they had no choice but to destroy him. Scotus attempted to talk them into letting him, but the villagers had none of it.
In the end, the village was burned, the villagers killed, and Cynthia gave her life to protect him. A feeling of loss and despair overwhelmed Scotus, the melancholy gave rise to unquenchable rage, and he went berserk. Although he was not at full power, he went into a berserk state and began slaughtering the heroes who hunted him. beginning to do as he did before and devour the world for what it gave to him, and for what it took back from him.
The hero chosen by the gods, with a blade imbued with the magic of dragons, managed to deliver the final blow onto Scotus, stopping him from devouring their world, and causing the rest of the Shadow beasts (Save the Alphas) to fade away into the darkness. In his final moments as he laid there, a dragon sword stabbed within his chest, as his own body began to break down and fade away, he and the hero had a discussion. He never really understood the value of life and its beauty until he met Cynthia and the others, and calmed down, he accepted his fate as an abomination against that beauty, destined to perish to keep it alive. The hero made a suggestion that maybe, if an afterlife exists, he could come back as a hero himself, maybe be able to help protect the worlds he cherished.
"...Yes. ...I would like that..." was his final words, before the rest of his body melted into the black.
The King was dead...
That is, until the Abyss acquired his soul. Reforming a new body from the Great Darkness, and rekindling the rage he felt, the Shadow King, once a great Puppeteer, was now puppet to the Abyss, with his army of Shadow Beasts at its beck and call.
Long Live the King!Personality: At the beginning until his 'retirement', there were only two things that could describe the Shadow King, A Beast, and a fearsome Emperor. As the primordial shadow beast born from the great darkness, Scotus was a creature of instinct by nature. He did not travel across universes for recognition or dominance or revenge, he consumed them because it was simply his nature to consume them. The light was a discomfort, and so he wished to snuff it out and feast on what remains. In that respect he was brutal, and remorseless, a firm believer in the philosophy of survival of the fittest, and practically without a heart to call his own, truly a monster that could not be reasoned with.
But that's not to say he wasn't intelligent, oh no, for every world he traveled he learned in an effort to more effectively spread and feed himself faster and with more potency. Eventually he gained himself a humanoid shape and meticulous sense of speech, very careful and straight forward with his word choices. During later invasions before anything else, he traveled to his targeted universes by himself and manipulated people like a devil on their shoulders to commit evil, to tear down any who might oppose the invasive force of his armies, took advantage of them at every turn, only to devour them when they have served their purpose.
Even his own Shadow Beasts had reason to fear him, for he was no nicer to them than to anyone else. Success was expected of them, and so they were not appreciated upon those successes, but when they fail, he showed no hesitation in destroying and consuming them back into himself. They were mere pawns, and easily disposable and replaceable. As such, he often showed no hesitation in sacrificing legions of Shadow Beasts if it meant heroes fell to a trap or their doom as well. The normal shadow beasts were merely destroyed upon failure. The Alphas, however, were 'disciplined' for theirs, and whenever an Alpha gained an instinct to try and one-up their king, Scotus had no hesitation in putting them
painfully in their place.
As a race that has had connections to the Divine that hates him so, and as they had proven to be an utter thorn in his side, Scotus had an intense hatred for Dragons, in any world where dragons were residing among other races, Scotus made it a point to Prioritize their elimination over any other race. The only exception in this utter loathing was the Shadow Dragon he conceived from their blood, and that was only because he was a useful tool against them. While on the subject, he also looked down at other races, saw them as very little threat, especially humanity which he felt did not even need him to destroy them when they so readily destroy themselves.
However, after he suffered his first defeat at the hands of the Queen of Light, a human he looked down on, humiliated as he left, his personality changed the moment he accidently met Cynthia. At first, he intended to kill her and her village as soon as he recovered his strength, devouring them as their reward. However, his disgust at their simple and naïve existence turned into a sense of interest, than fascination, he did not understand why they were so kind to him when it was so very clear he wasn't human, that he was a beast of the darkness. Eventually, he grew to appreciate the sights that the light of day creates, he grew to respect the humans as they worked for their people and protected him, an abomination of the Dark, and he grew to love Cynthia, the only being to ever show him these feelings he never felt before, such as love or compassion.
Then the heroes and dragons attacked, killed Cynthia and her people while they protected him, and all of that positive development just washed away like sand castles upon the shore. The Shadow King was now a berserk rampaging monster, an even worse version of the creature he was before. For all his evil, his motivation was only in his instincts to feed and comfort himself away from the light. Now it was personal, a grudge, a desire to destroy and burn, damn whatever happens to himself.
When he finally was defeated again, his final moments took him out of the anger stage of grief, and into the depression, the sadness and despair, and then acceptance.
...However, When the Abyss made the Abyssal Doppelganger of the Shadow King, it managed to rekindle the instincts of his past, and the anger of his present, in order to effectively make it a soldier of its will without remorse. Needless to say, he succeeded. The Abyssal Shadow King remembers the pain of Cynthia's loss, and knows that this is not what she wants. He accepts that she may never forgive him for what he is doing to the multiverse in the name of the Abyss, but believes it to be the only way to avenge them. In other words, even when using Cynthia's name, there is still no reasoning with the Shadow King - if anything, the only thing that would serve is to piss him off even more.
Signature Ability:
Umbrakinesis- True to his title, Scotus was a master of the darkness and the shadows moved to his whim. As an all-consuming entity of darkness himself, he could stretch himself into areas where light could never reach and manifest those shadows as an energy or a weapon of a physical mass. He can also meld with those shadows both as a way to strengthen himself, and as a method of escape a dire situation should it arise.
Abilities:
Umbraconception- As an experimental entity of life, contrary to his appearance and powers, he is essentially a being blessed with the power of life. By separating a fragment of himself from his gelatinous body, the fragment can grow and gain sentience, becoming a fearsome shadow beast under the command of its king, acting as separate entities from him. Most of these creatures, while sentient and self-aware, are unintelligible monsters - mere animals that maim and feast both on instinct and command of their king, and serving as an extension of his will. Should the king ever die, these demons of the dark would die and fade to nothing alongside him.
There have been some notable Shadow Beasts, however, a rare breed who are both sentient and sapient. Intelligent, concise speaking, self-aware, and capable of far greater destruction on their own than their lesser brethren. These are the Alpha beasts, conceived through a large portion of the King and a part of his will given life. Unlike these other beasts, the Alphas did not die alongside their king. As far as everyone knows, they are still alive and drifting across the multiverse to this day, likely causing trouble and havoc where ever they go. It would be common to see some heroes going on an adventure to find and destroy the last of the Shadow King's ilk, but presently there have been no reports of the Alphas declared dead, nor of the heroes' return.
Shadow Beast Absorption- The King giveth, the King taketh away. The Shadow King is not just an entity of the dark, but a devourer of it. Should he will it, the King can devour and absorb his children back to the source, returning parts of himself to the whole. This can be used in two ways: first it can rejuvenate him, give him strength he may have lost during a battle with pesky heroes. Second he can then once again divide himself to create another shadow beast, effectively recycling it. Furthermore, any shadow beast that died he can call back to him to remake anew.
This constant recycling of his children is a major factor as to why he was such a threat, his army had a reputation of being eternal. No matter how many Shadow beasts you destroy, as long as the King exists, more will come.
Shape-shifting- As mentioned, Scotus is a gelatinous existence of mass shadows and darkness, and so he has, many times, been able to shape-shift into various things from giant monstrous beasts of nightmares to humanoid shadows that masquerade (literally if the mask is any indication) as man. It's not just a case of appearance, however. The physical attributes of the king also changes with every form he takes. Smaller forms are faster and more agile, larger forms are stronger and more durable, and something like a four-legged beast akin to a wolf - a form he often uses - has a well balanced sense of both.
As will be shown in his Redeemed self, and when he met with his beloved, he
can actually become human in appearance. But this was a rarity when he was the Shadow King, and will most certainly be a rarity as a soldier of the Abyss.
