The Apparition

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WARNING: THIS PAGE HAS A TON OF SPOILERS FOR MANY GAMES AND ADVENTURE SERIES!

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The Apparition, also called Enigma, is the true primary antagonist of the Maskotia video game series, and the true form on The Shade. It serves as the final boss of Maskotia:Revelations.

History
Billions of years ago, The Ancients created a moon-sized supercomputer called ADMIN, whose purpose was to collect the fragments of Earth after its destruction due to The New Zealand Experiment, and form Maskotia from the ashes. An Ancient scientist created an antiviral program for any pesky virus that could've developed in ADMIN's AI during its lifespan. However, the program soon became sentient and proved to be unstable. After the program broke free, much of Pantheon was destroyed and the scientist was banished. The program repurposed all machines and other AI networks to kill the Ancients. Eventually, the program found the banished scientist and fused with him, and he became the Apparition. With much of Pantheon already destroyed, the last few surviving Ancients used ADMIN's power to absorb The Apparition's consciousness and body into The Absorbed Realm, a realm within ADMIN that preserves souls.

Eons later, during the events of Ploxl's Exodus: Shadows of a Hero, The Apparition's mind wandered free inside the Absorbed Realm. Stealing information from other souls that came and went, The Apparition watched over the land of the living above, Maskotia. When Wispell screwed up his magic act, it used that small sliver in time to ride the lightning and use the dispelled life force to inhabit the shadows of Ploxl and Jellpo. However, it was split into 2 separate entities; The Shade, a massive collection of smoke, ash, darkness, and fire - and the Nauo Crystal, which possesed The Apparition's mind.

At the end of PE:SoaH, when DP and DJ join together, The Apparition is reborn, in a weaker, non-sapient, less-cohesive form known as The Inferno. It is quickly defeated since it is weak in this form, and is scattered all over the galaxy as the Shade and Nauo Crystal break into fragments.

The Shade takes on many forms thanks to the fragments of the Nauo Crystal, and each serve as the primary antagonists for the games within the series.

In Revelations, All the Shade peices are returned to Maskotia, in the same place where The Inferno was defeated (And a few months later, where Dark Plague is found). Thanks to Xil and the past Shade villians, the Apparition is reformed in the as a massive stormcloud of smoke, ash and darkness. Red lightning cracks onto Maskotia's surface, causing terror everywhere. All the heroes from the past games band together to attack the cloud, and in the end, the cloud flees into space and enters a portal, the same one seen at the end of PE:SoaH, and is transported back in time to when the Ancients were building ADMIN. The heroes follow through and fight the Shade again, now attacking Pantheon. Finally, the cloud condenses into a solid crystal of Shade and crashes into a ruined city.

As the heroes approach the crater, the past Shade villians and Xil appear as the Apparition reveals itself in a ghost form. It sucks the life out of all the Shade villians and takes the powers it granted to Xil away from him, then becomes its physical form once again. The energy pulse created afterwards sends Xil flying off into space.

After the final battle, which takes place in the crater, The Apparition's body of smoke is broken, causing fire to spew everywhere like blood out of an open wound. Eventually, the fire depletes and the Appariton simply blows away like any other flame, leaving the Nauo Crystal behind. The crystal's energy is trurned into a monitor-like interface, and ADMIN uses it to speak with the Maskotians for the very first time, and thanks them for saving their world. It turns all the remaining Shade crystals into giant monoliths called the ADMIN Shards and departs into the depths of Maskotia. With the Apparition and the Shade finally defeated, the universe is at peace.

The game ends with the camera panning down in the Absorbed Realm. Due to the events in SpotQuest, one Nauo Crystal shard remains unnacounted for, dormant in the realm. With the Apparition and the Shade now gone, it must find a new host...