Dark fantasy

I am a major fan of Dark fantasy works and I want to try my hand at it. I was thinking of making it so that magic corrupts people no matter their natural morality. It would be a gradual corruption but there are a those few who simply embrace it. Feel free to offer any thoughts on how I could improve it.

How does magic corrupt its users? Specifically, I mean.

Why does it corrupt them?

What is the ultimate effect of this corruption?

Is this corruption something a non-user could notice?

Can the corruption be cured or remedied in any way?

What does magic do? How does it do that? Why does it do that?

Who has access to magic?

Answer these questions and I'll probably come at you with more. You should know at least most of the answers, seeing as it's your magic system. Even if you decide that you don't know why magic works the way it does, for example, you should at least know what it can do and how it does it. It's decision-making time.

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

Like I mentioned, it corrupts people regardless of morality so their sense of right and wrong gets blurry.

I want to keep why it does as a mystery to increase the fear of it.

Ultimately the corruption makes you unable to tell right from wrong so you commit immoral acts without question.

There aren't any noticeable physical changes but magic users are pariah and are treated the same as the witchs of Salem.

There is no known cure for the corruption, but doesn't stop people from looking.

Magic is by itself not actively malicious and has a multitude of uses, but the corruptive nature of it drives people to commit immoral acts. Virtually anyone can do magic but it doesn't corrupt you until you commit to it. As for how magic itself works, I'd prefer to keep that a mystery for the use of the plot.

Side note: corruption works faster based on the persons current morality, no need to be corrupted if you were immoral from the start right?

Edited by sifsand on Jun 23rd 2019 at 4:38:11 AM

It’s not specific to this thread, but I think you may want to consider a different approach to worldbuilding.

The world exists to serve the story, not the opposite way around. Without a story, all the worldbuilding in the world (pun intended) isn’t going to get you anywhere. Even in stories where a complex setting is a centerpiece, at the end of the day there’s still a story that the world serves to enhance.

You might have more success thinking of a story first and then working from there. For example, if the story is a tale of survival in the wilderness then corruptive magic doesn’t make much sense. If it’s about the seductive nature of evil, then the magic having a corrupting effect could be used to enhance those story beats.

They should have sent a poet.

You're assuming I don't have a story in mind.

It doesn’t seem like it, given that a story would be able to guide your worldbuilding. For example, magic being neutral yet making its users immoral could point towards a lesson about all evil lying in the hearts of men, or it could be totally inconsistent. It’s hard to tell without knowing what you’re going for.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jun 23rd 2019 at 9:14:42 AM

They should have sent a poet.

What feedback are you in need of?

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

I was looking for things like ideas to improve what I've established if at all possible, maybe refine the way corruption works on people. Those kinds of things

At this point, you've only given us the broadest of broad strokes, which is why I asked the questions I did. I can't tell what kind of advice you need or what specific direction you want to go in. Moral degradation is pretty clear but nothing much else is.

You don't have to give this information to your prospective audience but you should at least have a good idea of why doing that or saying this makes whatever happen. Otherwise, you risk using the magic as deus ex machina rather than a tool of your characters.

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

How useful is Magic? Is it something that's a cornerstone of "modern" society or something esoteric and rare? What can it do and how often does a caster use it?

This is also assuming that the point of worldbuilding is to create a background for a story rather than an end unto itself. I agree otherwise, as world-building (or creating the setting) for a story should be done in accord with the two other main building blocks: the characters and plot. There should be really strong synergy between the three, and it's much harder to do that once one is complete. But that's neither here nor there.

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Warhammer Fantasy does something very similar with magic, as all magic is the careful harnessing of the Winds of Chaos - the sanity-testing, all-corrupting power that the Dark Gods and their Daemons are made of and which they use. Wizards are always at great risk because of this, because it's almost like they're using nuclear backpacks to power their magic, only the only thing keeping the power in check is their force of will and mental training, and instead of radiation or a nuclear reaction when they slip up, it's mutation, corruption to the ruinous powers, loss of sanity, and just losing control of the magical powers they were trying to harness. As a result, even trained and sanctioned mages are shunned and distrusted by normal people, while the untrained hedge varieties would probably get burned at the stake the second their true nature was discovered.

Even the well-trained Wizards (human wizards, elves are too awesome for this, apparently ) change their personality and appearance the more attuned they become to their lore of magic. There are eight lores, one for each of the winds of magic, and humans are only magical enough to be able to specialise in one of these lores in their lifetime, so that one lore really does a number on them. Lore of Beasts wizards get stronger and grow long fingernails and wilder hair, Lore of Fire wizards get more hot-tempered and more impulsive as well as their hair turning to red/blonde, Lore of Metal wizards become more logical and empirical as well as their bodies becoming stiffer and more metallic, and so on.

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Another work that does something similar is The Reckoners Trilogy, a superhero setting where all supers are evil. The reasons why are one of the main questions driving the plot forward, and I've only read book 1 (which ends with an answer that only creates more questions - a great way to end what is essentially the first act) so I couldn't spoil the whole thing for you even if I tried.

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Even if you want to keep it a mystery from the readers for the entirety of the story, you should probably work out for yourself what causes it for the sake of consistency. World-building is often like an iceberg, in that the readers might not see all of it.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Jun 24th 2019 at 5:09:03 PM

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Right. This is the page I'm on

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

My personal problem with "magic is always corrupting" is that it robs the characters of agency, personally. Hopefully that objection makes sense.

Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?

Kinda, The magic is corruptin I feel is from conan and other sword and sorcery and was borrow into dark fantasy, in a way is also used to avoid using magic as free comodity all the time like D&D, since it rob the mysthic of magic

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

Sometimes that's the point. Maybe that's exactly what makes it dangerous.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Quick question, what happens when you give dark fantasy a more light-hearted tone? Does it cease bbeing dark fantasy?

The lines between genres like this are incredibly blurry as it is, but I'd say that yeah, given that the entire point of Dark Fantasy is that it is fantasy but Darker and Edgier, if you make Dark Fantasy sufficiently Lighter and Softer, it would stop being Dark Fantasy and become 'normal' fantasy once more.

I can't be less vague than that without going into existing examples or more concrete descriptions/definitions of how dark the fantasy is to start with and how much more light-hearted is it being made.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

My point about robbing of agency is that if the answer to "why are people evil?" is "because they used too much magic", it robs the story of depth and applicability

Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?

People in general in a dark fantasy universe or just the magic users?

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."