Dantia/Research/Regular usage of the Absolution or Icutu Zaharenela spells may cause weakening of Empath's potential strength

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Regular usage of the Absolution or Icutu Zaharenela spells may cause weakening of Empath's potential strength

Empathy is the natural force that links all living creatures in Elanthia, and all sentient creatures are born with a measure of natural Empathy for the life essence present in others. This is why the Empath Guild does not need to test an adventurer who wants to join their ranks for some "spark" of Empathic sense, because it is already present in everyone. Although every adventurer has access to a "well" of Empathic sense within them, only through training and nurturing can one learn how to draw from the very depths of this well, and indeed adventurers who choose to regularly harm other living creatures will over time find themselves unable to tap into this well at all.

When a non-Empath causes harm, they do not experience any ill effect because they have completely suppressed their Empathic sense. When an Empath causes harm, however, it clashes dramatically with their trained and thus sensitive Empathic sense, and that clash presents itself as Empathic Shock. Despite what many believe, Empathic Shock is not the result of violating a moral code of pacifism held either by the individual or the Guild, but is instead an automatic physiological reaction that is caused by over-stimulation of one's Empathic sense.

There are two spells that have been made available to the boldest Empaths, Absolution and Icutu Zaharenela. Although the Khalo (leaders) of the Empath Guild refuse to teach these spells directly, their availability via scroll has caused them to become both widely accepted and used throughout the Empath ranks.

Absolution works by forcibly and immediately dulling one's Empathic sense until you are far enough removed from an Undead's life essence that you can deal harm without experiencing Shock. Icutu Zaharenela converts an Empath's touch from a tool used to assess and transfer wounds into a weapon used to cause them. Although Icutu Zaharenela does not dull one's Empathic senses in and of itself like Absolution, its use does cause Shock, and with enough use will cause you to enter a "perma-shock" state. Once in this state your Empathic sense must be "jump started" through tending to a vela'tohr seed, else it will never return.

The more removed you are from your Empathic sense (and thus the shallower your reach into your proverbial well), the less effective your direct healing capabilities since those abilities rely on the presence and strength of your Empathic sense. We know from years of experience that adventurers who regularly suppress their Empathic sense will find themselves less and less able to tap into their proverbial well in any meaningful way, until they are unable to access it at all.

I thus posit that the regular and consistent use of either Absolution or Icutu Zaharenela may, over time, reduce an individual Empath's capability to tap as deeply into their well of Empathic sense as they may have been before their use of Absolution or Icutu Zaharenela, in the same way that an adventurer who deals harm regularly will eventually be unable to draw from the well at all. This difference may be imperceptible to the individual, for just as a Barbarian will never know what his strength as an Empath may have been, so, too, would an Empath be unable to know what their maximum strength could have been before they subjected themselves to a limiting factor.

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