eight thousand years ago, the inky vaults of heaven shuddered and a malign star fell to earth. it was an emerald accretion of all the evil that had existed in the universe at one point, the kind of thing well-meaning sages would make to keep it all in one place before we realised that evil would just seep in again from elsewhere to fill spaces devoid of it. that star was broken long ago, shards hauled off by ambitious necromancers and warlords who coveted its mutagenic glow, a head-sized chunk rumored to fuel the demon reactor of the ox-dragon empire, and a hundred tiny fingernail-sized chips that left trails of rage and anguish and misery and bloody murder as they made their way from hand to hand. one of those tiny chips is embedded in the leaden blaster you’ve just picked up, from a pile of weapons in the corner of the lair of a wyrm your party had just slain. you can feel its green light shining into the palm of your hand. you can hear it whispering in the back of your mind, encouraging every uncharitable thought you’ve ever had, every loathsome desire. you kind of want to pry it out and eat it.