The Magnitude of Spirits

As a follow-up to yesterday's discussion, here is an excerpt from Guilmar the Theologian's The Magnitude of Spirits, a book that was widely suppressed at the beginning of the 10th Age but has come to be accepted as part of the corpus on spirits and gods.

THE MAGNITUDE OF SPIRITS

Guilmar the Theologian

What separates the most humble of spirits from the very Gods themselves? Wherein lies the distinction between the Gods of men and the ancient Gods who ruled the world when the giants stood astride the whole north? It is not a fundamental difference, an essential difference, but rather one of power: that is, one of magnitude. A satyr is no different, elementally, from one of the Aelio themselves. What, then, of mere mortals? Is there something which separates them from the spirit world? We are inclined to answer both yes and no. For is it not blasphemy to suggest that man is on the same field as the very Gods? And yet, man possesses a reasoning soul and the capacity for immortality. Again, we are forced to answer that the truth lies along a continuum of magnitude.

Satyrs, Naiads, and other Spirit-folk

The category of spirit-folk encompasses a number of creatures that dwell in Arunia. Primarily, spirit-folk are those corporeal beings created by the gods to act as servitors in the world. They tend, on a whole, to represent an embodiment of some kind of natural environment. Most spirit-folk are servitor races, thus discluding creatures such as Minotaurs and Centaurs from this category.

There are a number of sylvan spirit-folk, most of them made by Eminia or Aloran. These include naiads, dryads, fauns, and satyrs all of whom are associated with forests (more or less: naiads are rarely found in heavily populated areas). Strong differentiation needs to be drawn between spirit-folk and those creatures that come from some other source, for they hardly belong in the same category. It is possible to include Raksha (the evil shadow-spirits of Mother Night) here without breaking the definition of the spirit-folk.

The defining characteristics of the spirits run as follows:

• Deific servitor race
• Corporeal
• Possessing, however, not insignificant magical powers
• Generally tied to a natural feature

Right away we can see that Raksha are the exception rather than the rule here. Mother Night most likely did not create them (but she uses them) and they have no ties to nature other than their associated with darkness and night. However, they do possess a number of the secondary features common amongst spirit-folk, the most important of which being that they have no desire to form societies of any complexity nor do they value civilization.