Nymphs

Nymphs are the naturally occurring spirits found in nature, formed by the clustering of Spirit. The spirit that exists everywhere as a thin fog that accumulates in some places are the mixed remains of the creatures and nymphs that once died, with their base souls falling apart and getting reborn as new individuals. Still, the traits of the creatures the spirit originally comes from heavily influences the appearance and behaviour of the nymphs.

Nymphs are loosely categorized in 5 categories, but these are blurry and just for superficial categorisation purposes. Often nymphs will fit in various categories to different extents, especially the lampad category is common among many nymphs of different types.

## Categories

*Nereids:* Nereids are the nymps of the sea. They are by far the greatest in number of all nymphs, but due to their habitat they are encountered by humans less often than other types. Due to the ''weight'' of emotions, more bitter and angry spirit sinks deep into the ocean while the lighthearted emotions form into nymphs before sinking deep, so most surface-dwelling nereids are playful inoccuous nymphs, while deep-sea nereids are often malevolent and more powerful. These Abyssal Nereids sometimes come to the surface and wreak destruction upon the ecosystems and humans in their paths, requiring them to be hunted down by specialized sorcerer squads. Due to their aquatic origin, the natural frequencies of Nereids are generally close to water, hydrogen, oxygen, salt, flesh or any element they contain.

*Naiads:* Naiads are nymphs of freshwater. They occur commonly in large freshwater ecosystems such as swamps and rivers, and are most similar to Dryads rather than Nereids usually due to their proximity. Most Naiads behave like biological creatures, though exceptions exist especially in areas with more human death where the influence of human spirit is higher. They take the shape of various freshwater and near-water land creatures, often in chimaeric combinations.

*Dryads:* Dryads are nymphs of terrestrial ecosystems, most often forests but also others such as plains and deserts. Like Naiads and Nereids they often take on a chimaeric shape drawing from the animals in the ecosystem. Of all nymphs, dryads have the most common human influence and are often more intelligent even those that are not human shaped. Dryads often have more complicated but less powerful techniques than some other nymphs such as Nereids and Aurai.

*Aurai:* Aurai are nymphs of the sky and mountains. They are formed by the spirit that drifts upwards because it carried lighter emotions with it. Light emotions are those such as kindheartedness, happiness, relief, and fleeting love, but also fleeting sudden anger, so despite Aurai being more kind of average they may be unpredictable and quick to change moods.

*Lampads*: Lampads are unusual compared to other nymphs in their formation process. They form when a soul of a dead creature has yet to dissolve due to an extremely heavy and strong emotion keeping it clustered, allowing it to amass spirit around it. They most often form in situation of mass death in tragic circumstances. Disease, war, and disasters are common sources of lampads, though a single person dying may also spawn a lampad sometimes. The forming lampad takes in the spirit around it and imprints on it, so a lampad forming in nature may have traits of dryads, naiads or nereids. When a massive tragedy happens and one lampad forms, they can snowball to a massive power by holding down the other dying souls, creating an amalgam of those lost souls - a lich. These are the most dangerous nymphs.

*Oreads*: Oreads are the nymphs of the mountains, earth and caves. They form when spirit gets condensed on one location surrounded by earth, which happens quite commonly, however due to them forming underground and generall remaining there, they are seen very rarely. Oreads absorb the heavy emotions of the spirit matter, just like deep-sea Nereids but above ground. They are less common than Nereids but similar in power and intelligence. Due to few lifeforms being around underground, Oreads have the least traits of biological animals and often appear as very strange creatures or as shapeless golems.

*Asteriae:* Asteriae are unusual nymphs, opposite in their weirdness compared to lampads. Asteriae form from the spirit emitted by the sun and stars or just present in space. The quantity of spirit present outside Dasjall is vastly greater than that on Dasjall, but is far more whispy and poorly concentrated, so most Asteriae are tiny, far tinier than nymphs on Dasjall. Asteriae can, however, cluster together to greater power when one keeps eating other smaller asteriae. Without environmental constraints of other nymphs, this can allow Asteriae to rarely grow to a higher strength than any terrestrial nymph. Large Asteriae rarely enter Dasjall's atmosphere, and the small ones that do are the primary food source of Aurai. When a greater Asteria enters Dasjall, they are often very disruptive and dangerous.

## List of Nymph kinds and individuals

These are specific examples of common or notable nymphs with noted categories.

**Siren**: Sirens are Nereid nymphs formed from spirit with unresolved longing. They are humanoids with various degrees of traits of aquatic animals. Their divergent technique is carried by their songs, another way in which they are similar to harpies. A siren will gain more humanity by receiving love back, but generally they just end up drowning people and consuming their spirit as they die.

**Harpy**: Harpies are Aurai nymphs that have traits of humans and birds. They are formed from the fleeting emotions of romanticism and attraction mostly, which is why they have a fixation on seducing passing humans. Harpies, like Sirens, convey their divergence ability through song, which has a powerful effect on those who are also romantic. However, due to the Harpy's voracious nature, what happens after luring in a victim is generally just killing and consuming their spirit for sustenance. Harpies vary in size between 3 and 7 m wingspan.

**Keres**: Keres are Lampad nymphs that form from similar spirit to Valkyries, but from the spirit that evaporates higher above the battlefields, so they are formed with less energy. A Keres hungers for more spirit of people who died a desperate violent death and they trek over the world in search of disasters as ominous omens of ill luck.

**Strigoi**: Strigoi are unusual Lampad nymphs rarely formed from large masses of people who died of hunger. Unlike most Lampads, Strigoi do not manifest a body for themselves. Instead, they posses the first compatible human and nestle themselves in their spirit. Compatibility is highest with people afflicted by starvation. When a person gets posessed by a Strigoi, they will still be themselves, but when the Strigoi gets hungry for spirit to consume they will be overtaken by an irresistible bloodlust. The Strigoi grants the host far greater physical power and senses through a form of Convergence, making them extremely dangerous even to experienced sorcerers. The spirit of a person killed by a Strigoi is consumed completely, and when enough excess spirit is accumulated, the Strigoi splits into two at the right moment to posess another person. Exterminating any Strigoi is of extremely high priority.

**Kishi*:*** Kishi are a rare kind of Dryad nymphs with Lampad influence. They are dryads that do not manifest their own body with conjuration but instead posess a person they come across. They lurk in the wilderness without a body until they encounter a child, which they can then inhabit for the rest of their life. Kishi do not just eat spirit, but also store consumed flesh in a divergent technique. When enough flesh and spirit have been consumed in their ravenous outbursts, they spit out an entirely formed Argoerakishi. The Agoerakishi is a full ravenous beast with no human side to it, and it will keep consuming until it dies in the span of a few days to weeks. When the Agoerakishi dies, it releases a Kishi spirit. That is the Kishi life cycle. When a Kishi takes over the host temporarily, it enters a state like Convergence and manifests beastly qualities and a hyena face on the back of its head, and then the head twists around leaving the unconscious human face on the back.

**Makhai**: Makhai are Lampad nymphs born from the souls of fallen warriors or people who died in vain in a fight. Due to the mental state at death of the spirits that form them, Makhai are obsessed with nothing but fighting against whatever stands before them. The presence of one Makhai often causes other nearby spirits that just underwent the same fate to also rebound into a Makhai, causing a chain reaction, so in the rare event of a Makhai spawning on a battlefield it must either be immediately obliterated or every remaining person evacuates. If several Makhai meet, they will start fighting each other, and due to their tough nearly-unkillable nature they can keep fighting for hours, days, sometimes weeks, and sometimes longer on end, getting better at fighting every minute. If many Makhai are left alive for long , they can grow each other to heights of martial arts skill in vast excess of any mortal creature. There are still several old Makhai like that alive, who have made name as legendary warriors.

**Valkyrie**: Valkyries are winged humanoid lampads that hang around battlefields. They feast on the souls of those fallen in battle and so they reduce the number of other lampads forming where they're present. Valkyries are the only lampads that are often revered as demigods rather than despised as demons. Sometimes valkyries become aggressive and dangerous if they go too long without fresh souls from battle, and they might attack humans to obtain more spirit. Due to them having a taste for the desperate tinge of emotion of a warrior's soul, a valkyrie will try to find a strong healthy person and fight them fairly to the death to consume their spirit.