Spirits of the Wild: Manifestation, Tethers, and Communion

Spirits lack physical form. They live in the realm of thought and symbol, perceiving and influencing the mortal world only in subtle ways. To directly affect anything, a spirit must manifest or possess a physical form — and the form has to make symbolic sense. A fire spirit won't possess water; it might animate a cloud of cinders or possess a hot-headed youth.

This is the framework that applies not just to wild spirits like the Glasbren or the Coedwaig, but to ghosts, dool spirits, some primordial powers, The Things Below, and little gods.

Many spirits are bound to a thing in the physical world — a tree, an altar, a fox skull, a cherished item, the place they died. The tether grants the spirit a stronger connection to this world and a place to retreat and rejuvenate if its manifest form is harmed.

A tether is also a vulnerability. Harm it to harm the spirit; destroy it to destroy the spirit (or at least diminish it for human lifetimes). The most powerful tethers bind their spirits, restricting their perceptions and influence — but no binding is perfect, and a bound spirit will tempt or trick others into freeing it.

You can only fight a spirit when it manifests, and manifest forms are often hard to harm — lots of HP, vulnerable only to specific materials (silver, salt, black iron, fire) or certain attacks. Reducing a manifest form to 0 HP ends that manifestation and forces the spirit back to its tether, but doesn't truly harm it.

To truly harm a spirit, you need potent magic, you damage or destroy its tether, or you fight it in the spirit realm. Track manifest HP and true HP separately if the PCs are doing anything that could cross the boundary.

The Blessed senses active spirits, speaks with them, and can force even dormant ones to manifest and hear her out. For everyone else, communion means entering a sacred site carefully, respectfully, and making an offering that gets the spirit's attention. Provoking a spirit into manifesting works too, and rarely ends well.

To seek a spirit in its own realm, a PC must shift consciousness via meditation, drugs, exhaustion, percussion and dance, a guide, or a magic item. Then they Chart a Course through the spirit world. Good requirements: a knowledgeable guide, the risk of getting lost, grueling travel, and the threat of Wraiths, dool spirits, fundamentals, Voidblights, or just territorial elemental spirits.

Build a sacred site from terrain + theme + marker + activity + disposition. Activity ranges from missing or imprisoned through slumbering and sporadic to alert and freely manifesting. Disposition runs from corrupted-dangerous through vengeful and plaintive to curious, mischievous, and finally content and beneficent. A spirit can be powerful and friendly; a spirit can be weak and lethal.