TROS in the Hammer:Magic Spirits

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There is a teaching story told by the wise women of the People. A young girl asks her mother “Who many different kinds of spirits are there?” The mother replies “how many kinds of thoughts can you have?”

Background and Philosophy

Types of spirits

Notional spirits: a notional spirit is a spirit that COULD exist, but does not actually have any contact with the real world. Its not clear whether these spirits ACTUALLY exist before they are summoned, but as every spirit that is summoned seems to already have some kind of place and connection in the spirit society, the general feeling is that they have some kind of existence prior to contacting the real world. It is a very strange kind of existence, though, with no real sense of time or place, only a sense of relationship and purpose.

Contacted spirits: a contacted spirit is a spirit that has been brought into contact with the real world. It is only while in contact with the world that a spirit has any sense of time or location. Some spirits relish this experience, and seek ways to stay in contact; others seem to hate it, and can’t get away from it fast enough.

Prevalent spirits: a prevalent spirit is a spirit that somehow can contact the real world of its own volition. Most spirits are incapable of this; they can only contact the real world when called. But some powerful spirits seem to be able to establish contact of their own accord, for their own reasons.

Anchored spirits: an anchored spirit is a spirit that has one or more physical anchors in the real world that give it a permanent or semi-permanent connection. Anchors always take the form of physical items, although the item could be anything from a ring to a statue to a plant or animal (including humans).

Embodied spirits: an embodied spirit is contacted or prevalent spirit that has a permanent or semi-permanent material form in the real world. Most spirits have to have a shaman help create this form (often as part of anchoring), but some spirits are powerful enough to do this on their own. This embodied form is composed of what the People call mana; a kind of solidified energy. An embodied spirit should not be confused with an anchored spirit who can control their anchor (i.e. the Golems of Empire 1).

Spirit characteristics

All spirits are defined by a set of qualities. These qualities are one word descriptors, either nouns or verbs. Spirits start with two qualities for free; one noun and one verb.

Examples:

• Simple Fire elemental - Fire, Create
• More powerful Fire elemental - Fire, Create, Anger, Increase, Wind
• Powerful Oak spirit - Tree(Oak), Strength, Grow, Squirrel, Call, Build, Wood, Protection

Qualities can be related to each other, either by overlap (Heat/Fire) or by superiority [Wood(Oak)]. One of the qualities of the spirit will be its PRIMARY quality: Fire in the case of the fire elemental, Oak in the case of the Oak spirit. A more complicated spirit can have more than one primary quality.

Spirits also have bans; areas they simply cannot affect. Each spirit will have one verb and one noun that are their bans.

Fire Elemental - Decrease, Water Oak Spirit - Bend, Metal

Spirit personality

All contactable spirits (those with at least two qualities) have a name, and are individuals. For example, if you summon two different Fire spirits with the qualities "create" and "fire", they will have two different names, and at least subtly different personalities.

In general, the more qualities a spirit possesses, the more "human" the spirit's personality will seem. The fewer qualities, and the more abstract those qualities are, the more alien the spirit will seem, and the more difficult it will be to contact and communicate with. Spirits with identical qualities will usually have similar personalities, but this is not guaranteed; spirits with few qualities are liable to be very similar in temperment, but spirits with a lot of qualities (even if the qualities are identical) could be very different in personality.

Some philosophers (particularly the theologians of Empire 2) have speculated that humans are simply spirits with infinite, or close to infinite, qualities. The spirits themselves seem pretty closed mouthed about this issue.

Spirit relationships

All spirits that share a quality are related in some way to each other. Therefore, a fire spirit that has the quality “create” is related to the music spirit that also has the quality “create”. These spirits will recognize each other, and will often have preexisting relationships formed in the spirit world.

Spirits that have the quality as their primary quality, though, are consider spirits of that type, and are related much more strongly to each other. Therefore, all spirits that have Oak as their primary quality are first and foremost oak spirits, and will have relatively strong relationships with each other. This relationship need not be a friendly one. An Oak spirit with the quality of "Growth" will probably be highly antagonistic towards an Oak spirit with the quality of "Decay".

All spirits that share a primary quality can also be considered, to some extent, as aspects of one higher level spirit, a notional spirit called an exemplar spirit. These exemplar spirits have only one quality. For example, all Oak spirits can be considered aspects of THE Oak spirit, whose only quality is “Oak”. As notional spirits, these spirits are believed to exist, and the spirits themselves often act as if they exist, but are apparently impossible to contact by humans; in practice, the simplest spirit that can be contacted is one with two qualities (a noun and a verb) regardless of its power. It could be that spirits with only one quality are simply too alien or esoteric to be brought into contact with the real world.

Spirits themselves have a hierarchy, in which “higher” spirits are considered dominant in some way over “lower” spirits. This hierarchy is not always clear, but in general, when two spirits share a quality:

• if they have the same number of qualities, the one with the higher Power Pool will be considered dominant
• if they have the same Power Pool, the one with the FEWER qualities will be considered dominant

Therefore, broad numbers of qualities are not “superior” in spirit society; rather, it is the purer concept that is generally held to be superior. So, for example, a fire spirit with the qualities “create” and “fire” with a power pool of 10 will generally be dominant over a fire spirit with the qualities “create”, “increase”, “fire”, “anger” with power pool of 10, and may even be dominant if that spirit has a pool as high as 15.

Conceptual hierarchies

An additional hierarchy of spirits is the conceptual hierarchy. Spirits whose primary quality encompasses another spirits primary quality will generally be considered to be dominant. So, between a Tree spirit and an Oak spirit of the same power, the Tree spirit will usually be the dominant spirit.

Complexity versus utility

One important point to make when discussing the hierarchy of spirits is the following; to the shaman, a more complex spirit is often more useful than a simpler one. But the more complex a spirit is, the harder it is to contact for a give level of power. There are certainly very complex spirits (with qualities so diverse that they are almost human-like in their personalities) of great power, but these spirits are VERY difficult to contact, and often occupy very strange places in the spirit hierarchy.

The ‘gods’

Certain spirits of sufficient power and conceptual breadth essentially have a god like status, both among the spirits themselves and among certain human cultures. Conceptual breadth does not mean more qualities, but rather the breadth of the individual qualities themselves; Plant is broader than Tree is broader than Oak. For example, Snow In The Branches is a very powerful spirit with the qualities of “Cold” and “Tree” and “Create”. All other Tree spirits, Cold spirits, and Creation spirits treat Snow In The Branches with reverence and fear, and consider it a god. It is a prevalent spirit, who is able to make contact with the real world of its own accord, especially in the cold, forested wilderness far north of where the People live, and is worshipped by the savage inhabitants of those trackless forests.

God itself?

Some philosophers (especially the theologians of Empire 2) have speculated that, given the nature of the spirit hierarchy, there must be a notional, exemplar spirit with the quality “All”. These philosophers have posited that this spirit would therefore be God. Spirits themselves, when asked about this concept, will either seem mystified (if of low power and low complexity), shifty and evasive (if of high complexity and high power), or simply say nothing (if of high power and low complexity). The only thing that seems certain is that this spirit is the most notional of notional spirits, and would be impossible to contact.

Esoteric spirits

Attempts have been made to contact spirits with very broad qualities (i.e. “know”, “everything”); these attempts, when they succeed, tend to contact spirits that are so strange that communication with them is impossible. Moreover, the broader the qualities, the less the spirit wishes to remain in contact with the real world; it seems as if the specificity of the real world (i.e. this Oak tree, as opposed to the plantness of all plants) is somehow painful, or at least uncomfortable, to them.

Game mechanics

Spirit Power

Example spirits: Desert demon - Heat, Create, Anger, Increase, Wind Oak totem - Tree(Oak), Strength, Grow, Squirrel, Call, Build, Wood, Protection

When spirits use their power, they choose some of their qualities and string them together into a phrase. This phrase cannot include any other nouns or verbs, but can use the verbs and nouns as different parts of speach, and can include conjunctions, particles, pronouns, etc. It must use at least one verb and one noun. Examples:

• the desert demon might choose "create heat".
• the oak totem might choose "grow oaks and build a strong protection with them".

Then, the level of effect (1-3) is decided. Use the vagary charts as a rough guide as to the level of effect. Combine this level of effect with the other parameters as sorcery to determine the effect target number (ETN). Modify the ETN by -1 for each of the primary qualities the spirit includes.

Spirits use a power pool, which is identical to the sorcery pool.

Spirits can use this power in three different ways.

• Charms - quick one off effect, can only have one verb and one noun. Treat these as spells of one.
• Power - More involved effect, can have up to four words. Treat these as spells of three, with +1 to ETN for each word beyond 2.
• Weaving - Much more involved effect, can use any number of words. Treat as spells of many.

Casting time is the same as for sorcery.

Spirits are not affected by "aging", per se, but they do have a relatively limited amount of substance/energy with which to work. Therefore, they still have to make "aging" rolls as per the sorcery rules, and risk unconsciousness normally. Track the months of "aging" normally, and when enough months are accrued (bad stuff happens, don't know exactly what yet, probably like aging, or maybe start losing qualities). The normal physical effects of aging found in basic TROS sorcery (such as long fingernails, long hair, etc.) don't apply to spirits. Functionally, the only concern is being knocked out.

All spirits can "cast" the equivalent of Mana I, Mana II, and Mana III.

Spirits cannot innately summon, command, banish, or bind/imprison other spirits. All spirits CAN communicate with other spirits in the "heavenly language". However, some qualities may allow one or more of these things to be possible. For example, a wind spirit may have "carry" and "message", which could be used to send a message to another spirit.

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