Souls and Spirits

As I started fleshing out some spells in my previous post, I realized I had some choices to make concerning the spirit world.

At first, I just wanted an ethereal backdrop of spiritual-soul derived energy. The place where gods could be born and dwell, but not reign over the living world in a direct way. Then, I thought it would be appropriate to have a path of apotheosis for those living on our alternate earth, which would allow characters to grow in spiritual awareness/ spirit power wielding skill until they reached a point of influence in the spirit world. This influence would be an entry-level position in the hero pantheon, with many possible role-playing angles, as the player's character matured beyond simply adventuring, and became a lasting hero. Then I thought, what about the small people? Do their souls not merit any individuality in the afterlife? Are they just absorbed by the deities they worshipped in life, becoming part of the very ideals they strove toward? Are they a constant? Do they have the chance to grow? Can they fade away or be reincarnated? While characters may never know for certain how these things work, I see that writing spells that call upon spirits needs a little structure behind it, so that everything flows naturally. This could go any of a number of ways, but I have a proposal.

Every being on our alternate earth who can safely be identified as having a soul, will enter the spirit world upon death. Their presence and powers there being determined by their relative level of spiritual achievement. While, heroes and legends would take positions of prominence, normal folks would also have a place in the glowing radiance of their deity of choice. As it was originally envisioned, the spirit world gave birth to representations of cultural ideals (gods), but the relative power of such would be reflexive of the amount of prayer/sacrifice made in their name. Thus, the common folk would also gain in the afterlife if those that remembered them from life prayed for them or honored their memory in other ways. Blatant ancestor worship would facilitate a ready pantheon of lesser spirits that might aid a family member, so this might be a solid fixture in many cultures. Those that are forgotten, for good or ill, drift into a slumber and may ultimately have their soul's energy reborn in another life (though this doesn't have to be made a rule). Certainly, my idea is that beings long dead and rarely spoken of would be in a slumber, but the length of that slumber would be proportional to their original power as a spirit. Gods could slumber for eons to be awoken and worshipped again, while forgotten heroes would have a shorter span, and most common folks might be reborn in 10-20 generations.

Of course, this ignores the usefulness of such spirits to more powerful spirits. Minion spirits could be retained by a more powerful spirit. Perhaps these faithful spirits can provide their power to their deity as their spirit experiences a sort of half-life effect over time. On the other hand, spirit slaves might provide many benefits for the various gods, demons, heroes of the spirit world. Souls could easily be a commodity of power, or simply a fuel for perpetuation. I'd like to leave this open to further development at some future point. If we accept that spirits of the dead reside in the spirit world for at least a while, then the spirit casters of our earth could commune with them, ask favors of them, and receive help from them. The Game Master would need to have a clear idea of what needs the spirits have in their world. As in any role-playing opportunity, each faction maneuvers others toward their goal. The goals may be the same (serving a god's desire) or the spirit may need to trick the adventurer to get what they want from a more powerful being. These concepts are old ones, but they are the core of folklore and mythologies.

That being said, it is my intention to keep a wall between the living and the spirit world, that only skilled spirit casters can breach. It will take some playtesting to iron out, but the costs of spells that deal directly with spirits will have a high casting target. Of course, gates and other breaches could be achieved with even higher magic, but that is another subject entirely.

There is another wrinkle I wanted to mention concerning spirit spells. There will be spells where the deity sends the power to the caster, and there will be spells where a minion of the god is sent to aid the caster in a specific task. Separate rules will have to be framed to incorporate these different processes, and the possible measures an opposing caster could use to foil the caster's spirit agent.

Finally, at some point, soul-binding magics will have to be worked-out. Binding souls to items, or links to spirits, is very viable. Soul forging of items, such as weapons, where the crafter actually places a bit of there spirit in the item is something to clarify.