Magic System · Character Group
Corrupted practitioners who have turned from Chaos to wield Discord — once thought eradicated, now violently re-emerging.
Dissonants are corrupted practitioners who have turned away from the natural flow of Chaos to wield the destructive, systemic blight of Discord. Once thought to be entirely eradicated from the world following the imprisonment of Zane Grey, their sudden and volatile re-emergence has shattered decades of institutional complacency, triggering widespread panic across both the Bastionic Lodge and the civilian Capitol City Congress.
Active Dissonance manifests visually to Chaos-enhanced vision as a roiling, oily cloud of dark smog that actively repels focus and strains the eyes of onlookers. The kinetic use of Discord behaves like a heavy, suffocating physical tide. When a Dissonant is knocked unconscious or drained of their energy, a severe physiological toll is revealed: their skin turns dull and distinctly gray, their features appear thinned and sunken, and their bodies take on a fragile, hollowed-out quality.
Rather than working within the structural mechanics of standard tech or elemental manipulation, Dissonants channel raw corruption to summon monstrous Blightborn beasts directly out of localized environmental rot.
Lesser Dissonants frequently rely on specialized external implements — referred to by authorities as "trinkets" — or cracked, ancient stone tablets to channel their dark energy currents.
Systemic lore dictates that true, high-level Dissonant masters are intrinsically tied to the legendary Black Books of Discord. This detail is so heavily guarded that the mere rumor of a book being present within city thresholds causes immediate institutional distress.
Dissonants occupy the lowest tier of fear and taboo within the urban fantasy setting, viewed as existential monsters by all civilized factions. Within Temple Bastion, historical mosaics depict ancestral Lodgesworn standing alongside the primordial entity Ae'ther to drive back the hordes of the Discordant god Bealthamon.
For the last several decades, the official stance of the Bureau of Mitigation was that active Dissonant practitioners were a historical relic of a darker time. However, the recent capture of a localized wretch named Mortimer at Emergent Park has thrown the Capitol City Prison into high alert. Tensions have surged to double-shift capacity within the Third Ring cellblocks, as authorities scramble to determine how a civilian could randomly stumble across active Discordant frequencies.