#2g bounty still up for grabs - though a couple of these are a bit mean

[fractal-quadrilioquy]

Zhaitan | Mordremoth | Kralkatorrik | Primordus | Jormag | Soo-Won

Soo-Won! I'll be honest, I wasn't planning on making Soo-Won - the other 5 Elder Dragons had pretty solid concepts/mechanics that I wanted to play with, but I didn't have anything for Soo-Won, as anything I came up with felt like an imitation of Starlight Seeks Its Form.

I am not kidding when I say that the solution came to me in a dream. I woke up after finalising most of the other boards and had an entire concept ready to go. Was it balanced? Absolutely not. Is she balanced in this state? Let's be real, probably not. But it's undeniably fun and sorta keeps up with other Spirits, so I think that's a good sign!

Power Cards! You Get One Use. Good Luck!

Shoutout to my sibling who rigorously plays Starlight for helping me test this. The amount of feedback and data I got from our games helped me refine this a lot.

(Lore descriptions and thoughts under the cut!)

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Currents Flow And Spiral

Protean and ever-shifting, Currents Flow And Spiral morphs and warps to the whims of whoever observes it. It often invites other Spirits - and occasionally, Dahan - to dance with it in its endless spiral, infusing and trading with them the secrets of the land or essences of the self, before breaking away and swirling elsewhere once again.

The Invaders care not for its whims, barely able - or willing - to perceive its invitations. Although Currents Flow And Spiral can see and witness the threat that they pose, it is against its nature to fully stop their advancement - But there is, and always will be, time yet for it to change and adapt.

Play Style

Constantly changing, but almost completely focused on helping other Spirits, with little ways of dealing with their own board, at least at first - Whatever Powers it may find itself picking up can change this in a myriad different ways.

Elements on Power Cards will heavily influence the forms in which it helps other Spirits, with the intent that they can later help them back.

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Similarly to Mordremoth, Soo-Won was difficult to pin down because of outside influences. While Mordremoth absorbed much of Zhaitan's magic in Heart of Thorns, we don't see much of Soo-Won that isn't corrupted by the Void. That would've been an interesting way to go, come to think of it, but I'll be honest, basing Soo-Won around corruption feels like a disservice to her as a character.

So, instead I switched tracks a little. The various water spirits that already exist tend to flow and move a lot on the island itself, whether themselves or others - River Surges In Sunlight, Ocean's Hungry Grasp, and Shroud of Silent Mist have this feeling of flowing on the island itself - but we don't actually see much of this in Soo-Won. Rather, her aspects of Water and Life revolve around nurturing or otherwise assisting others, and she was the one who created all the other Elder Dragons, so having her constantly shift/adapt/filter Power Cards while lending out assistance to other Spirits felt in character, and kept the feeling of cycling and swirling.

Lore-wise, I don't think Currents Flow And Spiral created the other spirits, but it's a possibility - We learn from both Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island and Shifting Memory of Ages that there are old, old spirits, and that the larger/more powerful a Spirit is, the slower they tend to perceive the world, where a generation passes in a blink. It's also why only certain Spirits can impact the island - Volcano Looming High mentions other spirits of vulcanism that are too slow for the Invader threats, and the Second Wave scenario mentions that the spirits that once defended the island had grown too large and too powerful to be of much help, save for setting up the island beforehand, and helping exactly once in Stage III.

However, Memory willingly forgets most of its knowledge in order to experience the slower timescales again, hence why it, too, starts with 4 Power Cards like the rest - but Currents Shift And Flow, rarely increases the amount of Power Cards. They change and shift, yes, but very rarely loses nor gains a net amount of Powers. So it's possible that she has been around for ages, but never approached the threshold of being too powerful due to constantly shedding and trading knowledge.

...I may spend way too much time thinking about Spirit Island.

I also had a lot of fun with her Growth options - Four choices that go to different biomes and do distinctly different things. It's something I've sorta wanted to do but couldn't quite fit it into any of the other spirits - but if you don't need to ever Reclaim, this becomes a lot more viable!

Her innates and growth track kinda go hand-in-hand - her fast innate helps Spirits with things relating to the self, dealing with symbols and power cards. Defend also needs to be fast, otherwise it's generally irrelevant. On the other hand, her slow innate helps Spirits affect the board directly - moving, healing, or dealing damage. I also had fun splitting each opposing pair into each category (Sun/Moon, Fire/Water, Air/Earth, Plant/Animal), though trying to figure out what each one could do thematically was a bit of a puzzle, while keeping to the tenets of Fast=Self, Slow=Board. Again, endless thanks to my sibling for helping me with this.

There are also two little easter eggs here, hidden in her first five power cards.

One is in the cards' names, the most evident being Point of Interest; but the others all refer to another in-game aspect of the world - renown hearts, fractals (and/or [x] Rushes), events and vistas.

The other is in the cards' effects - Each card referring to one of the other 5 Elder Dragons, matching most of their elements, and reflecting an aspect of themselves - Zhaitan returning presence and containing the land, Mordremoth marking a place as a Point of Interest to focus on, Kralkatorrik boosting damage, Primordus moving presence with some extra firepower, and Jormag freezing a location.