On The Nature Of Spirits

From Collected Treatises, Vol 3 (Second Arcaic Edition, out of print) 

My master was the renowned Hazel Mage. Though famous for his spellwork, he had a large number of summons available to him. One stood above the others, a blue-skinned siren who was his particular companion. I often saw them engaged in deep conversation, with my master taking copious notes. After he passed, I never found his writings on the spirits, but I relay here remembrances of our conversations on the matter. He was wont to speak of them at length, more so when his companion was away for some time.

It is wrong to say the spirits are immortal. Although it is true they don’t die while in their summoned forms – they can only be disincorporated or banished – their true forms can be killed. It is more accurate to say they are ageless. A wood sprite living peacefully in its tree, among others of its kind and rank, will neither age nor grow. It is a product of a mature plant, well-nourished by mana in excess of its needs for life or basic reproduction. The sprite will never change, unless some outside force catalyzes new growth. Likewise, sufficient harm to its true form will kill it as permanently as any mortal.

Neither do spirits exist, as some have claimed, in a formless gray limbo, waiting perpetually for a summoner to call them to our waking world and give them purpose. My master claimed they have their own country, The Ageless Realm, where they live their lives, inhabit their true forms, and keep their favored associations, much as we do. Those who choose to be summoned are the adventurous ones, eager to partake of our world in all its strangeness. Clothes, music, food, hunting, adventure, and every other experience our world offers are like a spice next to their slow, seldom-changing home. We may envy their agelessness, but they envy the color and variety of our world.

The Ageless Realm lies next to our own, untouchable except by the spirits themselves. Mana flows from our world to theirs, seeping through our shared border like whey through a cheesecloth. This mana both creates the world and births the spirits who inhabit it. Changes in mana flows, vents, and major workings of magic in our world are one of the outside forces that may change the Ageless Realm and its denizens.

I will not recount the usual classifications here: they are familiar to us all. Plant types, Elemental types, etc.. These distinctions do not interest us today. 

Instead, let us concern ourselves with a spirit’s Origin. On this axis, we may categorize spirits as Free Spirits, Embodiments, and Abstracts.

Free spirits arise spontaneously through a happenstance of mana and proper conditions. A healthy tree in the Ageless Realm may bud a nick-nock, leaf sprite, or twigling for no discernible reason other than to employ a surplus of mana. A forest might birth a fox spirit. A stream might birth a frog spirit or flights of willow-fliff. Such spirits may prefer their place of origin above all others, but they are free to wander. They sustain themselves by absorbing the ambient mana abundantly present throughout the realm, naturally preferring mana most similar to their own type. Most importantly, if a free spirit is killed inside the Ageless Realm, it dies.

Embodiments arise from a particular location or living thing. The renowned Great Spirits are mainly of this type. The Sunglaze Wyrm did not spring from her great namesake river. She IS the river, with every ounce of its life-giving potential and its vast, destructive power. The form she inhabits is as temporary as a free spirit’s summoned form. Destroy her body, and she will return, for her true nature is the river itself. There are Embodiments of all sorts of places and things. Ancient trees often have them, most famously in the form of dryads. Grand rivers, lakes, and mountains are well-known sources of spirits, though few present themselves to the mortal realm. The Red Marshes of Temer, Lake Nivermere, and the tar pits of Lampshire are all known to have embodiments.

An embodiment whose source is damaged or destroyed may become a free spirit, no longer invulnerable to grievous harm. Such spirits diminish, and may even die in time. I was told that a rare few may embody a new location, but no examples were given.

Abstracts are the final, and strangest, origin for spirits. Wen-Ra-Turi is the most famous of these. You might know him as “a great cougar spirit”, but that is incorrect. He is The Cougar Spirit, a paragon of all cougars and cougar-like animals everywhere. The Hazel Mage claimed there were several dozen such creatures. These are the only creatures who seem able to cross the boundary between worlds at will, though I have never witnessed such an event for myself. He once told me that, somewhere in the world, wandered The Radish Spirit, spreading his spicy goodness everywhere he went. 

My old master left a great many tomes behind when he died, but his research into the spirits wasn’t among them. He was very protective of his companion and his summons and could not bear the thought of someone using his life’s work to bring them harm. He never shelved those notebooks with the others, nor would he let his apprentices read directly from them. It is my belief that only a fraction of what he knew ever passed his lips. Rather than use his knowledge to increase his fame, he chose to defend the people he loved through silence.