Dark Art: The Changing Face of Public Relations

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In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, multiple practices can leave Gaia Garou at risk of Wyrm contamination. The Dying Cubs camp of the Red Talons practices a rite that "feeds" the earth with the pain of a tortured human. The rite cleanses the land and lowers the Gauntlet of the immediate area, but the effects are temporary. Moreover, spiritual guardians of the region will no longer defend the land against Wyrm incursions.

Even though the only crime in art is bad taste, the Mad Artist usually knows how to drive viewers mad (in the bad way) with their art. A hero might be able to "redeem" the Dark Arts, or at least use them without becoming damned/addicted when the Godzilla Threshold is crossed. The huge majority of people who get interested in runes and bone charms just end up fascinated and obsessed with them, usually to the point of madness, paranoia, murder and death. You found plenty of examples of such people in the game.It invokes dangerous forces, beings, and entities which are impossible to control once released, and which tend to hold a grudge about being forced into service — if they were ever really under the user's control to begin with and not just giving them the rope to hang themselves with. Echos of the concepts and iconography of some of these mythological and cultural arts can be clearly seen in contemporary work, but it seems an act of hubris to claim these universal motifs as belonging to Dark Art. Although other magic schools serve to light people on fire or freeze them alive, hurt or even kill them by tormenting them with visions and so on. By the second and third game, Hexes had taken Pyromancy's place as the most reviled form of magic. Hexes are what you get when you take sorcerous/wizardly Functional Magic, or holy White Magic and corrupt it so that instead of using intellect or faith to power them, using the connection to the Dark Soul of humanity and the Abyss. Sometimes Hexes don't just cost typical Vancian Magic attunement slots, but drain your character's Soul (XP). The reputation isn't entirely undeserved, since the "bad guy" faction of New Londo is also big into hexes, and often described in flavor text as using negative emotions or causing the targets pain. Answering the question of whether Alien is Dark Art, I would suggest a firm no. Although much of Dark Art is influenced by pop culture and illustration, and the same imagery and style might appear in creature designs and album covers, Dark Art exists when the work is created as Art first and foremost, with no other purpose in mind.

For a considerable time in Larry Niven's Known Space history, almost all technological research was considered this. The Earth government suppressed any new technology that could be weaponized, which turned out to be everything. Dark Sun defilers aren't tolerated by anyone including most other defilers, because their magic is fueled by draining the life-force of every living thing around them, and centuries of using magic this way resulted in the world of Athas becoming a harsh and inhospitable wasteland. All magic is looked upon with at least some suspicion because of this. There's some categorization in-universe on the seriousness of offensive magic, as such spells are called either jinxes, hexes or curses. Jinxes are defined by Word of God as "spells whose effects are irritating but amusing". Hexes are darker, intended to cause some pain or discomfort, while curses are described as "the worst kinds of dark magic". Three in particular, the "Unforgivable Curses"— Crucio, Avada Kedavra, and Imperio— are so called because any use of them is punishable by life in prison. Villains use them all the time, naturally, but our heroes will only consider it after crossing the Godzilla Threshold. The Balefire weave is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique whose use permanently damages the structure of the universe. Mere knowledge of it is supposed to be enough to be Stilled by the White Tower, since the world was once almost destroyed by channelers abusing it. The significant number of people knowing it we encounter in the series show that this ban is not so strictly enforced, but all of the good guys (and even some of the bad guys — and we are speaking of people who have no problems killing or torturing thousands of innocents at once) consider it something inherently wrong and to be used as a last-resort weapon only.

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Among the Silent Striders, members of the Eaters of the Dead camp practice the Rite of Dormant Wisdom. Participants ritually devour a dead person's brain to acquire their memories. Not only is the rite a grave violation of the Litany, but participants risk attracting the attention of the Urge Wyrm Foebok. If a Garou takes part in the rite more times than their permanent gnosis score, they become a slave of Foebok. In President's Vampire, Necromancy and some forms of alchemy are called "Dark Arts" by Cade, due to the fact that they need Human Resources to work properly. According to one codex entry, the Tevinter archons of old were taught Blood Magic by the Old God Dumat the Dragon of Silence. Since an Old God is basically an Eldritch Abomination that happens to look like a dragon this makes Blood Magic even more unsettling. Necromancy in An Army of the Dead, which revolves around using the energy of formerly living things to power spells. Oddly enough, the time it was actually used was for a good reason.

Dragon Age has Blood Magic. While magic itself is not evil, blood magic revolves around using life force for power. Most of the blood mages in the game are evil, or at the very least enemies of the heroes. The power is also taught to humanity by personifications of emotions (ingame only a personification of desire teaches it, no information on which emotions are able to), and while it can just be used as an alternate means of powering normal spells, the big headline blood magic spells allow for Mind Control, blood-boiling and similar nastiness. Also, of course, the life force you use to power the spells need not be your own, a temptation that few blood mages can resist. In Wraith: The Oblivion, three Arcanoi are forbidden in the Western Underworld on pain of soul-forging - Intimation, the power to create and remove desire (because of its great capacity for abuse); Mnemosynis, the power to explore and manipulate memory (again, because of its capacity for abuse), and Flux, the power to affect the structure of inanimate objects, strengthening them, decaying them, and animating them (because of wraithly politics, rather than any potential to abuse others). With this movie standing as a kind of ouroboros of Dark Art, both inspired by and inspiring artists, should we consider the movie itself a work of Dark Art? Dark magic in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic appears to be this since even Twilight Sparkle, who is very knowledgable on the subject, was surprised by it when Princess Celestia uses it to demonstrate the threat King Sombra poses in the Season 3 Premiere. Twilight herself manages to use it later, but it does not look anything less than painful to even cast . Outsider magic (that is, most if not all functional magic) in Dishonored. Its practitioners are hunted and slain by the Overseers of the Abbey of Everyman. The Overseers are a fanatic religious police headed by corrupted people in league with an oppressive political power, but as bad as they are they might have a point on that magic. It looks extremely corrupting since people who get involved with it fall in two categories:Answers to questions such as these have the potential to direct and focus those who make Dark Art beyond the creation of their next piece, or may conclude that such questions are irrelevant and we simply want to stand together to support the making of monsters. Bazil Broketail: The Masters of Padmasa along with their servants practice magic which involves drawing blood, inflicting pain or killing to work. It's used for creating horrific war monsters. In Forgotten Realms there are prohibitions from the gods of magic (covering Fantastic Nuke, endangering of the world's magical circuit and a few crimes against the magic-using community) plus whatever local laws and traditions don't approve, typically including the most unpleasant forms of necromancy and/or using wild magic in populated areas. From what is known about the elven kingdom of Cormanthyr, it prohibited some enchantments that allow massive binding of magical items and creatures, some blood magics, using mass-destruction and later also selective spells in modes aimed to harm elves or "allied" beings. A few areas don't approve arcane magic at all, claiming it's " dishonorable", but in fact it's the places when magic may attract a curious spell-grub, and no one wants that anywhere around.