Meta Essence CYOA 62

Essence of 'Salvation'

By drinking for a vial of pure white liquid that glows just bright enough to be hard to look at directly, except for a pitch black core directly in the center, you have become an extremely powerful force of hope…and despair.

●Your entire existence transforms, taking on both infernal and celestial traits. By default, you have a prehensile tail adapted for grasping and holding objects, a pair of white, leathery bat wings which allow you to fly, a pair of horns that jut upwards, black sclera and an ominous red halo. The rest of your form, however, is malleable to any humanoid appearance you wish as a one-time change.

○Your halo acts as an indicator of the general state of the world or universe, growing darker and closer to black the worse things are and closer to gold the better things are. As an average, the modern world leaves it at its default red.

○Your diligence and willpower become limitless, making you significantly more driven and motivated, no matter what hardships you face you will always persevere. Furthermore, you are also purged of excessive indolence and procrastination. That is to say, while you still value relaxing and chilling out, you won't put something off if it's important.

○No matter how much time passes or how many things you experience, you will never grow jaded or sick of simple pleasures or tasks. The sights and sounds you experience will always be as uplifting as the first time you saw them. Also, your skills and abilities will never degrade with disuse, even if you languish for eons.

○You are immortal and undying, requiring neither food nor water or any other thing needed by regular creatures to survive. Your body now has limitless stamina, can completely regenerate in seconds after being reduced to just your skeleton and is immune to the ravages of time.

○If needed, you may conceal your inhuman traits, and even your powers and nature, though the more you conceal the more said concealment will interfere with the flow of your Divine and Demonic Energies and using too much of either may partially or fully release the concealment.

●You gain access to a pocket dimension that allows you to search through the multiverse from within, and pick out any universe you wish to enter and what time and place in said universe you wish. This multiversal movement defies space, merely requiring you 'step' out into the universe from the pocket dimension.

○The dimension highlights universes that have some kind of serious or apocalyptic crisis or major change in the world towards a 'climactic event' in their timeline, be it positive or negative, on earth or elsewhere, and pinpoints an opportune time and place to enter them that would allow you to decide the course of the event. If you choose to follow this guiding influence, then instead of simply stepping into it, you'll descend from the sky of your entrance spot with light shining on you from above, highlighting your presence.

○Your pocket dimension acts as its own afterlife that retroactively accepts anyone that you would judge as worthy upon your entering into a specific universe, undoing any corruptive and deleterious effects from their souls that you want gone.

■You are effectively omnipotent within the pocket dimension, able to change anything about it and within it as well as everyone accepted inside coming under your control. However, anything derived from this ability cannot be utilized in any way outside of your dimension.

■Your dimension is beyond the reach of most entities and is practically impenetrable to any being you do not want inside; even a supreme deity could not pierce the barriers surrounding your dimension.

○Your body automatically generates and is capable of utilizing both Divine Energy and Demonic Energy, though at your base level your internal reserves of both start off rather small. As a side effect of your dual nature, you are immune to all corrupting or purifying effects.

■Divine Energy can be used in a variety of ways, such as performing miracles, slaying entities through smiting, resurrecting the deceased, healing injuries and purifying corruption. Mortals as well as most monsters and infernal foes are poisoned by too much raw divine energy without being accustomed to it. High levels of divine energy poisoning if left untreated inevitably result in death, however those who can adapt to it gain immortality, immunity to most effects like poison, disease and curses, superhuman attributes, and can lead to transforming into a celestial being.

■Divine energy represents order, and wielding it requires intense precision and concentration. In general, divine energy can be used to do nearly everything and is seemingly only limited by one's imagination, as it can be used to manipulate both space and time, and warp reality.

■Conversely to divine energy, fel energy is an extremely destructive form of energy, It is entropic, chaotic, and extremely volatile. Its use by the wielder, or its effects on the victim, frequently results in an alteration of the individual, colloquially called corruption. Fel corruption can manifest with positive effects in which case it can be considered a gift, or a blessing, or with negative ones in which case it can be considered a curse. Physical transformation normally ensues with use, such as a change to an individual's eyes or skin colour, or heavy mutations such as the growth of demonic traits like spikes, scales, and horns. Negative corruption tends to lead to physical or mental deterioration. Either way, corruption gives the individual increased strength, more magical potential, and can lead to transforming into an infernal being.

■Demonic Energy is mainly attuned to chaos and causing destruction, but it can also be used to scry, turn oneself invisible, and create portals which are much more efficient, long-lasting and easier to maintain than those made with Divine Energy. It can be used to breathe life into constructs creating living automata, or in a necromantic way by resurrecting creatures as undead. Fel can also be used to heal, though it leaves a mark on creatures who are not fel-based.

■Both of your energies can be used to enhance your body and passively fortify it, your mind and your soul against unwilling transformation or damage, the protection scaling to the amount of power you actually have. This fortification is perfectly effective against anything that would nullify or negatively affect your powers specifically, regardless of how strong it is.

○You draw energy from feelings of hope or despair. The ambient feelings of those around you grant slight, temporary increases in power that grow the more prevalent that feeling is, with hope boosting your Divine Energy and despair boosting your Demonic Energy, but people actively associating you with those feelings will give you a lot more of a temporary boost and cause your power to slowly creep upwards permanently. A lone person still doesn't give you all that much energy, however.

■To anyone that can detect the difference, you register as both an angel and a demon simultaneously, and anything that affects you reacts as though you are whichever is more beneficial to you unless you will it to do otherwise.

○Whenever you tip the balance of an 'area' in favor of hope or despair, you'll gain a large boost in the corresponding energy depending on the size and population of the area. Turning a near-empty city would give you an incomparably small amount in comparison to a planet full of people.

○You have the ability to perceive the flow of destiny, and an intuitive understanding of how to interfere with this flow to best influence the 'tone' of the world around you. This also allows you to identify, locate and draw towards yourself individuals with some form of importance or grand destiny within their world.

■You can use this ability to lead specific people towards 'Good Endings' or 'Bad Endings', which guarantee a life full of happiness with no major instances of suffering or with some manner of life-long/eternal torment respectively. This does require you dedicate your attention to them specifically for a time, however.

Essence of Mercurial Superpowers

Upon drinking this vial of silver essence with a rainbow sheen, you hear an indistinct whisper cursing something far beyond your comprehension. You can barely make out the word 'Arbiter' amongst the curses.

●By drinking this essence, you have obtained the power to get random abilities from the Superpower Wiki every day.

●Every day, you have to randomly choose 3 powers from that website. You then choose a single power from your list and discard the rest.

●If you don't like the lineup of powers, you get three resets per week that allow you to throw out the lineup and choose another. These resets do not stack, and can only be used shortly after you get the lineup.

○You gain a free reset for every significant achievement you attain using the powers from this essence, as well as every time you roll a 10 for your power rating and every time you reach the current maximum level on a permanent power. This reset can swap just the powers themselves, or the power rating as well as the powers.

●You will have a minor instinctive ability to understand and use the basic functions of the power, but your higher understanding will be limited by the power rating of the power itself, with lower numbers you will have to figure out more advanced usages on your own.

●Your powers are guaranteed not to react in a negative fashion with eachother, even if they would normally react in a volatile fashion.

○This does not affect processes that cause temporary negative effects for permanent positive gains.

●If a power requires a specific energy source such as Ki, magic, or chakra, you will have the energy to fuel the power to its maximum potential, even if only once before you need to recharge.

○You can increase these energies by repeatedly making use of powers that draw upon them, like exercising a muscle.

○There will be no permanent negative consequences from housing a large amount of energy with an unenhanced body. However, there may be consequences that last until the body is upgraded.

●Low-level active powers that do not specify that they use a specific kind of energy tend to use up a proportional amount of stamina to use, but this is not always the case.

●Every time you select a new power, select a random number from 1 to 10, the power and versatility of your new ability will be decided by this 'power rating' number, with 1 either being the lowest possible interpretation of the article description or, for invariably potent powers, a limited variant of the power, and 10 being the most potent portrayal of the power, possibly with supplemental abilities. For example, if you have miracle manipulation, a 10 may be as powerful as Bernkastel, a multiversal witch capable of destroying all of creation, while a 1 would be closer to Sanae Kochiya, a miko who takes several days of preparation depending on how impossible and strong the miracle is, with other numbers being somewhere in the middle.

○Using a reset rerolls this number as well, unless it is a free reset.

●Powers that you roll can have permanent, lasting effects on the world around you even passively, such as Eldritch Magic weakening the walls between worlds and causing Magic to slowly become a part of the world with even a single use, if its powerful enough.

●If you roll an ability with a power rating of 10, you will permanently gain a minor version of the power with heavy limitations, a sub-power of the power, or a physical trait from physiology affecting powers.

○These powers will very slowly grow more powerful, whilst losing the limitations at the same rate, but can be improved much quicker with active use. It will still take a long time to get them to the level of the ability that created them, however, and they will not be able to surpass the maximum definition of the ability they spawned from unless you have some other way of evolving the ability past that point.

○Extremely potent powers can grant permanent powers at as low of a rating as 8, but may not express their full power and will only grant access to a limited number of applications unless you meet certain conditions (e.g: having a certain level of overall power, discounting the potent ability).

○Some powers, such as ones that only grant the user more powers, will require the user to perform certain thematically appropriate actions in order to gain access to some or all of the powers in question. Unearned powers may negatively affect the permanent powers from a high roll.

■You may roll again for free if the power that you'd gain isn't hinted at, or take a power themed after the method used.

●At will, you may open a status screen that lists your current random ability, as well as all of the permanent minor powers and physical traits you have obtained and every power that you have from other origins.

○You may also choose to mark their improvement in gamer-esque levels if you so wish, as well as any physical or mental statistic as long as they have been improved permanently by a power.

■You can choose to be unable to lose revealed stats to degradation over time.

●Whenever you undergo heavy mental or emotional stress, take a serious wound, or are put in a situation where you are at high risk of such and don't have a good response, you may immediately burn a reset in order to perform an emergency roll, changing your current power and power rating immediately, though you must either burn more resets to change again or take the power as-is.

○If you roll an 8 or higher and have a power that can be applied to other powers (e.g: Continuous Force), you may immediately roll the power and rating again and combine the two powers for free.

●It may be possible to regain certain non-innate powers via your own efforts even if the power has already left you. However, this may be a long and difficult process, depending on the power itself, and may not give you the same level of power.

●No power granted directly by this Essence, including the Essence itself may be permanently sealed away, destroyed, stolen, suppressed, or otherwise manipulated in a negative fashion by outside sources, nor may your ability to use said powers. It may be done temporarily, but this will not last longer than a year or two at most, and if it is done repeatedly then the interference will steadily become less effective until it doesn't do anything.

○It will also become harder for the perpetrator to tell that you have regained your strength, especially from a distance. Scrying, remote viewing and Sensory abilities will both start being twisted to see you as you were after the perpetrator's influence, making up false events to let things make sense.

Essence of Self-Sealing

 By drinking for a vial of golden liquid that seems to have chain links floating within it, you have intentionally weakened yourself.

○You can choose to place any ability, knowledge or even body parts, bodily functions and even parts of your own existential nature behind seals, which may partially or fully release upon fulfilling a condition or set of conditions.

■These conditions may be anything you like, whether they be tied to internal factors such as your emotions or determination, external factors such as your situation or the condition of those around you, physical objects that act as releasing mechanisms or even things like the state of your goals or the world.

■The sealing of abilities may do more than simply reduce their power, and can even alter the way the abilities take shape. This altered ability must always keep some elements of its full form and be 'weaker' than said full form, but may cause it to have different effects or take shape differently. (e.g: Pyrokinesis might manifest as a flame aura caused by extremely high body temperature)

■The sealing of things such as your nature can also do strange things to your form, from changing your species to splitting you into fully formed copies of yourself representing different fragments of your existence and holding different parts of your abilities.

■This sealing can bind your form within the form of an outside 'Host', whether it be some kind of weapon or artifact, or the body of someone else. You can choose whether damage to this 'Host' causes damage to the seal(s) or not.

■You may also choose whether being sealed within such allows your 'Host' (or the wielder of your host object) to make use of your powers or be affected by your essence, and how it allows for this. This may be tied into the conditions on the seals themselves if you wish.

■You may choose to represent these seals with any cosmetic effect, physical object or transformation, such as chains binding your limbs if they are sealed, tattoos that appear when your powers are either sealed or unsealed, or demon powers being partially unsealed being heralded by horns growing on your head.

■You may choose the strength of the seals that bind you, and whether they can be broken using either brute force or any other methods of bypassing seals that are available.

■You may also choose a particular 'method' of sealing if you have one in mind, as well as any side-effects of said sealing method. Even if the method doesn't exist, it will be created.

■You may choose to keep some of the functions of things you've sealed despite them being sealed, such as keeping your blood flowing despite having no heartbeat.

■You may choose to have the act of straining against the limits of the seals act like resistance training, increasing the strength of whatever is sealed away.

■Optionally, you may gain the ability to put the same kind of seals you have placed on yourself on others.

Essence of the Card Fantasy

 Upon drinking this orange, you taste a strangely metallic but also Card-like taste, and gain several effects:

•Three Cards will appear within your mind, each representing a fantasy archetype: Warrior, Archer, and Mage.

•Every 24 hours you may choose to hold a Card, summon a Card, or evolve a Card in your Deck. Either way, that Card will become 'active', becoming a separate instance from the initial three and entering your Deck if it isn't there already.

•Held Cards will remain in your Deck and can be evolved, taking on a more advanced and specific identity with access to greater levels of power. (i.e: Mage -> Witch -> Magical Girl -> Elite Magical Girl -> Ultimate Magical Girl). Most of the time, this will cause its rank to rise.

◦Cards cannot be evolved infinitely, there is always a capstone evolution (Usually an UR).

•Summoned Cards will summon a generic instance of the Card's archetype under your control. This instance will be a real person but will start off as a mostly blank slate with only a slight disposition and enough information to be able to function, use their abilities (Notably, they don't have information on what those abilities are) and communicate along with basic emotional responses.

◦Your Cards will instinctually know that you are their creator and will be compelled to listen to your commands and not harm you unless you demand them to.◾Repetetive, continuous abuse of your Cards will cause the compulsion to falter and your Cards to become hostile.

◦The appearance of summoned Cards is up to you to decide when the Card is created, as long as it vaguely matches the archetype, but if you don't choose then a fitting (though somewhat random) appearance will be generated automatically.◾This can be used to influence the abilities that your Cards have, but not to the point of overshadowing what they would have anyways.

◦Cards begin with set abilities, but these powers are usually rather broad and non-specific unless strictly required by the archetype in question. Cards can learn how to use what they have in more specific and effective ways, and may even grow stronger and learn more abilities that are in-line with their archetype.◾The previous evolutions of a Card can influence their current state (i.e: Having a Witch evolve into an Ultimate Magical Girl will cause that specific Card to have an affinity for Dark Magic and obtain Dark Magic abilities in all stages of evolution after Witch)

◦Card Summons that are killed are removed from your Deck.

◦If you become particularly attached to an instance of a Card, you may resummon them with mind and soul in-tact if they die as long as you summon a Card that is in the same evolution as they were in with the intent to resurrect them.

◦Summoned Cards can be unsummoned in exchange for losing the point cost of the card for 24 hours. These cards do not lose whatever personality and knowledge they may have built up, and can be differentiated from 'fresh' cards.

◦Instead of drawing or evolving an Archetype Card, you may choose to take up to 3 consumable Cards. These Cards consist of random abilities and/or items that can be used immediately after summoning the Card. These Cards also have the same ranked costs, but are only charged from points for 48 hours when summoned.

•Cards cannot be evolved unless they are already in your deck, and summoned Cards also cannot be evolved on demand.

•Each Card has a rank, which is dictated by their general power level. Higher ranked Cards take up more 'space' in your deck, represented by points.

•The ranks are: Normal (N), Rare (R), Super Rare (SR), Special Super Rare (SSR), and Ultra Rare (UR), Transcendent Rare (TR) and they cost 1 to 6 points respectively.

•Your deck starts off with 5 points avaliable, and hitting this limit means that no more Cards can be held or summoned unless they were already in your deck.

•More points become avaliable as your Cards gain experience.

•At any point in time, you may choose to Include or Install any unsummoned Card, which will allow you to make use of the Card's abilities in different ways, as long as you can pay a temporary cost in Points until it is desummoned.

•Including a Card will give you access to the weapon of the Card, along with some of the innate abilities of the Card and the Weapon. However, the Card's actual abilities will be heavily muted, and mostly missing from the equation, leaving only the weapon. This costs ½ of the Card's cost in points, rounded down.◦If the Card doesn't have a weapon, then you will gain one of the Card's accessories and gain a bit more of their innate abilities.

•Installing a Card will allow you to make use of all of the Card's capabilities, even taking on the Card's clothing, accessories, weapon, and even some physical attributes sometimes, but you must pay the full cost of the Card.

•Either way, this process drains stamina (Installing much more than Including), and will immediately stop just as you run out.◦The rank of a Card also affects this stamina drain, with higher ranked Cards draining stamina much faster.

•Over time and as your summoned Cards see combat, your deck will gain points and more and more options for evolving the Cards will appear to you, and after particularly tough trials or grand achievements you will gain access to another base archetype Card in addition to the first three.

•This will also shorten the time that it takes to be able to hold/summon/evolve your Cards.

•Optionally, you may have a book that records all of your summons, with a complete biography and detailed information on their powers, as well as the powers and disposition of any possible summon that they could've evolved into.

Essence of the Clockworks

Upon drinking this essence that looks and tastes like liquid metal, you start feeling a ticking motion from within your body.

●You'll find that all of your organs aside from your brain are replaced with copper clockwork gears that perfectly perform the functions of the replaced organs with a massively improved effect, even for things like processing food. The clockwork is also very durable, able to protect you from things that would damage normal organs, and allow you to live without any bodily needs.

○The durability of these clockwork organs scales to twice the most durable part of your body (with a minimum cap of whatever the gears are made of), and even replaced parts become just as durable when placed within you. This clockwork is also responsible for performing the processes of your conversion power, so if it is damaged the results may start to become incomplete or incorrect.

●You are immune to any anti-mechanical effects due to the abnormal, anomalous nature of your inner clockwork.

●You can easily and harmlessly open up your chest to reveal your clockwork insides for maintenance and part replacement and just as easily perform said maintenance or part replacement if you have the right materials.

○Despite its anomalous nature, your clockwork internals are maintained just as regular clockwork would be.

○You can function at full capacity without your clockwork for about 24 hours, and survive with a slowing body for another 24 hours before it would kill you.

●You have the knowledge of how to maintain your new innards, as well as knowledge on how to build a full-sized SCP-914 clockwork machine with all of its anomalous abilities.

●Upon coming into contact with any object, living or not and in any state of matter, you may choose to absorb it into an 'input' pocket dimension. This dimension is infinite in size, and appears to anything inside like a metal room with its massive metal walls and ceiling lingering eternally in the distance. Anything within this pocket dimension has no need for any kind of sustenance whilst it remains inside.

●You have a mental selection of five different settings: Rough, Coarse, 1:1, Fine and Very Fine, as well as a mental 'trigger'. Only one of the settings can be selected at a time. When the mental trigger is pulled, the five settings have different effects on the contents of the 'input' pocket dimension.

○Rough causes the destruction of whatever is within the pocket dimension, such that its function is rendered completely unusable. This can even kill immortal beings as long as their essence is put through the process (e.g: putting a Lich's body through would just destroy it and sever it from the phylactery, whereas putting the phylactery through would destroy the soul within). This often takes the form of separating the 'input' into it's base elements or general chemical makeup, but can also take the form of more violent, haphazard disassembly.

○Coarse causes the disassembly of whatever is within the pocket dimension in a clean fashion, sometimes even reversing permanent state changes to do so. (e.g: a human body may be separated into complete organ systems, a complete skeleton and complete skin. A book may be turned into leather, a block of wood, a stack of ink-stained rags and a reel of thread if those were used to make it.)

○1:1 converts the object into something that you see as being of roughly equivalent value, or something that is objectively speaking (or as close to objectively as possible) of equivalent value. (e.g: Money converting into its equivalent in value in another currency.)

○Fine converts the object into something that you see as being of greater qualitative value, or something that is objectively speaking (or as close to objectively as possible) of greater quality, removing any impurities and improving any mechanical or biological functions. (e.g: Money converting into a higher denomination. 10 pounds of iron converting into 10 pounds of stainless steel.) This preserves any consciousness and/or identity of living beings placed within.

○Very Fine improves the input to the extreme, often producing items beyond the laws of physics or sane reason. Putting in a laptop may give out a functional intelligent android, putting in a phone with a game open on it may make objects and/or people from that game real, etc.

●Converted instances are placed in the 'output' pocket dimension, a mirror of the 'input' pocket dimension with the same proportions. Items and effects in this dimension are put in stasis immediately after conversion until you choose to release them from it.

○You may, at any time, produce the object(s) in the output dimension from any point on your body. Whatever comes from your 'output' dimension is unable to harm you for a minute after release.

●As you use this conversion ability more, you will gain more control over the exact output that comes from the input, though it must still conform to the limitations of whatever setting the process was run at.

Notes

●If there are multiple possibilities for an output in any option, then one is selected at random.

●If something that can't normally be disassembled into components is input on rough or coarse settings, the result may be anomalous items, substances or effects.

○Items placed in on Fine or Very Fine can also have anomalous effects no matter what they are.

●Items with no normal equivalent placed in at the 1:1 setting may cause the same item to be output or output an anomalous item, substance or effect.

●Converted items may be from brands or sources that do not exist in the reality the user resides in.

●The conversion process fabricates the output from the items that were input through anomalous, reality-warping processes, but they are all mechanical processes nonetheless.

●Putting multiple items through the process can combine them in different ways depending on the setting.

Essence of the Commentary

 By drinking this essence, you gain…a voice in your head.

○Upon drinking this essence, you can choose any number of real or fictional characters from any point. The characters that you select will now be voices in your head, commentating on your life. Pick whether its as though they are watching it on TV or as though they're actually there with you.

■You can choose what kind of existence your head-voice is, whether they are actually commentating from their homes, or a pocket dimension, or just insanity manifesting as voices in your head, or even sealed inside of your soul, and can mute them at will (though they will be aware that you have done this immediately). You can also choose the backstory behind the characters being there if they are real, and whether your thoughts are broadcasted to them as well.

○You can swap out the characters with ten minutes of concentration. You can decide how this works if the characters actually exist in a pocket dimension or in your soul. You can also use their powers through your mental connection…as long as you find a way to do so, which may not exist depending on how you've configured this essence.

Essence of the Cyberworld

 By drinking this fizzy black essence that makes you think of a computer screen, you gain access to a world beyond conventional reality.

•You now have the ability to enter the Cyberworld with any digital computer system, manifesting into a space where the system you have entered is represented in a physical fashion. The appearance of this space may vary, but if there is a visual display for it then you will see it as a 3D version of that, since that is what you will be interacting with.

•You can enter fictional mediums like games and videos and change the way they play out, the medium literally becoming its own world within the Cyberworld upon your entry.

•You can control the computer system you have entered by physically interacting with the world around you, consequently modifying, damaging, creating or destroying the data present in the system. This can cause things to act more like physical objects than actual programs (or parts of programs).

•Other powers that you have will also work in your digital form, and may allow you to change things in different ways than previously stated.

•You can bore a 'hole' into the internet in order to travel between different systems without exiting the Cyberworld, but this cannot take you to any computer system that is not connected to the internet, nor can it function in a computer system that is not already connected.

•Other people may also do the same to you if they have a way of interfacing with the system you are in, but you can resist any attempts to modify or delete you. Your ability to resist people just beating you up or killing you manually depends on how well you could resist that kind of thing anyway. You are also subjected to the physics and rules present within mediums like games and videos to a degree if you enter them, but this comes with the opportunity to internalize these things and let them act on you all the time, though you can suppress or discard these physics at will when not within the medium.

•You gain immaculate, masterful drawing abilities in any digital medium you interact with.

•You gain the ability to 'wake up' other virtual objects into sentient beings like you upon interacting with them, though at first this ability will be uncontrollable and activate randomly. Awoken beings will have powers that they were 'intended' to have by their immediate creator if they are something like an image of a character, or powers based on their position if it is something like a video box.

•You get a one-time opportunity to create a virtual avatar for yourself that you can transform into whenever you enter the Cyberworld, though this is not mandatory. You can also take over any non-living image or screen and make use of it as your new avatar, as long as it can be used as a 'body'. This body may have minor abilities by default, but nothing beyond street-level. If you need a guideline, then nothing that a superhero like Spiderman (whilst holding back) couldn't beat on his own.

•You, and all other virtual beings have the potential to develop new abilities with enough effort, training or stress, though your potential is much higher to the point that it wouldn't take too much effort to obtain blatantly supernatural abilities such as pyrokinesis. Virtual beings modeled after certain characters or themes have an easier time developing abilities related to said appearance.