The Spirit Realm

"Trying to find the right words to describe the Spirit Realm is a bit like trying to find the right tongs to manipulate love. It's not just the wrong tool, it's the wrong class of tool altogether. But it is what we have, so we do our best with it. - Zariya

"If the body is the ship, and the mind is the sailor, then the spirit is the sea and wind." - Kailo Moana

The Spirit Realm is the domain of significance, connection, and the fundamental nature of all things. It is the origin of the power which fuels Magic, and it underlies and permeates every aspect of the world. It is a difficult realm to understand or describe, as it transcends thought, matter, and time - mortal beings simply do not have the context to truly comprehend this realm. When the Spirit Realm intersects with the Physical and Dream Realms, a world is born - you can read more about how these components come together here.

The Spirit Body

All things have a spiritual component to them which represents their deepest and truest essence. In the case of creatures, we call this component the Spirit Body, or Pneuma. When a person dies, the Pneuma should split away from the physical and dream bodies, and migrate through the spirit realm as described in Death and What Comes After.

You can read more about the Pneuma here.

The Ties that Bind

In the spirit realm, the bonds between individual Pneuma are tangible things. We experience these connections emotionally, forming and breaking them throughout our lives. The specific emotion we feel is dependent on the nature of the connection, and spans the range from love to hate and everything in between. The strength of the bond is a measure of how significant it is to those who are bound by it.

As described in Death and What Comes After, these bonds can and do persist after the death of a person. While the Pneuma does not carry any memory or identity, the bonds with other spirits will influence its behavior after death. In some cases, tightly bound Pneuma will migrate between lives together, reincarnating with new identities but still feeling a connection formed in a previous life. You can read more about how the Pneuma behaves after death here.

Type

Dimensional plane

The "Real" You?

Sometimes people believe that the Pneuma is the real person, and that the physical and dream aspects are only appendages to that reality. This is not quite right. A person is the intersection of the three bodies, and changing out any one of them produces a new person altogether. While the Pneuma contains a person's deepest nature, it does not hold any memories or identity (those are a part of the eidolon), and it doesn't have the physical aspects that both enable, constrain, and shape the final person.

Creatures of the Spirit Realm

There are entities who seem to live primarily in the Spirit Realm, or at least who interact with it in a fundamentally different way than we do. These creatures derive sustenance directly from manipulating the bonds between spiritual bodies. They are categorized into two major groups. The first group is often called angels or heralds, and gain their sustenance from the formation and growth of these bonds. The second group, frequently called demons or fiends, feed on the weakening and destruction of the bonds between spirits. Within these groups are multiple subtypes who specialize on particular types of bonds and the strategies they use to manipulate them. For example, the incubus fiend has specialized to destroy bonds between intimate partners by manipulating sexual desires.

While this may seem like these creatures broadly fit into the ideas of good and evil, this is not always the case. Hatred is as much of a bond as love, and few would argue that a creature who was specialized in building and maintaining bonds of hatred could be considered good.

In order to interact with mortal beings, these creatures must manifest, gaining an Eidolon and possibly a physical body as well. When this happens, the creature will adopt an identity and persona that is consistent with their spiritual nature, drawing upon the ideas and tropes present in the area where they are manifesting. Manifestations can be brief, lasting only a few minutes or hours, or they can extend for years or centuries. There are some magical rituals that can banish the manifestation of a demon or angel, separating them from their dream and physical bodies and causing them to revert to a completely spiritual state.