The Truth About the Spirits (SB)

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In earlier chapters, all we gave were vague hints that the spirit world was the afterlife, a mirror of our world where the indestructible part of all things reside.
It would follow, then, based on the construction of the AD&D multiverse, that the spirit world is somewhere between Limbo, the Astral, and the Ethereal Plane, perhaps even part of one or more of the above.
Well, in making those hints, we were in fact telling a white lie.
There is a simple reason why no one has ever visited the spirit world and lived to tell about it: The spirit world doesn't exist.
The spirit world is a figment of mortals' imaginations. It is the land that people dream of when they sleep; it is a place where ideas and emotions find form, and where yesterday's shadows are still cast across the ground; it is a place where legendary heroes are born when storytellers have invented or reinvented them; it is a place where the words and deeds of the dead live on after their time, as long as they exist in some fashion in the minds of mortals.
If Callax the Enchanter thinks of his dead father, the "father"—or rather, Callax's image of him—comes into existence in the spirit world, and will linger until he has been forgotten. The phantasm of the "father" is called, for convenience's sake, a spirit. Equally, if a character feels a powerful emotion—anger, hope, hatred—that emotion finds a form as a spirit. A person who is forced to leave a loved home might leave a kind of "psychic echo" of herself there, and that, too, is a spirit.
The strongest spirits are those which are thought of or told of the most, or those caused by the strongest emotions. And once created, the spirits are further shaped and altered and given powers by those who believe they hold sway over them. In a very real way, the shamans are themselves the source of their power. It is the belief of the shaman that the spirits grant him magical abilities if he makes sacrifices to them that allows the spirits to do just that.
==Simple Facts: Questions and Answers==
: Q: Are spirits immortal?
: A: No. They fade away as time passes, unless reinforced by the beliefs or feelings of mortals.
: Q: How intelligent are the spirits?
: A: They are as intelligent and wise as mortals believe them to be.
: Q: Are mortals aware of the spirits created by their feelings and thoughts?
: A: No. In fact, even the shamans are unaware that this is how spirits are created. Likewise, most spirits aren't aware that they were created by mortals, either.
: Q: Are spirits linked to anything other than mortals?
: A: Yes, some are, and spirits associated with nature in particular. A tree's spirit fades away if the tree dies, for example.
: Q: Do characters enter the spirit world when they dream?
: A: No. At most they look into or receive visions from the spirit world.
: Q: What happens if peoples' ideas about a spirit change?
: A: If the spirit exists only because people believe in it, the spirit changes to conform to these new ideas. In some instances, this can cause one spirits to become split into two or more different ones, if contradictory views of the same spirit begin to emerge.
: Q: What happens if two different groups of people have different ideas about a spirit's personality?
: A: The spirit appears to be different to each group.