Lore:Shadekin: Difference between revisions
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{{Needs revision|reason=Feedback needed, loreteam insight required<br>Strongly considering changing the languages' text but that's a code change...<br>Speaking of code changes... todo summarize and push to the PR if it's still open?<br>Also maybe the LorePageHeader colors (above) tweaked? Copied them from Nightmare.|priority=Changing for certain species' circadian rhythms.}} | |||
When people talk about their deepest, darkest desires, why is it always violence and murder? By all means, those are good drives to repress and not act upon, but people repress all kinds of feelings. Hungers, crushes, wanderlust, grief, passwords, pride, charity. In favor of the status quo, a person will discard dozens of dreams a day, refusing to risk the person who is for a chance at the person who could be. And yet, the heart still sings these desires into the void, and sometimes, when the right strands of Resonance strum at just the right chord, the void sings back. | When people talk about their deepest, darkest desires, why is it always violence and murder? By all means, those are good drives to repress and not act upon, but people repress all kinds of feelings. Hungers, crushes, wanderlust, grief, passwords, pride, charity. In favor of the status quo, a person will discard dozens of dreams a day, refusing to risk the person who is for a chance at the person who could be. And yet, the heart still sings these desires into the void, and sometimes, when the right strands of Resonance strum at just the right chord, the void sings back. | ||
Revision as of 23:16, 19 March 2026
 Shadekin |
Denonyms: Shadekins |
Strongly considering changing the languages' text but that's a code change...
Speaking of code changes... todo summarize and push to the PR if it's still open?
Also maybe the LorePageHeader colors (above) tweaked? Copied them from Nightmare.
PRIORITY: Changing for certain species' circadian rhythms.
When people talk about their deepest, darkest desires, why is it always violence and murder? By all means, those are good drives to repress and not act upon, but people repress all kinds of feelings. Hungers, crushes, wanderlust, grief, passwords, pride, charity. In favor of the status quo, a person will discard dozens of dreams a day, refusing to risk the person who is for a chance at the person who could be. And yet, the heart still sings these desires into the void, and sometimes, when the right strands of Resonance strum at just the right chord, the void sings back.
Nightmares: the apotheosis of sapient instability, the embodiment of every primal instinct of violence and carnage, of overstimulation and counter-intuitive reflexes, of generations of evolutionary boons repressed by impossibly futuristic contexts. When a station is calm and bright, outwardly illuminated but complacent at its core, the strife in the heart of her crew does not simply vanish, but congeals into an avatar of survival, the fear of the dark desperate to remain relevant. These voidform, these shadowlings, these light eaters rebel against the status quo, cleaving darkness and uncertainty into unnaturally peaceful times.
When less violent fears go equally suppressed, so too does the void sing back. Shadekin, as they have been dubbed, sprout from the shadows where death is thin but longing remains strong. While (some) Anomalous Zones tend to make the veil of death an easier barrier to reverse, that ease flows both ways. Scattered Resonance, with a skeleton of unresolved desires, grows a skin of shadows and an agenda: less violent, but no less disruptive.
Shadekin
Galactic sailors have always described mysterious miracles in their darkest hours; an unexplainable comforting hand on their shoulder, the gentle whisper of a late partner's goodbye in the hiss of an airlock. Until recent developments with Resonance and Anomality research, these delusions were considered just that: the person's irrational coping mechanism as a survival instinct. With their relatively-recent physical appearances, we know now these to be similar manifestations of Shadekin, the strongest they could possibly be born where Death is inflexible and uncaring.
Shadekin, despite being born of local yet abstract desires, neither represent the universal application of that want, nor a specific person's second chance. Quantum philosophers describe them more as the want itself given a second chance, rather than the wanter. Generally, it takes more than one person with similar yearnings to manifest a Shadekin.
Shadekin formed in times of great loneliness tend to be social, despite their physical limitations, and Shadekin formed of missed opportunities try to master the necessary skills from the shadows. While their physical limitations mean they will never (literally or otherwise) properly make it in the limelight, they find contentment in having made a good faith effort to try.
Importantly, Shadekin are not formed just anywhere, but mostly in and around Anomalous Zones, particularly ones where death is both abundant and fragile. The Shadekin are not bound to these places, and their life paths often take them across the galaxy, but these creatures are not some galactic plague on the concept of emotions, just a neat circumstance in places where neat circumstances are routine. In most places in the galaxy, intense and sustained longing manifests poetry or profitSomeone else's, of course..
Yearning Is Fun
Trying to define a Shadekin, metaphorically shining a light on them, goes about as well as literally trying the same. We know for certain the ones that manage to manifest, they are made of shadows, repulsed by the light, and have innate knowledges and instincts of the sort of folk who would typically express the unexpressed longings. Not many nursing homes are near anomalous zones, but those that do tend to produce Shadekin with creaky joints and other elderly traits. Children tend to have too much of a future ahead of them to fully enunciate the depths of desire necessary for a Shadekin to form, but those that do tend to come from hospice wards, small playmates to make the journey onward more bearable before they finally step into the light. Hospitals tend to be overly-lit to begin with anyways.
But yes, adult-aged desires produce adult-equivalent Shadekin with adult-standard knowledge, even if the desire seems culturally childish, e.g. wanting to be a Kotahi Master.
A Shadekin is not innately aware of the desires that manifested into it, nor will it demanifest once said desires are reasonably fulfilled. Much like in normal people, opinions and wants change over a person's lifetime, especially in the face of satisfaction. Linda "No-Glo" Rizzo did not vanish after producing the soundtrack to Castle Bubble, despite obviously being formed from a mash of desires to have followed a singing career. Linda continued to produce musical hits, expanding into fostering other singers and congealing her minor fame into the restaurant world, building a small chain of precision gastroplatformers.
Throwing Shade
As many of these desires are unfulfilled due to selflessness, these Shadekin are often seen as selfish critters, regardless of how true that is. Unconfessed love is often unconfessed because doing so would disrupt their situation, either risking a friendship, or causing social strife, or breaking bro code, so if that yearning is the skeleton for a Shadekin, they are unlikely to adhere to "bro code" in their life (though an unrelated Shadekin may not have any opinion on bro code either way).
Shadekin are metaphorically the enemy of the status quo, which relies on infinite small sacrifices by everyone to be upheld, but also are physically the enemy of both Ethereals and Replica Pod People. Ethereals in their natural state live unburdeoned lives, shepherding and caretaking for their Worldtrees, near and on Where All Is Found. They formed societies without significant drive, and are thus unlikely to hold regrets strong enough to encrust shadows around. Also, they glow actual physical light, which: not great.
Plant People, Pod or otherwise, similarly have an addiction to photons and various wavelengths of light, so find it hard to coexist. Philosophers find it harder to narratively link Pod People and Shadekin in a poetic manner.
In Society
SolFed's Bureau of People acknowledges Shadekin as people. They are willing to operate within society, are capable of performing labor and paying taxes, and are not intrinsically a threat to existence or to SolFed. On a more localized level, nations, cities, and individual stations each have their stances on Shadekin acceptance, whether their presence provides more value than the cost of accommodating both their physical needs and unorthodox behaviors. A Shadekin inclined to travel may find themselves having to reside in sewers or other undesirable spaces, what with the lack of dedicated infrastructure.
Societies with larger concentrations of Shadekin tend to have intentionally dark sections, maintenance tunnels entirely unlit, brutalist apartment blocks standing windowless (an amazing canvas for graffiti), streetlights on only one half of the road, et cetera. Shadekin seeking to form permanent shade-friendly civilizations often inhabit tidally-locked planets, where an entire half of the planet is perpetually shielded from the nearby sun. Barring that, low-light suns (e.g. Brown Dwarves) also prove more hospitable. Ultimately, visible light isn't lethal in quantities that would not also be lethal to humans, just strongly concerning.
Identifying Traits
Shadekin's primary color manifests later in life, between a week and a month after cognition begins. Philsophers wax poetic as if these Shadekin were not shadows of the entire light spectrum, but of only certain wavelengths, tying the concepts of "pigment" and "visual light" in haphazardous mixed metaphors. Scientists attempting to correlate "skin" color with emotion, drive, intent, or even social strata, find themselves more confounded the more data they collect. What does it mean? If the Shadekin know, they won't (or can't) convey it.
Eye color, however, is deeply connected to their current emotional state and personality. It's possible that the color schemes are different per Shadekin, but it's also possible that there's a universal pattern, but the nuance involved seems arbitrary to an outside observer.
They eat and digest human-standard food. This is expected, as this resembles the typical traits of those who desire. Raw food disagrees with them, junk food appeals to the same dopamine pathways, so on. It is uncertain what digestive pathways are involved, whether they break glucose into ATP, etc., but the surface level interaction is the same: food goes in, Shadekin doesn't die.
Names
Shadekin pick a name thatlets me write the pun Linda No-Glo Rizzo feels right to them in their empathetic language, but the nuances of that choice have proven difficult to convey to a "Child of the Light."This doesn't seem to be a universal term for non-Shadekin, but a potentially condescending remark at a particularly nosy researcher? These Shadekin names have been known to change as satisfaction and reality both adjust the Shadekin's life path, but again, the nuances are tough and basically arbitrary, godAny of 'em, doesn't matter which. damn it.
Legally, and thus on Station, they go by nicknames they have received from others, usually acquired in their earlier moments, when they are still figuring out how much of society they need to participate in to accomplish what makes them feel fulfilled. Analogous to an army nickname, stemming from boot camp and impossible to escape. They go by the nicknames not just because those are more stable, but trying to convey the diaspora of emotions of their in-language name into written script necessarily loses almost all of the nuance, to the point that is practically sacrilege to the feelings themselves to even attempt.
Procreation
Most Shadekin do not procreate... intentionally. As per studiesA game show wherein two distinct groups of related individuals guess at the typical responses to a statistical survey of the general population. from 2550, while Death was the number one cause of self-described "dream killing," Life was number two, as in siring one or more heirs and devoting significant time or resources to parenting them. The resulting unfulfilled desires, and thus Shadekin, stem from a hypothetical where they did not have those children, thus it would be antithetical for those Shadekin to impede themselves by having or adopting children.
Conversely, regrets about not having children are more easilyread: ethically alleviated, via adoption, vicarious parasociality"You're the son I never had," and/or streaming subscriptions., or the natural way, and thus less likely to fester long enough for shadows to envelop them.
The research team dedicated to investigating Shadekin reproduction wanted so badly to discover the reproductive prowess of the Shadekin in question, that their longings created a new Shadekin who promptly had human-standard intercourse with the existing (and consenting!) Shadekin. The resulting cuckoldry feedback loop led to one of the largest single-incident Shadekin manifestations in quantity, until Researcher Boris remembered the door code, rendering the experiment academically unsound. University money for the project halted immediately, but funding remained steady through Tier Three access and behind-the-scenes footage. No successful reproduction was logged that involved a Shadekin in a genetically primary role.
The straightforward nature of Shadekin does indirectly create more Shadekin, as their blasé nature towards petty obstacles like tact tends to highlight to others that their own desires were possible, leading to enhanced rumination and envy. It can be devastating to see someone worse than you (in your mind) do significantly better than you, just by virtue of applying effort and ignoring some rules you never thought to question. In the best of cases, Shadekin presence leads a person to self-reflection and improvement, and in the worst of cases, deeper into negativity until the shadows walk away with it.
After all, Shadekin are cut from the same cloth as Nightmares, and are no less disruptive.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
