The seven deadly sins is a list of 7 sins that were outlined by Pope Gregory and were the antithesis of the 7 Christian virtues which are
chastity,
temperance,
charity,
diligence,
kindness,
patience, and
humility.
The theme of the seven deadly sins has caught on like wildfire in works of culture like in the series seven deadly sins and stuff so I’d like to ask how do you incorporate this concept into your story?
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1. Pride would be incorporated by letting the user enter a temporary state of nigh-invulnerability and strength -- this includes physical, emotional, and mental strength -- followed up by a period of crippling weakness and venerability -- which includes physical, emotional, and mental venerability -- that gets worse and worse the more consistently you use this transformation state.
2. Greed would be fairly simple, the idea is you get stronger by the amount of wealth you have, but for your attacks to have any real effect you need to spend wealth your wealth reaching zero would render you in a vegetable-like state till someone takes the mercy of sparing money to you. At that point, you are in their service as a slave for some time depending on how much money they gave.
3. Lust would be a state that you can enter that makes you an Adonis or Aphrodite like character with the ability to swoon people with your silver tongue and mind control powers, after it ends your words and body would become more repulsive and convincing after leaving this state, gradually getting worse and worse the more consistently you use this state.
4. Envy would be represented as the ability to copy any sort of skill or form -- literally and metaphorically -- perfectly, but you are unable to keep these skills or techniques forever needing to see them over and over again to really use them consistently. You'd also never be able to come up with something unique forever damned to follow and leech off the shadows of others.
5. Gluttony would allow you to take on the aspect of the things you consume for an allotted period of time, the changes to this form are permeant, but the constant abuse of this ability makes your time in it longer, and your mind becomes more ravenous and feral. Which could lead you to become an eldritch blob that ate everything.
6. Fairly simple once more, the more you give in to the endless anger and the more you give up the stronger you become. The things you give up could be something like a precious item, a memory, or more commonly your lifespan. Some of these things, like the memory or lifespan, would come back slowly, but if you give into much your life will be quick and short, and continuously giving up things like a certain memory in a short amount of time will result in permanent deletion of said memory, and you could end up becoming nothing but a short-lived ball of rage.
7. Sloth would involve the ability to control time and space and nearly being immortal, at the cost of the time and energy it would have taken to cover such a distance or how long it would have normally taken to do such a thing in a period of time. The aftereffect of using this ability would inflict a type of waking dream with the severity and deepness of the dream depending on how to power the related ability used.
(The abilities that induce a temporary transformation state would get stronger and stronger and their durations and effectiveness would continuously get better the more consistently they are used, much how their side effects would get worse and worse.)
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To anybody that would say, "These trade-offs sound terrible! Why would you use these abilities regardless of the reward?" That is kind of the point the are the seven
deadly sins after all.
