World building: Ghosts!

I’ve thumbnailed a bunch of Sparks pages and I’m getting started working on them now, so as promised here’s a little explainer on ghosts!
This sort of counts as mild spoilers since I’m hoping I’ll be able to work this information into the comic naturally, but it’s also not all that relevant to the main plot so no biggie. Bonus info for all you patrons ;) 💖

As you’ve hopefully gathered, there was a near-apocalyptic event in the past of the Sparks world. Honestly I’ve never made a proper timeline but let’s say somewhere between 300-500 years before current events. All the life that died in this event became ghosts- no new ghosts have been created since, so for example if someone dies now they won’t become a ghost, haha…

Originally the ghosts had more solid forms that reflected what they were in life, and had more of a consciousness/memory, but as time has gone on they’ve lost hold of that and become the mindless monsters we see in the comic. A ghost who hasn’t latched onto any objects is just an ethereal blob/wisp, but as Vasilis told Atlas, they tend to try and create forms for themselves by collecting material things. This is usually when they become more dangerous as well.

Ghosts are attracted to magic and life. When they come into contact with a human whatever they touch dies- so for example if a ghost latched onto your arm, dead arm! They have a similar effect on Satyr but not as powerfully, and Satyr are capable of healing/recovering from the damage.

They can’t travel through solid objects/walls etc, and magic barriers (wards) created by Satyr also stop them. We just recently saw Vasilis’s ward wall in the comic- this is a magic barrier that circles Archerus’s kingdom and keeps ghosts out. The lands outside of this ward are referred to as ‘haunted lands’ because they’re still full of ghosts and are generally considered uninhabitable.

As you can imagine humans are quite fearful of ghosts, but luckily for them they have Satyr around ;) human soldiers are also given ‘runeswords’ if they’re going into haunted lands. These are swords imbued with magic created at the Spire- very valuable, and they allow them to actually damage ghosts.

As for why Vasilis was absorbing that little ghostie Atlas destroyed… well… you’ll have to wait and find out 😜 I hope this was interesting! Feel free to ask any questions, although some things I’ll be keeping under wraps!