Essence of theShura

By drinking this essence, like blood red flames, you gain a number of boons.

• Within you is a limitless lust for blood and violence. The act of killing and fighting provides incredible pleasure, comparable to the greatest natural highs. The pleasure is purely mental, as opposed to sexual or similar. Naturally, you have no hesitation when it comes to taking other lives when you choose to do so.

• The negative mental effects of combat, danger and bloodshed aren’t an issue for you.

• Your aptitude for combat and killing is incredible. Even with no prior training whatsoever, you can identify how best to kill any given thing and can fight with skill to rival masters in any field of combat using nothing but pure instinct.

• Should you actively try to improve your skill at combat, you’ll find that it comes to you with transcendent ease. Simply seeing a movement or technique will allow you to understand, replicate or even improve upon them, should you possess the appropriate traits.

• The act of killing rejuvenates you. Taking a life will seal your wounds, replenish your stamina and satiate your needs. So long as you continue to take lives ceaselessly, you can survive wounds that should be fatal and continue to battle indefinitely without rest or fatigue. This rejuvenation repairs damage that would normally be irreparable and even reverses your aging until your prime.

• If you are at peak condition, the rejuvenative effects will accumulate until they are necessary.

• The act of killing improves you. Every life you take will strengthen your body and your mind. Your blows will hit harder, your sword will swing faster, your feet will move quicker and your senses will be sharper. Your thoughts will flow quicker, interference and pain will slide off of your mind and the stranger abilities wielded by some will become less and less effective. This process can continue without limit, so long as you continue to kill.

• The greater your victim’s power, the greater the benefit you receive from killing them.

• As you grow stronger, you can begin to express your nature in supernatural ways, like leaving wounds that resist attempts to heal them, harming the mind and soul, striking the intangible or permanently killing beings that would normally resurrect. This can be done through your body, weapons or any other powers you possess.

• Your nature, the limitless bloodlust within you and the endless bodies you leave in your wake can all be expressed as a violent aura that impresses your malice and experience upon others. This aura can tweaked, such that it may merely allow someone to feel your fathomless killing intent, comprehend your sheer body count or manifest itself as a crimson cloak of howling bloodlust, blazing fire and tormented souls.