Spirits of Our EstatesBrillianceSpirits of Brilliance are flighty things mostly. They are wrapped up in their moment of Brilliance and see little else around them. Most of the time they are transitory and fade relatively quickly, but some have longer lives. Most of these appear as ghostial remembrances of past great deeds, and these can be easily confused with ghosts, especially if the person whose Brilliance they expose is dead. Because of Alec's low domain Brilliance spirits are not too interactive in the universe currently. They are too introspective and too locked too truly interact with the world around them. Also spirits of Brilliance are created by acts of Brilliance not the other way around, thus ensuring their constant viewing to the past. Alec has seen some spirits of Brilliance, but never talked to one. Most are too indistinct to respond. Cities[Not available] DesireWhen looked upon with the Sight, Nezha's spirits typically are things that hover around people governed by strong desires. The least intelligent and willful spirits are the most abstract, and as they climb towards greater sentience they take on ever more human forms. They never look completely human, though, and infallibly have some monstrous attribute that marks them. There is some thematic consistency between different spirits of desire, but I don't want to pre-specify it in too much detail. I tend to invent spirits by piecing together cool images from random sources, and I don't want to cut off any potential. I figure that sorcerers and occultists in-game understand it, though: "Hm, Joe is obsessed with mathematics, and Tobin's Spirit Guide reports that set of desires is governed by Blakean imagery. His desire is a cloud of darkness floating to his south. That symbolically represents the demiurge Urizen, which must mean that Joe sees mathematics as opposed to art rather than as a form of art."
LossSprits of Loss ride the grieving, the luckless and the bereaved; smoky black wraiths wrapped piggyback on their creators, choking them, clouding their vision and whispering nasty secrets in their ears. These spirits are created on the event of a personal loss and can be exorcised through natural healing, counselling, or anything that allows the mourner to accept her loss and move on with life. The Order of the Fallen have ritual techniques that allow them to banish such spirits, and there are psychic surgery techniques to excise grief. These spirits know only the details of their creation and what they have seen in their tenure with their chevals. They have the power to recreate sensations of their loss in the mind of their bearer. It is said that there are rituals that can resettle a spirit of loss to another person, thus transferring the loss and its details to that victim. There may also be a ritual that uses the spirit to call forth what was lost, but this option is dangerous and often has terrible results (for details, see The Monkey's Paw). There are also spirits of loss that are tied to particular places and events, more powerful and significant in form and scope. These wax and wane according to the depth and rawness of the loss(es) suffered. Each one may be approached with individual rituals and greetings catered to their particular personalities, though all are more occupied in their own misery than in what any petitioner has to say. Examples include:
Romance[Not available] StoryStory Spirits are assembled from bits of information, emotion, and experience. Much of these pieces in fact come from other stories. Some of these pieces come from novel experiences or thoughts on the part of their creators. Thus in many ways, stories are conceived much like many life-forms in prosaic earth; that is, they have parents (other stories), but are greatly randomized by their environment (experiences, emotions, and ideas of their creators). Story Spirits, like people, consider their lineages to be rather important. Many Stories can trace their lineage back quite far, and are proud of their "genetic" histories. Once stories are conceived, they reside in their maker until they are propogated to others through some form of story-telling. Such story-telling may take the form of anecdotes, novels, movies, jokes, ballads, or any other medium which conveys a sequence of events and their human implications. When stories are so propogated, they actually live in all of the people that hear them. As they interact with the stories that also reside in their new hosts, they may mate and produce new stories as above. Thus, stories want to spread to as many vessels as possible to continue their lineages. Most people agree that when a person retells a story, he or she cannot help but alter it in some way, no matter how small. This is simply because he or she actually propogates the progeny of the story he or she was told. For this reason, stories propogate extremely frequently (every-retelling). However, extremely powerful stories tend to create progeny very similar to themselves, and thus their potency is not easily lost. Occasionally, something interferes with the propogation of a story. Often times words are obscured by other sounds, or a listener is distracted. In these cases, the story spirit is simply unable to be consumed completely, and thus is limited in the extent to which it can produce progeny in that host. However, sometimes the propogation is so botched that a new story is created. These stories are considered freaks of nature, and are deformed abominations. They are generally shunned by the rest of the Spirit world. Sometimes these freaks are able to overcome their deformities and propogate. Stories with malformed ancestors often try to hide their histories. Books, films, and other documentary media are rather different from spoken stories, since they can be consumed multiple times. Because of this, their spirits tend to reside in a greater number of hosts than their spoken counterparts. These spirits thus tend to have many more progeny, and are more influencial, both in the spirit world and the prosaic. The copying of books or other documentary media does not result in new story spirits unless the copy deviates significantly from the original, in which case a malformed story is created, similarly to the case where a story is grossly misheard. Story spirits die when they are no longer capable of ever being consumed. Thus, if the last person to have heard a spoken story dies, that story dies with him. Stories propogated by books or other similar media live on (although they are dormant) until every instance of that book or medium has been destroyed as well. The oldest stories on Earth are the ones representing fairly primal fears and feelings. These stories live on as parts of newer stories, but are never forgotten, and thus never die. They are old and proud, and have seen countless numbers of their children rise and fall. Examples:
Basically, one of these old story spirits exists for every theme that seems to pop up in nearly every story. Hmm, I think this would be cool: Merlin often interacts with story spirits from the chancel. The story spirits he has created with each story of the morning are powerful indeed, since they are heard by every person in the chancel. Merlin counts on these collosal spirits for information, and sometimes to act as his enforcers in the spirit world, mostly with respect to other story spirits, but not always. Example:
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Player CharactersBrillianceCities
DesireLossRomanceStoryTea
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