Darkness Calling

This spell is a part of the Blotting spell chain and is found in the Blotting rune stone.

There is a threshold beyond which fear stops feeling like a warning and starts feeling like the only thing that exists. Beyond that threshold, a person will do almost anything to make it stop. Agree to almost anything. Obey almost anyone who seems to hold the key to ending it. Darkness Calling finds that threshold and pushes every target past it simultaneously.

The timoramancer reaches through Dread and floods every enemy on the battlefield with fear so complete, so consuming, so inescapable that the rational mind simply stops functioning in any meaningful sense. What remains is pure, desperate survival instinct - and survival instinct, when it cannot fight and cannot flee, will bargain. Each target must make a Hard Mental Balance check. Those who fail find themselves willing to do whatever the timoramancer commands for the duration, not because their will has been taken from them but because their fear has made obedience feel like the only possible relief. They are not mindless. They know what is happening. They simply cannot bear another moment of what Dread is doing to them and the timoramancer is the only one who can make it stop. The affected targets are still in control of themselves. They cannot be willed to harm themselves for they are trying desperately to escape that very harm, but they can be told to harm others. Any task that is not against the target themself can and will be followed. Once under control due to the failed mental balance check, they remain obedient for the spell's duration. Those who succeed resist. Their fear no less real, but their will intact enough to endure it. For now. When the spell ends and the deep dread and fear have abated, the targets that gave in are dazed for 1 round and struck with loss of self for the next 1d6 rounds as they must make peace with how low they went to escape their fear.