The Black Road is darkness, peace, void, stillness, focus and emptiness, and in its other direction, despair, nihilism and entropy. Some believe the Black Road is the primordial void from which all things arose; others see it as an entropic nothingness that will consume all existence.
Black magic encompasses the siphoning away of things and the manipulation of absences such as darkness, silence and cold, spells that grant peace, focus and rest, powerful void weapons and implosion attacks. It can call upon the fear of the dark and the unknown to strike terror in people’s hearts, fill them with peace, usher them into dreamless sleep or drain away their hope into a void of despair. Black magic can also absorb attacks and allow short jaunts through the shadows.
Black philosophies and doctrines include nihilism, pacifism, detachment and discipline. The Black Road teaches that all things end, some of its adherents interpreting this to me that all things exist to cease, others seeing it as simply one part of the order of things, to be accepted with calm and reserve. Black also teaches that action should come naturally from the peaceful inner void, without need for deliberation and thought; that to achieve understanding of emptiness is to know truth and absolute peace. The darkest aspects of Black include the view that all is blank of meaning and therefore whatever people do or believe is in the end irrelevant, a different but related idea to the Red Road belief in desire above all else.
Devoted Black mages are rare and tend to be either peaceful mystics, cruel nihilists or hard-nosed disciplinarians.
Things associated with the Black Road include ebony, onyx, jet and obsidian, black velvet and the sign of an incomplete circle.
