Tomahtra

Magic, half-dead tumour baby that can mutate the DNA of living things on a continental scale.

Tomahtra is a Relic created by L.U.C.Y herself.

Greatly impacts the events of The Elementalist Series.

Appearance
It do be looking kinda nasty tho.

Exudes Terrific Infatuation at same level as a Predater.

Leans more towards abominable than it does enchanting.

I'm not describing it.

Abilities
Allows the User to Program Ethraksha with zero risk of death

EXCELS at permanently altering the DNA of living creatures.

Only usable by EBOs.

The more that Tomahtra alters the target(s), the more painful the mutation process becomes.

A Simple Relic. Requires deep knowledge of Ethraksha Programming techniques and a lot of trial and error to successfully create.

History
During the events of Era I, L.U.C.Y, the only person during that Era capable of Programming Ethraksha, created a watering can that would mutate and change the colour of flowers it waters. Some time after that L.U.C.Y decided to attempt to create an EBO from scratch, something that is nearly impossible and not worth the time at all. However, L.U.C.Y had no raw Ethraksha to work with. The Fields of Ethraksha puddles was infested with Eidolons and proved too dangerous to traverse. L.U.C.Y decided to use her watering can as a template. It had enough mass to create a small child, at least. L.U.C.Y worked for years endlessly, cross-referencing Programming from herself and her friends, as well as any Eidolons that wandered too close to her home. Killing humans by shoving them into her work and taking their Programming was forbidden, so it took ages to make even a little bit of actual progress.

All the while Silva, another prominent character in Era I, was pressuring her about fulfilling her role in his prophecy, and his disciples were starting to get on L.U.C.Y's nerves. One day while L.U.C.Y had nearly completed creating her child, Silva got on her last nerve. She got so pissed that she accidentally killed Silva, and angrily went about fulfilling his prophecy. Then she gave up trying to finish her decade long project, and flung it halfway across the planet.

Tomahtra fell onto Arcerra. Single worst thing to happen to Arcerra.

L.U.C.Y's Gifts
The last thing L.U.C.Y did before she was never seen again.

Silva was pressuring her to "Bestow her Divine Blessing" upon Humanity, and after about ten years of pestering, she decided to do it just to get him to leave him alone. She used the unfinished Tomahtra on a worldwide scale to make two alterations to the human genome: The Divine Blessing and the L.U.C.Y gene.

The Divine Blessing

 * Living Things no longer need oxygen to create energy.
 * Respiration can occur by using Aura, condensed into Ethraksha via biological processes.
 * Present in all life.
 * Affected all of earth. Present within all stories.

The L.U.C.Y Gene

 * Worldwide effect.
 * Exclusive to humans
 * Activates randomly at a VERY low chance
 * Slowly replaces the body with Ethraksha, preventing loss of Programming and complexity issues.
 * Gains a Magic System.


 * Unknowingly gains parts of L.U.C.Y's Ethraksha Programming knowledge.

This creates an Arkin, an EBO with power equal to L.U.C.Y.

The Bedrock Solution

 * A few years before L.U.C.Y's fulfilled her role in the bogus prophecy.
 * L.U.C.Y couldn't find a way to stop Ethraksha in the ground absorbing whatever steps on it.
 * Abused Programming Stale by filling the ground with useless Programming, making it unable to contain any more Programming.
 * This rendered most of Earth's Ethraksha useless (Programming cannot be deleted, it has to go somewhere.)
 * Totally worth it though.

Faux Paradise Installation
The Original Predater was the first to find Tomahtra on Arcerra.

Used Tomahtra's powers, it's own mastery of Programming, and the information it received by absorbing the Aestithikodex to damn humanity to an eternity of suffering.

The Original Predater did the following things:

Returned many of Earth's species from extinction. (Most die out again by Era III)

Skeletons are now infused with Pallobalt, for extra strength

Animals are now roughly double the size.

Animals have multiple hearts.

Lifespans have nearly tripled.

To Humans Specifically

 * Average height has been roughly quadrupled to 24ft.
 * Human skeletons contain a fairly high amount of Pallobalt, causing it to bend and dent instead of fracture and snap.
 * Humans now have two extra double chambered hearts located inside their pelvis bone in addition to their regular heart.
 * Average lifespan has been increased to a whopping 280.

The Arkin Preventative Measure
Obtaining Tomahtra after defeating U.B, Great Kings Aether and Akasha decide to try and use it as a way to stop people from awakening into Arkin and posing a threat to their position of absolute power. However, neither if them were able to fully understand the way that Tomahtra works and were unable to utilise it's full potential. This prevented them from being able to permanently prevent any more Arkin from awakening by removing the L.U.C.Y Gene of non-Arkin, which was their original intention after learning what Tomahtra was capable of. Instead, they did something else instead: The Great Kings replaced the L.U.C.Y Gene of all non-Arkin on Arcerra with a fusion of their own Magic Systems (Aether's Psy System gave him unparalleled psychic abilities and Akasha's Resource Systems let him create matter out of thin air). Combining these powers created the Flow System. They also placed a potent inhibitory factor upon the L.U.C.Y Gene of these new Flow System users, making the Awakening process take hundreds of years (80% of the average Arcerran lifespan) instead of the regular couple of months.

In doing this, Great Kings Aether and Akasha have made the human threat entirely manageable. There's no unpredictability anymore, no risk that a new Magic System will arise that completely counters those of the Great Kings. The general populous will be satisfied with the baseline, non-threatening level of power, and anyone who dedicates themselves to honing their strength will be easily identified and then swiftly eliminated before they pose and actual threat. Aether and Akasha used the illusionary powers of the Clarity Artifact mask the immense pain the comes with being subjected to Tomahtra's powers, and claimed that they enacted the Divine Blessing foretold in the book of Silvanism in order to stop people from questioning this in the first place (this is why Divine Blessings hates them)

Also, considering that the Great Kings aren't very good at Ethraksha Programming, they also unintentionally affected quite a few animals with the Arkin Preventative Measure, which is strange considering that they had no L.U.C.Y Gene in the first place. So uh, that's why a few animals can use magic too: the Great Kings fucked up.

The Arkin-Specific Preventative Measure
"But what about the Arkin that have already Awakened?".

The Great King's could not use the Arkin Preventative Measure on existing Arkin. If an Arkin has a child with a Flow System user, the child will have a 100/100 fusion of both systems. But thanks to the way that the Inhibitory Factor affects the Flow System, it's more like 100/0-100 since the Flow System now takes forever to develop.

The Great King's made the Inhibitory Factor infect other Magic Systems as well, it's efficacy increasing every generation.

So 100/0-100 becomes 90-100/0-100, and then 80-100/0-100, and so on until they both start off completely unawakened and the descendants of Arkin (Now called Distinguished Mages) can be dealt with in the same way as Flow System Users.

But since the Great King's are bad Ethraksha Programmers the Inhibitory Factor, unbeknownst to them, will only TEMPORARILY affect the development of Non-Flow-Sytem L.U.C.Y Genes. So eventually, the Distinguished Mages will return to do the mad ting. The first batch of reawakening Arkin are already present in Era IV, Nobuo Warholm and Deviké Mcleod.

Functions as a weapon
Tomahtra can function as a bioweapon. Get some mushroom spores, alter it so that they become airborne and immediately kill the things they grow on. Give a person a brain tumor, or any other genetic disease if you like.

Trivia

 * The name is derived from "Teratoma". Don't google it.