skekTek ideas

Dark Crystal:
--Brings down Dark Crystal itself vs. a crystal beam - could maybe come from stage chasm in background, be moved around, albeit in committal fashion
--Could have essence mechanic where, versus power, improves in speed - frame data, movement, and/or pace of crawlie effects
--Could involve sliding scale of buffs ala skekSil, downside if left unused too long?
--Crystal could be connected to machine, creating constant damage and/or essence suction within certain proximity, instant KO (w/ essence burst for him) past a certain point?

Creatures:
--He carries around smaller Thra crawlies (bugs, small furry monsters, etc.) on his person, able to transfer over to opponents on hit (could either manually summon creatures or accrue them over time)
--Crawlies can be spread to foes (on passive contact, from landing attacks, and/or being thrown out in AOE from attacks), could have escalating effects ala Pikmin (poison damage, periodic flinch, etc., potentially affected by Dark Crystal)
--Whiffing attacks costs him crawlies - they could linger onstage, be picked back up on contact/via some summoning input (a warning bell to signal ominous things if they don't come back?)
--Reorganization input for crawlies he's carrying ala Olimar DSpec/Amano?
--Foes could kill crawlies while on his person (leaving him progressively more vulnerable) and/or while they're onstage
--Crawlies could turn against him (on his person and/or onstage) in some capacity? (w/ too much Crystal enhancement maybe?)

General ideas:
--Bring down Dark Crystal itself vs. a crystal beam, use inventions to make it more combat ready
--More sadistic/unhinged melee attacks, flailing, w/ more ingenuity in combat
--Modernize aspects of previous Skeksis sets
--Use of Gruenaks, Arathim and/or Arathim for experimentation and/or contributing essence to Crystal?
--Locksnake tether!

Old Warlord concepts:

DOWN SPECIAL – THE DARK CRYSTAL
The Scientist has the Dark Crystal, which is about the size of Marth, be lowered down by chains from the top blast zone, ending in a position where it is suspended in midair in front of himself. If the top blast zone/nearest ceiling is too high, it will just magically float in midair, suspended by a mechanical hovering device above it. The Dark Crystal cannot be attacked in any way, and any characters who are close enough to it will have their essence slowly be drained by it. Characters touching the crystal will take 5% per second, characters within a Mario width take 3% per second, within a Bowser width will take 1.5% per second, and within 2 Bowser widths will take 0.5% per second. If 100% damage is taken entirely from the crystal (a minimum of 20 seconds of someone doing nothing), the target will instantly die. The scientist is entirely vulnerable to the crystal, which makes it incredibly dangerous as the Scientist effectively bans a portion of the stage.

The Scientist can only place the Dark Crystal once per stock, since it is invulnerable anyway. The crystal goes away when he dies. If the Dark Crystal is scrolled off the stage or somehow destroyed or stolen, the Scientist is allowed to immediately produce another one, so he cannot be denied it. So long as Scientist is in play, the crystal will exist. While it takes a bit for the Dark Crystal to lower down when the move is first used, it applies very minimal lag to the Scientist himself.

While the Dark Crystal is in play, Scientist’s Down Special changes, like Villager. If Scientist is within 3 Bowsers of the Crystal when he inputs down special, he will take out a pair of cords and reach forward with them as a grab hitbox, attempting to tether the foe to the crystal. If grabbed, the foe cannot move farther than the distance the Scientist was from the Crystal when he used the move until they destroy the tether, which has 30 HP. This give Scientist greater rewards if he gets close enough to the crystal to hook up the foe to it to get drained. If the foe hooked up to the crystal takes knockback that would knock them further away from the crystal, the cord will be broken instantly and free the foe from their tether.

Inputting Down Special when more than 3 Bowsers away from the crystal will have the Scientist take out a beaker, which will contain all essence drained from the foe while they were hooked up to the crystal. Scientist can drink the essence to heal himself of half of the damage the foe has taken, as well as to power himself up and increase his physical strength. This will increase his movement speed by X units per X% the foe takes while hooked up to the crystal, aerial speed by Y units per Y%, and give various powered up effects to his moves once he passes certain threshold of damage drained from the foe. The beaker is a throwing item that deals 9% when smash thrown, and Scientist can take out empty beakers to throw to use as basic projectiles. This is a spammable projectile that is nothing to scoff at, but these projectiles are all items the foe can casually catch. To drink the essence inside of it, Scientist must press B while holding the beaker, which is also a bit slow. If Scientist throws a beaker with essence in it, it will splat onto the floor, and people can press “A” over it to eat it like a food item, but only 1% at a time. The Scientist certainly wouldn’t put perfectly good essence to waste given his fellow Skeksis would jump at the chance to take it for themselves, so he will relinquish any dignity he has and slurp it off the floor quickly, healing twice as fast as foes when trying to drink it that way.

SIDE SPECIAL – LOCKSNAKE
The Scientist takes out a snake, holding it by the tail, before whipping it forwards, looking similar to but considerably more violent than Lucas’ grab. This is one of Scientist’ best neutral tools, comparable to Simon’s ftilt. If the Scientist hits the foe with a part of the snake other than the head, they will take damage and knockback comparable to the Simon ftilt. If he instead hits with the head of the snake, it will latch onto the foe and do the same damage, but no knockback. This will deal 1% per second to the foe until they kill it by depleting its 10 HP, like knocking a Pikmin off themselves. This is not super impressive by itself, and if anything you may want to specifically not hit with the locksnake’s head a lot of the time, to use this move as a proper spacer or as a KO move when the foe’s at super high percents where anything can kill. Still, the move has less ending lag if you hit with the snake’s head, as the Scientist doesn’t have to go through an animation of reeling back in the snake or anything.

A snake latched onto a foe will consume any essence that they would’ve otherwise drank. It will instantly slurp off all essence off the floor that the foe passes over, increasing its HP by the amount of damage the Scientist would’ve healed X2, and instantly recovering any HP of the initial 10 base HP the snake has. This will also cause the snake to deal 0.2% more damage per second per  the amount of damage that it heals.

Aside from powering up the snake, this move turns potions with essence into them into a much more direct threat. Foes can no longer grab the potion out of the air to casually dodge it anymore. The snake will instantly break open the potion with it to drink the essence inside, which will not only deny the foe the use of the essence, but hit them with the beaker’s projectile hitbox. This will actually make the beaker hitbox linger a bit longer as shards of glass fly through the air, meaning this will also hit foes who dodge the beaker, if the movement of said dodge did not get them out of the way of the hitbox. It can be much more threatening than just drinking the beaker to heal the Scientist, and at the very least will make foes respect Scientist more when he goes to take a drink. Even with barely any essence drained, you can get this obnoxious effect on your spammable projectile, and Side Special will be heavily used due to it being such a good spacer. This is not unrealistic to achieve, and is not uncommon to happen multiple times in a stock.

UP SPECIAL – GHELFLING
Used in the air, a Ghelfling strapped to a chair appears, roughly the size of Wario primarily due to the chair moreso than the victim in the seat. This happens very suddenly, and the Scientist jumps off of it to recover as they fall to their deaths horribly, making for a similar recovery to Sonic, the hitbox the same as Sonic’s spring for the chair, and Scientist able to very quickly act out of the move. Scientist will go up 2.25 Ganondorfs by default, but for every 1% he drains from a foe, he will jump up 0.1 more Ganondorfs higher when he uses this move due to increased leg strength, empowering his recovery, up to a cap of 5.5 Ganondorfs. This will also increase the strength of the chair hitbox as the Scientist kicks it down more forcefully, potentially making it 1.2X as strong as Koopaling’s Up Special, but far more useful due to how quickly the chair falls like the Sonic spring.

If the chair lands on the ground, it will stick around as a construct with 10 HP. The Scientist can, of course, hook up the Ghelfling to the Dark Crystal to drain them, and their essence is just as valid to drain as a foe’s. Foes will want to kill them if Scientist hooks them up, as that will stop him from getting as much precious essence, but coming into range to kill the drained Ghelfling will just get them drained instead, so they have to be very careful about it.