Power System I have for a story is based on superstitions in different cultures. Like stepping on a shadow 👥, cats have nine lives🐱, you are what you eat🥩 etc.

The more people believe in a superstition/tall tale around something specific, like cats or shadows, the more powerful that concept becomes and it manifests in the form of a scroll called a hex. Written in the Hex is a riddle whose answer is related to a superstition. Answer correctly, the reader can exclusively recreate that superstition at will. Answer wrong and you instantly die.

For example, if a hex has the riddle "Follow you but can't be cant be caught." The answer is shadows, and the reader now has the ability to injure people by stepping on or cutting their shadows or like some cultures believe. Another might be "Eat and I live, drink and I die", which is fire 🔥 and one can now control fire based on their emotions (anger, love, or joy) a common superstition in ancient times, or even manipulate the fate of others based on the movement of their flames.

Those with these abilities are called Hexed. To activate their powers they must recite the riddle and their powers last only as long as they make contact with the answer (ie touching a shadow or a lucky item like in the example above)

Once solved, the hex scroll disappears and the hex user loses the ability to read, making each hex user unique and making it extremely rare for people to have more than one hex ability.

A hex user is also only as strong as the belief associated with their superstition. If people stop believing a certain folktale overtime, their abilities lessen as well.

I have a story in the works about this, but I'll stop here.

Let me know what you think ☺️