Shadowling

EXTRATERRESTRIAL STAFF
Shadowling	Access: Whatever you or your victims had or have Additional Access: Anywhere you can phase to Difficulty: Extremely Hard. I'm not kidding, you'll probably lose. Supervisors: None Duties: Enslave the filthy humans, ascend and murderbone Guides: This is the guide

Shadowlings are light-sensitive alien creatures from space. They are mainly defensive, but can 'enthrall' humans, which is basically a euphemism for enslavement of their minds. They start off disguised as a normal crewman (they can still enthrall like this!) but they have to take time to 'hatch' to unlock their full potential.

While hatched, shadowlings will resemble humans with black skin, small horns, red eyes, and claws.

Until they ascend, of course.

Shadowling Abilities

Shadowlings have quite a few tricks up their sleeve, from vanishing to freezing the air around them. Below is a list of abilities that shadowlings can use.

Name	Requirements	Cooldown	Description
Enthrall	Hatch; or, under 5 thralls (currently bugged)	None, but can only enthrall one at a time	A shadowling can grow a cute little tumor on a victim's brain, rearranging their memories and motivations and turning him into an obedient thrall. This is slow, and does not itself disable the victim, so many shadowlings will use mundane means to do so, such as handcuffs and removal of headsets. Loyalty Implants interfere with this ability; however, the protection is not perfect. It is well within a shadowling's power to disable such implants, though doing so will slow the enthralling process considerably. The benefit of thralls to changelings extends beyond the utility of an obedient crewmember. Shadowlings gain power directly from their thralls, unlocking new abilities with greater numbers, including their ultimate goal of ascension.
Hivemind Commune	N/A	At will	Shadowlings and thralls share a telepathic link through which they can communicate silently, undetectably, and at zero cost or cooldown. There may be ways to discern this behavior, but it is unlikely and for now all you can do is simply let their words flow past you.
Hatch	N/A	N/A	To access their other abilities, a shadowling must first hatch. A hatching shadowling will first drop its items. After a short delay, it will grow a chrysalis around itself, forming a 3x3 grid of impenetrable but obviously abnormal walls. When the shadowling's evolution is complete, the walls will burst, and the hatched shadowling will emerge. Although headsets, belts, and backpacks must be dropped to evolve, shadowlings are capable of wearing them, and often pick up such items they had previously owned after hatching. While a hatched shadowling is powerful, and much better equipped to hunt for thralls than an assistant, shadowlings are also obvious after hatching. For this reason, young shadowlings who are not yet sure of their abilities often delay hatching to avoid alerting the crew.
Glare	Hatch required	30 seconds	Glare is the shadowling's basic single-target stun. By forcing one target's gaze into its own, the shadowling can mesmerize a target from a range to stun and mute him for quite some time. While the duration is shorter than the cooldown, and is not long enough for a complete conversion, it does leave plenty of time to restrain or strip the victim.
Veil	Hatch required	25 seconds	The shadowling's basic defensive ability, Veil instantly puts out nearly all light sources, mobile or otherwise, near the shadowling. Electronic lights such as flashlights, PDA's, gunlights, and light fixtures can be repaired simply by reactivating them, where consoles can be repaired by disconnecting and reconnecting the screen. Glowshrooms resist this extinguishing effect, but will be killed in a short radius around the shadowling. Lights based in fire or bioluminescence are often resilient enough to be unaffected.
Shadow Walk	Hatch required	1 minute	Shadow Walk lets the shadowling briefly enter the space between worlds to escape attackers. For four seconds, the shadowling will be invisible, move quickly, and be able to phase through all obstacles. Unlike the wizard's jaunting, holy water does not have an effect on this.
Icy Veins	Hatch required	2 minutes	Icy Veins is a formidable crowd control ability. Everyone within a short range will instantly have their body temperature reduced to freezing in addition to having it continuously lowered, similar to a cryogenic sting. Targets will also be briefly stunned.
Collective Mind	Hatch required	30 seconds	To access some abilities, a shadowling must draw on its thralls for power. Using this ability, shadowlings can send out mental "hooks" that latch onto the minds of their thralls, granting the shadowling a count of his thralls, and unlocking any abilities which the number of thralls now allows.
Blindness Smoke	Hatch required + 3 Thralls	1 minute	By regurgitating a cloud of black smoke, shadowlings can disorient pursuers. This smoke will induce blindness in and stun non-shadowlings, but heal shadowlings and thralls.
Drain Life	Hatch required + 5 Thralls	10 seconds	The shadowling drains the life of nearby humans, healing the shadowling for a significant amount for each human in addition to weakening the humans.
Sonic Screech	Hatch required + 7 Thralls	30 seconds	The shadowling can let out a piercing screech. This will confuse and deafen nearby humans, damage windows, and stun silicons.
Black Recuperation	Hatch required + 9 Thralls	5 minutes	With this ability, a shadowling can revive a fallen thrall, healing them of damage completely after a short time. Like conventional methods of revival, however, the ability requires the cooperation of the target, and cannot revive a body without its spirit.
Ascendance	Hatch required + 15 Thralls	N/A	If the shadowlings should gain this ability, all hope is lost to the crew. The shadowlings have enough collective power from their thralls to assume their ultimate form, becoming impossible to destroy by conventional means, and gaining terrifying abilities.
Below is a list of abilities ascendant shadowlings are known to have used.
Annihilate	Ascendant only	At will	Ascendants, with extremely high telekinetic abilities, can easily cause someone's entire body to explode simply by directing a lance of mental energy at them.
Hypnosis	Ascendant only	At will	Ascendants can enthrall from a range and with extremely increased speed. Basically, it's a ranged and instant version of enthrall.
Plane Shift	Ascendant only	Toggleable	An upgraded version of Shadow Walk, ascendants can simply enter the space between worlds at will at no cost. They use them as passageways, able to move from place to place extremely quickly.
Lightning Storm	Ascendant only	10 seconds	The spiritual successor to Icy Veins. Sends out bolts of lightning to everyone nearby, dealing a significant amount of burn damage and knocking down those affected.

What To Do: If You're A Shadowling

So you're a shadowling. Congratulations! Here's some pointers on how not to die from a lightbulb within thirty seconds.

Starting Off

You're disguised. You don't take any damage from lights and you are undetectable to any means short of godly intervention. You possess three abilities: Hatch, Enthrall, and Hivemind Commune. First off, send a message or two over the hivemind to see if you have any buddies - chances are high that you do. Assess your job's capabilities. Are you the captain? Feel free to grab some stun stuff to arrest people and then enthrall them - same goes if you're an officer or something. Are you an engineer? Build a stunprod and use that as well. Are you the clown? You're not clumsy, so use your banana peel to cablecuff people and do it too. Are you an assistant? Make use of the environment, using things like tables to stun or hinder people.

There are multiple things to do from the start. If you're confident you can avoid detection, hatching immediately can work since you can easily enthrall people who rush into maintenance early with Glare. Or, you can play it safe and try to get some thralls before that. It's up to you - you're the alien monster, after all.

Post-Hatch

So you've hatched. You have the rest of your abilities now - use them! Alert your fellow shadowlings (and thralls) that you're hatched over the hivemind, and make more thralls your first priority. You can't wear normal clothes, but you can still put on backpacks and headsets, which is an extremely good idea. If you're discovered by a group of people, use your defensive abilities to escape in addition to your thralls. If a single guy sees you, just glare at him, slap some cablecuffs on if you have them, take away his headset, and enthrall him. People whom you enthrall cannot be turned back under any means and their new loyalty to you overrides all else. If you enthrall a nuclear operative somehow, they will serve you over their Syndicate friends. If you enthrall the captain, he will do much the same.

Your priority is to gain fifteen thralls. You have the Collective Mind ability which will, after a short time, give you a count of how many thralls you have as well as the needed amount for ascendance. If you get fifteen thralls, use the ability and it will give you the Ascendance ability in a new tab. Simply use that ability and you've won - no need to escape on the shuttle!

The Light and You

While hatched, the light is your worst enemy. You take extreme damage from even being in it, and burn-based stuff like flashbangs, welders, and lasers all hit harder. However, on the other side of the coin, the darkness is extremely beneficial. All wounds will heal. You will have a stun reduction. You have night vision and thermal vision as well, so not being in the darkness at all is a huge downside to everything about you. Use the darkness as your buddy in times hard and easy. The darkness will always give you a shoulder to cry on. He's a bro like that.

What To Do: If You're A Thrall

So a shadowling mesmerized you by staring into your eyes (lewd) and now you're a thrall! What this means is that your primary goal and objective is to obey the shadowlings and help them at all costs. If you look in your tabs, you have a new one, Shadowling Abilities. In this tab is the Hivemind Commune ability, which lets you communicate on a silent channel with all other thralls and shadowlings. You're basically an Adamantine Golem in terms of where your loyalties lie -- utterly with the shadowlings. Loyalty implanted? Not anymore, the nanobots are dead. Wizard? Use your spells to help the shadowling. Traitor? Tough titty, if the shadowling wants your uplink you give it to him with zero questions asked. You have no free will.

Keep in mind that many of the shadowling's abilities rely on damaging or manipulating you. Even by helping the shadowlings accomplish their one objective, you are sentencing yourself completely and utterly to death - there is no way around it. You may find yourself drained of half your life, used as bait, used as a bodyguard, or suddenly surrounded in the middle of a maintenance tunnel by Security officers who are trying to cave your chest in. Assume you're going to die because you are and there's no way around it.

As of right now, thralls cannot currently see in the dark as shadowlings can. That means you have to use your lights in the dark areas, so make sure you don't accidentally make a Kentucky Fried Shadowling with your PDA light. You do have one advantage, however: stealth. Short of attempting to loyalty implant you, there is zero way of finding out that you're a thrall. Use this to your advantage to do things for your masters. Keep in touch often.

Finally, you also have a HUD indicator above your head. A more intimidating version can be seen above any shadowlings, hatched or not. Your indicator signals that you are a thrall - only other shadowlings and thralls can see this. If you're killing someone with that HUD indicator, expect a ban.

This is the HUD indicator for shadowlings. These are your masters.

This is the HUD indicator for you and fellow thralls. You obey the shadowlings.

It is important to note that if you are enthralled by one shadowling, you obey all the shadowlings. This includes the others. If Shadowling Bumblefuck tells you that Shadowling Fumbleschmuck isn't your master, ignore him. No matter who enthralled you originally, you must obey all other shadowlings.

Mask Up, Gang

An important thing about being enthralled is that it physically alters you. By becoming a thrall, anybody nearby that can see your face will be able to tell you're a thrall just by examining you while close by! Thankfully, there is an easy way to alleviate this: wear a mask. Any mask will work: breath mask, gas mask, bandana, anything. By wearing a mask, your special examine status will disappear and you will be indistinguishable from regular crew. If an officer tells you to take off your mask and then gets close, the best solution is to try and escape. Wearing a mask is conspicuous in its own right, especially if it conceals the face.

Dethralling

So you got captured by the Reds and they're throwing you into the surgery theater. To debrain you? Cut out your eyes? CHANGE YOUR GENDER?! Nope. It's far worse - they're going to sever your link with the hivemind by completely dethralling you! This means you will become a normal crew member again, unable to distinguish your masters and fellow thralls, having no unique abilities, and being boringly standard. Luckily, this can only be done via surgery, and if your master intervenes in time you might escape! If Sawbones gets his hands in your head, you're either going to become dethralled or instantly killed. Either way, you won't remember anything about being a thrall, so if you tell them anyone else that's a thrall expect a ban.

What To Do: If You're Non-Shadowling Crew

So the shouts over the radio weren't wizard, ops, or blob, but shadowlings? Your work is gonna be cut out for you, soldier. Shadowlings are terrifying foes and can do much in their power to avoid you. They can even extinguish lights, save for fire-based sources and yellow slime extracts, and even then they can extinguish those fires. Don't get caught alone or you'll live out the rest of your considerably shortened lifespan in mindless servitude.

Things you SHOULD do

• Travel in groups
• Get burn-based weapons and lots of light sources (flares are good, so are slime extracts if xenobio is doing their job, and if all else fails botany can make torches)
• Carry flashbangs or flash powder grenades from security or the medbay
• Be extremely wary
• Avoid areas that seem unnaturally dark
• Don't fight anything alone
• Watch for suspicious activity
• Don't fight anything alone
• Be prepared for anything
• DON'T FUCKING FIGHT ANYTHING ALONE

Things you SHOULDN'T do

• Hoard the entire armory and secede from the station as your own force
• Run up to the shadowling and ask to be enthralled. Seriously, it's a dick move to everyone and the admins will ban your ass for it.
• Prowl the maintenance tunnels alone armed with your trusty screwdriver and PDA flashlight
• Refuse to talk or communicate - a silent vigilante, as proven by the mime, is the best vigilante
• Attack an ascendant
• Ask to be enthralled by an ascendant. They'll seriously just make you explode.
• Be near an ascendant
• Consider approaching an ascendant
• Look at an ascendant in a suggestive way
• Think about ascendants

Is that a horrible wail in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

So you're in the maintenance tunnel with your group of vigilantes and ready to fight a shadowling. Suddenly you hear a horrible wail in your head and all the lights blow up. Not good. This means a shadowling has ascended. You're basically fucked over since all the shadowlings can ascend when one can.

In Case of an Ascendant

If you see an ascendant, it'll probably look something like this:

That guy just exploded.

RUN.

Run far and fast. There is no way to fight a shadowling ascendant. They are completely invulnerable to normal attacks, can phase through walls at zero cost, and possess a slew of abilities designed to make you and all you hold dear explode. They can make the air explode, they can make reality explode, they can make objects explode, they can make your corpse explode, they can make you explode, too, so run. They can instantly enthrall you, so run. Not that it'll do you any good since they move faster than you. They'll probably just make you explode like they did the seven guys before you it found. The now-exploded seven guys. Oh, and they also hit harder than an esword with their melee attacks.

You're probably gonna explode, too, so just accept it and hope they're either merciful, somehow friendly, or want to enthrall you.

Again, though, you'll probably just explode.

Or maybe, somehow, you can kill it?

Relevant Code Changes

• #8157 Shadowling (MERGE-READY!!)
• #8927 Shadowling Update I: Bugfixes and Minor Features
• #10254 Shadowling Update 2: 121% Merge-Ready
• #10871 Shadowling Update III
• #11414 Shadowling Update IV