Essence of theOne Who Suffers from Somewhere in Nevadean Madness

Drinking this liquid-like blackened rock dust on a flask with the label danger stapled on its side, made you feel like a woozy. Like someone killed you at least three times, and you were back stronger than ever.

• One-time appearance sculpt. Purely cosmetic, if I say so myself.

• You’ve changed now, your body is constantly upgrading itself by creating charge points that you can expend every hour. It bore no outward changes, but you can feel it. You can manually input the changes but it has to be done beforehand and it will be one change at a time until you feel that you use up all your allotted charges.

• Think of this as an idle game mechanic where you continually gain points over time.

• The points have an “Interest Mechanic”. For every point in two digits you stored, you will gain one more point in addition to the one point you gained. Every hundred points grant two additional charges that you can expend or store away. The maximum allotment of points is a thousand, any more points gained will be expended automatically to a random upgrade for your body.

• You can even expend charges to assimilate technology with the most advanced technology needing a maximum of a thousand points to incorporate within you. The more you absorb, the fewer the charges you need.

• You are biologically immortal. You don't produce any natural wastes. After all, you don’t want to be ambushed with your pants down shitting on a bush, would you?

• You can enter a bullet time mode where everything slows down. Be warned that this mode has a limited duration. You can extend the duration with your charge points. The maximum limit is 1 hour… unless you have an Essence or something that breaks that limit.

• Occasionally, you may enter a berserk state. Whenever you are in this state, time will slow down accordingly akin to bullet time mode and all of your stats are amplified. But be warned, this will also cause your friend or foe indicator to be removed. Your allies might be part of your victims.

• You are an extremely talented combatant able to fight a whole host of enemies and win.

• Your strength can rip someone’s spine off with ease.

• Your endurance and stamina are enough to fight in a hellish dimension and escape it.

• You can use any weapon effectively as if you have trained yourself professionally when using them.

• You have an ethereal halo hovering above your head. This isn’t a Keystone but something signifies that you are the Keystone. What is a Keystone? An artifact in a Nevada drenched in a Madness of Combat. It grants you mystical powers. These are the known powers it has shown so far, further experimentation is required to find more powers.

• Raise the dead as zombies.

• Materialize objects with a bright flash of light.

• Create energy shields, which can also be used to catch projectiles and return them to sender.

• Generate an immense amount of bluish energy that you can use to channel throughout your body and can be used offensively to enhance your attacks and durability.

• Dissolving people with a stream of reddish dark energy that can also be channeled throughout your body much like its bluish counterpart.

• Telekinesis. Literally moving things with your mind. What? You want something more from this? Nope. Just Telekinesis.

• Levitation. No, not telekinesis. These two are separate, somehow. I mean, you can just use telekinesis to levitate.

• A healing factor that is strong enough to ensure that if your head ever explodes, it will reconstitute safely with all of your memories intact.

• Enhancing people’s fighting prowess immensely to extraordinary levels.

• Creating some sort of black substance, known colloquially as the liquid darkness. The substance is solid when lightly touched but liquid when force is applied. The substance can also be used as a fuel or organ substitute.

• Absorbing materials to create a shell that can grow in size and power. The growth can be shed by you popping out of your shell.

• Turning yourself into a rather large skeletal abomination that can outsize a building.

• Summoning units that you own and skeleton.

• The Keystone automatically revives you should you die.

• The Keystone’s halo can be hidden away with but a thought but whenever you’re using the powers granted by the Keystone, the ethereal halo automatically appears above your head and will glow intensely.

• Anyone who sees you with the Keystone’s halo out will think of you as a holy man. Ironically, the Keystone made all holy energy and objects compatible with you.

• You have the blueprint to create copies of your halo, the Keystone Fragments, but they will be material and solid, unlike your ethereal halo. Meaning they can be stolen.

• Not only that but the Keystone Fragment is quite limited in what it offers. It has a limited amount of power slots that you can place before it degrades in quality.

• The power randomizes with each user unless you force that Fragment to run specific powers. Even then, the current user might even get locked out from their previous user’s powers.

• The Keystone Fragment also has a strict compatibility requirement. Expect problems arising towards those whom you have given the Keystone Fragment always.

• The Keystone Fragments degrade over time to the point that they will fragment soon until they can no longer be used.

• Much like the infamous, for all the wrong reasons, Sheriff of Nevada, you have immense charisma and a lot of knowledge on political intrigues. Enough to make you win the Election.

• As an added bonus, to prevent you from being a wuss like the Sheriff of Nevada, the more important the position of power you hold, the more powerful and skilled you become. Think of this as a permanent boost until you retire from the position you have.

• Much like the infamous Champion of Nevada, you have been granted a limited form of Toonforce, the Power of Improbability. It won’t make you as unkillable as a Toon but you sure as hell tough enough to have a building crash on top of you and live.

• Whenever you’re using the Power of Improbability, you generate the same substance when you use the Keystone to create a pool of liquid darkness.

• You are also an immensely talented DJ and rapper for some reason.

• Ah? What is this? Congratulations on your new job. You are now an Employee. This position grants you access to the power to turn into an ethereal body made entirely of black flames. Your eyes will be fully tinged in a red glow, or any color really but the default is red, whenever you’re using the ethereal body. This form grants immense strength, durability, agility, and the power to phase through objects, leaving behind scorch marks as your trail.

• Your ethereal form gives off a particle trail of shapes. Whether they are geometric or just the default flame, is up to you.

• Your strength wouldn’t be able to destroy a building with a single punch, but you can take someone’s heart out of their body.

• Despite your immense durability, you are not infallible. You can still be taken down if energy-based attacks are used against you whenever you are in that ethereal body of yours.

• Whenever you phase through objects, you have the option to appear somewhere nearby. This makes it look like you teleported but actually just you moving at immense speeds.

• Should you desire for promotion, four trials will be set aside for you by the Higher Ups. The four Employers will appear and test you.

• The Auditor’s trial is the easiest of them all, making you stay in hell and survive for at least a month with the constant amount of his soldiers and MAGs going after you. You may kill them, the more brutal, the more points you will earn towards his approval. Should you survive for a month or rack up enough points the Auditor will appear before you to congratulate you. Should you complete it, you will be sent to the next Employer, but not before the Auditor gives you a pair of red shades that he may or may not have stolen from Hank’s corpse. This pair of red shades grants you several vision modes. It can track enemies around the area. It also won’t be covered by any materials or liquid, allowing you to fight unmitigated.

• The Stygian’s trial will be about the soul… Huh? Oh. He is going on vacation for a week. You’re going to be doing his job, including the job where he goes to his cultists and does what they ask in proportion to the sacrifice that they will give. It should be easy enough, right?

• The constant usage of Improbability defines the Conductor’s trial. Use your power creatively as you go into copious amounts of puzzles inside the level and foes bearing Improbability will spawn to chase and kill you. You may retaliate against the foes but they won’t count for completion. Should you reach the end of the trial, the Conductor will give you a Stop Sign that allows you to stop time temporarily when planted on the ground. The Conductor will then send you to the next Employer by slamming a building atop you.

• The Debilitator’s trial is the hardest. You must survive for a year whilst surviving all of their trials combined, excluding the Stygian because he went for a real vacation. Not only that but the Employers, excluding Stygian because he is currently on vacation, will enter the field after six months and will try their hardest to take you down.

• Should you manage to complete the trial above, then congratulations on your promotion. You are now an Employer! As an Employer, your ethereal form has more “weight”. Your form is now resistant to energy damage. It still damages you but it won’t be as debilitating as when you are an Employee.

• Your strength, durability, and agility have been amplified. If you thought can punch people’s hearts out of their body, then you’ll find that you can destroy buildings with ease now.

• You have gained an organization under your control. They are located across the multiverse and their main HQ is in a pocket dimension that contains a copy of the Nevada drenched in Combat and Madness. Most of the people there are mook-level though… Maybe you should give them a training regime?

• You have gained awareness that reality can be codified. Thus, you can create programs to alter reality. You can even use it to “rank up” the mooks of your organization. The only limitation is the machines you need to build so that you can program the code and the machine made specifically to run the programs into reality.

• You also own a version of Hell connected to the same Nevada copy. It is quite empty, though. Maybe kill people to put their souls here? Who knows what might happen next?

• This Hell cannot be escaped from, even if the person is an Archdeity. It is also indestructible and regenerates should it be destroyed. The structures inside this Hell, however, aren’t indestructible.

• The liquid darkness you spawn now connects to the version of Hell you control.

• This grants you heavy resistance to energy-based attacks. However, this isn’t outright immunity.

• You can cast Judgement into a World and force Normalization Routines to happen. Doing so will cause the sky to crack and immense lightning bolts will occasionally descend and explode to the world’s surface. Once a Normalization Routine happens, it will cascade until the whole World is “Normalized” or a barren world ripe for harvest.

• Should you seek promotion for the next stage, the Machine and the Maker will both test you one final time. The Machine will test your MADNESS while the Maker will test your mind. Then, they will move aside. For the Devil himself, the true ruler of Hell and Nevada will appear. He looks like some sort of black circle with a face on it. You have a single day to survive them, run. The Employers would appear, either to help or impede you with the same things that appeared in their trials.

• If you survive the trial above, you’ll be granted Ascension to become one of the Higher Powers. No idea what it does, but it grants you the power to revive people at least three times. Needs further research on what you can do, though, with what this position entails.

• As a Higher Power, you exude Normality and Improbability, granting you access to limitless god-like powers.

• You have access to the technologies from the hellish Nevada drenched in Combat and Madness. Wherever they are placed, a puddle of liquid darkness will appear in their base.

• You can take any characters in Madness Combat, whether canon or fanon, as your companion. They will be grateful for bringing them out from whatever hellhole they came from.

• One-time travel ticket to Nevada. Any Nevada. You don’t have to go to the Nevada of Madness Combat… unless you really, really want to.

• As usual, this Essence can’t be erased, forcibly changed, removed, or stolen. Doing so will cause you to absorb them.

• Wait, what’s this? Oh my god. OH MY GOD! You have been granted the single most important power of it all! You have gained the power to go back and take weapons from your foes!

• In translation, you have gained Common Sense unlike the people in Madness Combat. Seriously, the amount of money you can get by selling those weapons is staggeringly high.