Hey folks, I haven't been here for long, but I like the forum's encouraging environment for new ideas. I figured I'd give this a try, but i haven't finished the idea; the fun part of this is, I'm willing to take suggestions to fill in the blanks. Anyway, here goes:

The Fluffy Backstory

It Was.

That was the only good word to describe what It did: Be. It did not Live--it was far beyond such a trivial Way. It did not Slumber, for It neither desired rest nor required any. It did not Hunt, for there was nothing It could seek that it would have need for. It was not Waiting, or Plotting, or Scheming--all words for describing the more complicated, fragile, brief things that seemed to buzz about it. it simply Was.

It first Became in the immemorial past, before the concept of time--the baffling and profound nature of this was thankfully lost upon It. Over the countless eons, It grew slowly, neither taking from Its environment nor contributing to it. The only thing It cared about was continuing to Be, and unfortunately there seemed to be a number of obstacles in It's path to even maintain this; chief among them were the pests that seemed to swarm around It. They had many Names, and many Ways, but they were all pests, their curiosity and inexplicable drive for self-destruction matched only by their brevity; they scarcely seemed to life half a century, far less if they annoyed It too much.

If there was one thing It did besides Be, it was Think. Not as a man thinks, or as a god, but in a way that scarcely seems like thinking at all; the vast, primeval contemplation of primordial chaos incarnate. In the time It takes for It to have just one of Its Thoughts, an entire civilization of the vermin might rise and fall and be excavated, studied and put on display by the next. By the time it started a second, that civilization might have joined them. This was one of the many things that contributed to its dismissive opinion of Life--all that buzzing, and yet It was the one that persisted. What was the point?

Usually, It was content to find a hidden place and Exist there, but the pests simply couldn't leave well enough alone. They would inevitably either find It and lash out at It, or expand their wretched hives over It, spending the entirety of their short, pointless lives building equally pointless things of wood and stone and metal that would just crumble and fade away before It would even notice. Either way, the pests would eventually disturb It enough that It would have to move--usually annihilating any pests It came across on the way. It eventually decided that It was very good at that--if It got tired of merely Being, that might be a good alternative.

However, something profound happened one fateful day: something Changed in It. It felt something It had never felt before: another. There were Others now--somewhere, amongst the pests, there were Others that were closer to It than the pests. They were Gods--at least partly.

It had been aware of Gods before; It Knew they existed, but found them unimportant; they seemed to have almost less to do with all that Was than It did. It could also make others, but they were only extensions of Itself--It only made them if It wanted to observe the troublesome pests, but would consume them after they were useful. He could change the pests, as well--share with them but a fraction of Itself--but even then they were never useful or interesting. But the Others were different: they were part of this world, but at the same time above it. Beyond it. If nothing else, they were not as brief as the pests, and It had seen that meaningfulness seemed to increase, however trivially, with age in the Pests.

In the time of two generations of man, It came to a quick decision: It must find the Others. It didn't know what It would do when It did; perhaps it would eat them? Learn from them? It didn't matter: It must find them all the same.

And so, for the first time in several centuries, It stirred. Men would tell stories for ages to come of the day It rose from under their city: women and children fleeing in terror as a black wave of sludge washed over buildings and walls; a veritable mountain of bubbling pitch, crushing everything in its path, the image of the bleached bones of its countless victims suspended in its inky girth; the trail of destruction it left in its wake, the city ground to dust as if it had never been built. Perhaps a few of these pests would begin to grasp the utter insignificance of their existence, compared to It. Those that didn't had the audacity to call It Umbra--to give It a name, as if they were on the same level as It.

After all, It Was. It Is. It will always Be.

Design

Okay, so obviously this thing is a blob monster--a big, translucent blob of black-purple funk, maybe a little bubbly--like tar, not like soda--with some cool effect, like you can see skeletons and crap suspended in him. I always liked blob monsters--they're threatening because you don't know how to deal with them. Can I even hurt it? Does it have a weak point? Is it alive? What is this thing capable of? They offer a lot of sheer potential, and in the hands of a monster, that's scary.

Also, I thoroughly enjoyed writing the Fluff--I tried to borrow a few things from the game's intro in its style, and like the idea of focusing on the demigod, while also not revealing what it is until the end. Hope you enjoyed it too.

One of the hard concepts I struggled with when making this idea is, how to keep him from overlapping with other demigods. On the surface, he has some similarity to the Queen of Thorns, and particularly the Unclean Beast; therefore, I tried to make sure his abilities are something that only an amorphous blob could do. I look at this in terms of "domains": what types of abilities fall within the character's feel? I see the Queen as having the domains of "Crowd Control" and "Resourcefulness", while the Beast has "Hunter", "Poison", "Sacrifice", and "Frenzy".

Therefore, I have chosen Umbra's domains to be "Consumption", "Chaos" and "Survival". "Consumption", because that's what slime monsters do: eat. This can be either an HP gaining effect, or more interestingly (and less encroaching on Erebus), a gradually-increasing buff to himself. I chose "Chaos", because he is a remnant of a time before Order, and what says chaos better than an undulating blob of slime? Lastly, "Survival" in this sense means being willing and able to sacrifice anything to keep yourself alive.

Mechanics

OK, the details. We'll say he's a General, on the Forces of Darkness. He's awkward in a fight, but is excellent at simply surviving--and sometimes that can be more useful. Some quick stats:

• HP: High. He's a giant pile of biomass, for goodness sake!
  
• HP Regen: Slow. He may be a giant blob, but he's an ancient giant blob--he didn't get this big overnight.
  
• Armor: High. Again, another advantage of being a giant lump of biomass.
• Attack Damage: Medium. He has a lot of oomph behind his attacks, but they're clusmy and inaccurate. You try aiming a pseudopod...
• Attack Speed: Extremely Slow. I mean REALLY slow--like, you'll need more than one artifact if you want to get him even close to the 0.5 max speed.
  
• Movement Speed: Extremely Slow. See above.
• Mana: High. If there's one thing Umbra has in spades, it's stamina, and that includes magical stamina. However, he doesn't make very good use of it...
• Mana Regen: Slow.

Skills

This is where things get kidna sticky: I haven't been able to come up with a lot of good ideas for skills. I know that I want his minions to be little blobs that break off of him, and are weak, but attack by blowing up on people; it seems like a cool way of having a high-damage ability, because it can afford to be pretty strong, since it can be prevented simply by killing the minions. I also like the idea of giving him a sort of teleport--he melts down and slithers somewhere else--and that having some interaction with the minions.

I thought he should have some sort of kill-based status, like the Queen's Compost, except it's not a constant buff, but something he can expend with his attacks--we'll call it Biomass. For example, perhaps when you use the teleport ability, you lose all your accumulated Biomass, but when you go you leave behind an exploding blob minion for each rank/level/etc of biomass you had, which then explodes on the nearest target.

As far as the "chaos" side of things, I think it'd be interesting if he had some ability that allowed him to adapt to the changing battlefield. Perhaps a mana-draining buff that you can toggle on or off that makes you take less and less damage from certain kinds of attacks the more you get hit with them, up to some cap; for example, for each 100 damage he takes from ranged attacks while the buff is up, 1% of the damage dealt by all future ranged attacks is dealt to his MP instead. This would make you harder and harder to hurt as time went on, but you mana would be depleting faster and faster, forcing you to either retreat or deactivate the buff. It could also have some interaction with Biomass, if we keep using that.

So, basically, we have 3 skill ideas right now:

1. Make exploding blob minion, consumes Biomass to make, thereby putting some cap on how many of these things you can churn out.
2. "Teleport", lose all Biomass, leave behind a number of exploding minions based on how much Biomass you used; minions immediately explode on the nearest enemy.
3. Buff that makes an ever-increasing amount of damage be re-directed to your mana instead, based on how often you are struck by that type of attack. Perhaps transfers more damage based on Biomass.

This is where I'll open up the floor: Thoughts? Suggestions?