Humane Spirits

*Spirits deeply connected to society and the human condition*

### **Sages**

* Spirits of knowledge. Assume various forms, such as owls, or more abstract ones like a swirling twister of pages and books. Many can be found in the Library.
* Very eager to know more but very protective of what they do know already. Sages are oft sought out to learn something that is not readily found, but it will come with a large intellectual price.

There are not many around Wisteria that aren’t in the Library, and they are fickle spirits, but the ones you can find will offer up a secret or piece of knowledge that is equivalent in significance to whatever you offer up.

OFFERING - The only way to get a pact out of a sage spirit is to offer up a unique piece of knowledge that they do not already have. If you do not have this, then permanently giving up something you know, a memory or thought, will suffice. The more significant the memory, the more information you can get out of a sage.

### **Hobs**

* Household domestic spirits, who love working and helping. Appear to look like short, pale goblin-like humans.
* They will gladly aid humans and magicians alike and are very easy to make pacts with, but they despise any kind of laziness or lack of promptness, and will get hostile if they do not believe you are trying to hold up your end well enough.

Hobs want to help out, and will gladly make mundane non-magic deals and also pacts with the promise of sustenance and shelter. The small prices mean that magic or services from a hob won’t be especially powerful.

OFFERING - Initially, sweet food like honey or chocolate will be enough to draw a hob to your home, and offering to keep them fed and letting them live with you will satisfy them long-term.

### **Mares & Dreamers**

* Nightmare and dream spirits, respectively. Both tend to appear as “uncanny valley” humans, with odd features and proportions that make them look unsettling. Mares drift more towards darker, paler, nastier looks while Dreamers appear more glitzy, bright, and put together.
* Grant magic relating to nightmares, dreams, glamour and sleep. The existence of these whimsical spirits was widely debated in the magic community, until one of the more boisterous magicians sent the entire congregation that was debating it to sleep. Can even grant reality manipulation to a certain degree. ***Extremely powerful***

One must perform The Dreamer Ritual to even find these spirits.  And when you do they are nigh impossible to make pacts with, they are barely connected to reality and their knowledge of it comes from dreams and nightmares. One must think like one of them to even communicate with them.

OFFERING - The Dreamer Ritual. It opens and closes one's mind to the mares and dreamers, and will summon the closest of either when performed. This is the only known way to interact with them outside of sleep. The ritual can be found inside the *“Rituals and Realms”* book in St. Edith’s library.

### **Muses**

* Spirits of the arts. Often appear as young women, and are accompanied/occupied with some instrument of art.
* Pacts with Muses are fairly abnormal, but they can grant artistic/musical proficiency, powerful chants and rhythmic incantations, and more.

Musical spirits that can grant proficiency in the arts, powerful chants and rhythmic incantations, and more.

OFFERING - The playing of a meaningful song. Playing a song, or singing one, that is personally meaningful to you will capture a Muse’s attention.

### **Champions**

* These spirits embody humanities most honourable combat. Traditionally, they present themselves as noble knights, brave musketeers, ancient athletes or great generals. These spirits will be drawn to people of great talent and a good sense for fairness and honour. They will give these people courage and strength to ensure their way to the top.
* Making pacts with or binding these spirits might give you enhanced courage, better foresight, superior strategy or a simple burst of strength when you most direly need it.

Champions want to see people excel at noble tasks and be fair in the process. Simple sportsmanship and success will attract their attention.

OFFERING - You might be challenged to a fair duel of some kind. The exact nature will depend on the champion, whether it is one of football, warfare or chess. If you win, they will help you.

### **Basilisks**

* Basilisks are abstract entities with no physical form that must inhabit other mediums, such as surfaces, screens, or reflections. A basilisk looks to an outside observer like a chaotic collection of images shifting continuously between each other as it moves, each one a still image in a slightly different pose; as a result, they have no stable form.
* As is obvious from their form, they are heavily tied to the arts, much like muses - but they are far more hostile. It is believed that basilisks form when a brilliant artist meets a violent or unexpected end, and the many creative ideas in their head are discharged and given form and hostility from the remains of the artist’s mind.
* Basilisks are named for their ability to target people via perceptions, such as sight or sound. The strongest basilisks match their namesake, in that merely looking at them can induce death, but weaker basilisks tend to only induce unconsciousness, extreme headaches, dehydration, or bleeding. The majority tend towards the latter level of strength, attacking prey by disorienting them and injuring them via sight in order to inhabit the surface of their skin and begin breaking it down. As entities of perception, they can be opposed by obscurants, such as smoke, ink, or oil.
* Pacts with basilisks tend to confer abilities related to perception, including at-a-glance attacks and an immunity to sensory overload. Basilisks’ nature also makes them effective assassins if you can bind one to your service, as physical doors don’t stop them traversing the surface of the floor beneath it.

Basilisks have little interest in making pacts due to their somewhat abstract thought processes. The violent death of a brilliant creative mind is liable to get the attention of nearby basilisks, and it’s also liable to create a new one.

OFFERING - The murder of an artist or other creative type will draw nearby basilisks to you.

### **Avatars**

* Avatars are the personification of a location, generally scaling up in power as the location gets larger or more prominent. Their source location reflects them, and they reflect it; to damage an avatar is to bring ruin to a location, and the burning of a location will injure its avatar. Though avatars take humanoid form, they are not necessarily human in mind, morality, or behaviour. To form an avatar a source location must be an important landmark or geographical feature; you’re not likely to find an avatar of someone’s street.
* The relationship between avatars and nearby spirits, or spirits associated with their source, varies. They are most often friendly with those that protect their location, and hostile to those who would look to change or destroy it. Their appearance is tied to their location - one associated with a body of water would look more like a naiad, compared to one associated with an urban area, which might display some of the traits of a smog dweller.
* Notable avatars found in Wisteria include the Avatar of the Spirit Well and the Avatar of Clarendon River. It is believed that there is an Avatar of St. Edith’s Library, though it has been also suggested that St. Edith *is* the Avatar by now. It is hypothesised that there is an Avatar of Wisteria; if such a spirit exists, it has never been seen.
* Pacts with avatars are difficult given their relative strength, but when made their benefits correspond with the nature of the avatar involved. One might offer the ability to find your way back to their source location even from a locked room; another might offer free travel through the location, unhindered by any nasty inhabitants. An avatar of a river may provide the ability to traverse bodies of water.

Avatars are tied to a location and therefore do not need calling. Whether an avatar manifests for you is a different question, and they generally only do it to those who contribute to their site (such as those who invest power in a landmark) or those who are working to destroy it. In the latter case, they will be hostile. Avatars that make pacts do so with accompanying requirements to assist their source site in some way, with greater benefits requiring more significant contribution.

OFFERING - Unnecessary; they are tied to a site.

### **Dogs of War**

* Dogs of War, also known as dog tags, are spirits of conflict more narrow in source to a wraith. Where wraiths emerge from conflict and discord as a whole, dog tags only emerge during particularly prolonged wars. They also draw their power from the war they came from. As spirits of war, they carry inhuman vitality, allowing them to fight on even after receiving wounds that should incapacitate them, only collapsing when they finally accumulate enough damage that it’s not even remotely plausible that they’d stay upright. They can be killed, but so long as their source conflict continues, they will re-emerge somewhere nearby a few days later. In addition to their constitution, they also possess a sense for weapons - allowing them to seek out weapons to use in combat. This, paired with near-unmatched skill in both marksmanship and close quarters combat, makes them extremely dangerous. They’re also extremely difficult to bind if their source conflict is still ongoing, to the point that it’s generally considered impossible.
* There exist two subtypes of dog tags: frag tags, also known as blast dogs, which emerge in much smaller numbers but always carry explosives or means to start large fires, and who cannot return after death unless a large fire is present for them to walk out of; and rag tags, also known as black dogs, which emerge as representations of civilian casualties of war, and who are capable of inflicting retaliatory curses on those who kill them (a potent ability when paired with their resurrection).
* Appearance-wise, dog tags are indistinct soldiers, becoming more clearly individual with each kill; frag tags wear heavier gear; rag tags tend to take the form of children or the very old.
* Pacts with dog tags and their subtypes confer militaristic, combat-oriented or combat-adjacent abilities, such as their sense of weapons or marksmanship.

Dogs of War or dog tags are extremely hard to bind, and so willing pacts are the most common way of working with a dog tag. They can be called with representations of their home conflict, though whether this will invite their interest or their enmity depends on the dog tag in question. Note that calling a dog tag (or any of its subtypes) will likely draw its squadmates to you as well. They do not often make pacts, but when they do, they tend to request resources like firearms or combat assistance like keeping them safe from other magicians that may look to destroy them.

OFFERING - Dogs of War can be called to you by representations of their conflict.

### **Pixies**

* Conniving trickster Spirits who pull pranks and like to misdirect and confuse. Take any form they please due to their glamor magic. Generally uninterested in serious matters and don’t get involved in big events.
* They give tricky, illusive magic, including magic holograms, glamor, or hiding in plain sight. Pixies may require the magician to do something to aid in tricks and pranks. For a long time Pixies had convinced the magic populace that they were born whenever someone pulled a prank, this led to a worldwide prank ban for a few months before it was revealed to be a joke. In all fairness they were very convincing. To this day the birth of Pixies is very mysterious and shrouded in misinformation.

Pixies are very non-serious Spirits and actively avoid involvement with big events, so the most they are going to ask you to do is to help them in their pranks or schemes. The amount of effort willing to be put in by the magician usually determines the amount of power they are given to use.

OFFERING - Anything that a Pixie may find funny, or useful for current or future schemes.

### Notable Spirits:

***Nivaa*** (Pixie): Leader of Wisteria’s pixies. A trickster like all pixies, proficient in using glamor to the point that she can make entire worlds of glamour. Her personality is that of a caricature, her only goal is to entertain the other pixies.

***Rothsun*** (Sage): The sage specifically born from the presence of St. Edith’s library. Right-hand man of St. Edith herself and seer of everything that happens within the library’s walls. Mortal enemy of Morumask.

***Nalia*** (Muse): The spirit of sweet song and romance. She is easily swayed to help by being serenaded with ballads and poetic recitations of love, but this may also drive her to meddle in your love life.

***Renaud*** (Cult-God): A Canadian/American claiming to be the vessel of a neo-pagan god. Amassed enough followers to successfully take over the west part of South Wisteria. Currently has a following of 110+ worshipers, each of them supplying him with advanced regenerative and sensory abilities, as well as other pacts he has made with less-than-noble Spirits.