First Spirits

## Common Knowledge

The spirits of the world - that is to say the ifrits, venti, nymphs, and naiads - sometimes speak of their ancestors: four spirits inextricably tied to the elements.

## Further Description

Avani, Cinaed, Nanami, and Zeru are the first four elemental spirits, from whom all spirits are descended either by mortal union or divine creation. Many spirits respect, revere, or outright worship their parent spirit. Each spirit has incredible power over their respective element, as well as Elemental magic in general, and each can bestow that power onto any they so choose.

The Spirits began their lives as Demon Lords, powerful beings created by Velka the goddess of sin, but in their battle for independence became bound to an element of the Material Plane.

## Members

### Avani, the First Nymph

Firm Avani, the first spirit of earth. Avani gave rise to the Greater and Lesser Nymphs, and protected the forests of Temporis with her motherly, kind nature and unfathomable power over earth and plant life. During the Planar War, she fused with the Binturian pirate Meerafet.

### Cinaed, the First Ifrit (Deceased)

Prideful Cinaed, the first spirit of fire. Cinaed gave rise to the Greater and Lesser Ifrits (or Ifriti), and protected the deserts of Temporis with his unyielding confidence, power over fire - more than he ever had as a Demon Lord - and martial prowess. During the Planar War, Cinaed tried to instigate a fight with Avani, and by extension Meerafet. Though he was never even wounded during their engagement, his rage consumed him and killed him.

Cinaed left behind a daughter, a Greater Ifrit named Emberara, who some Ifrits worship in the same way they did her father.

### Nanami, the First Nayad

Wise Nanami, the first spirit of water. Nanami gave rise to the Greater and Lesser Naiads, and protected the oceans of Temporis with her cunning and her power over water and the tides.

Nanami has a passing friendship with Night, the embodiment of the Astral Plane, though the two have never spoken.

One of Nanami’s descendants would later give birth to Morgan, a Greater Naiad who would be a Binturian, the Prophet of Life, and the Elder God of Compassion.

### Zeru, the First Venti

Swift Zeru, the first spirit of wind. Zeru gave rise to the Greater and Lesser Venti, and protected the mountaintops and clouds of Temporis with his whimsy, psychological trickery, and power over air and storms.

## History

### Rebellion in the Abyss

The four spirits began their lives as Demon Lords of the Abyss, the earliest creations of the goddess of sin Velka charged with ruling a terraform of their mother’s plane. Avani ruled the ninth terraform, Cinaed the twelfth terraform, Nanami the first terraform, and Zeru the thirteenth terraform. Despite their luxurious positions, they became disillusioned with the Abyss and sought to leave. Expecting both their subjects and Velka herself to object to their departure, the four left the Abyss in secret and arrived in the Material Plane. Seeking to put as much distance between themselves and the Abyssal portal through which they escaped, the four Demon Lords scattered to the corners of Temporis.

Firm Avani fled to the North and took refuge in the woods, communing and hiding among the trees and creatures of the forest. Swift Zeru ran to the east, climbing the mighty mountains which lay in his path, moving as swiftly as the birds that called the mountains home. Cinaed, ever prideful, traveled south to the desert, welcoming the heat as only a demon could and making his home in the desert, a bold statement that he did not need to hide from the lesser demons. Clever Nanami made her way westwards, slipping into the ocean in hopes that demons would not think to search for a creature of fire hidden in the water.

Velka feared that her children entering the Material Plane might upset her mother, the Goddess of Protection, and so she sent legions of demons to stop their escape, and then sent armies to the Material Plane to bring the escaped Demon Lords home by any means necessary.

### One with the Elements

They came first for Avani, burning the woods and murdering the creatures which called the forest home. Avani saw this and felt remorse, for the forest had become a home to her, and she felt compelled to defend it. Avani went to the center of the forest and meditated, hoping that with all the energies of the forest surrounding her she could find the strength to repel the invading force. Suddenly, she found herself aware of the life of the forest, and realized that she could feel the life of every creature that surrounded her, from the ancient trees to the short-lived chipmunks, and she immersed with the great force that she could now sense, taking the power of the forest’s essence and in effect becoming it. The demon’s horns turned as brown as the trees from which she drew her energies, and her tail vanished. Firm Avani, no longer a demon but rather a nymph, went to face her pursuers, and in her rage drew vines from the earth to crush her enemies and commanded the animals of the woods to fight by her side, and so she drove out the demons from her forest.

The demons, their rage increased, left the north and traveled instead to the east, clawing their way up the mountain and fouling the sky up with the smoke from their fires. Zeru saw this, and traveled to the highest point of the highest mountain. There he stayed, his only weapon a bow and a dwindling number of arrows. From on high, he observed the foul smokes and the stocky creatures trying to force their way into the sky’s domain, and felt the winds around him, and as he loosed his last arrow he suddenly and impulsively leaped into the sky, letting the wind take him, and the wind did take him, and reformed him into a winged creature of the sky, a venti. Swift Zeru felt power, as if the sky itself had granted him dominion over the winds to do with as he pleased. Now more confident than ever, Zeru went to face the demons. The demons saw their changed adversary and fired many arrows, but the spirit dodged them, swift as the wind, and gathered raging gales that tore the demons from the mountain and sent them back to earth. The demons had to give up, for Zeru’s new powers made climbing the mountains an impossibility.

At this point, hundreds of demons had died, but the fury of the Abyss was a mighty force indeed, and so yet more demons went south, to where the prideful Cinaed was waiting for them. He offered to take on all the demons at once, claiming that his rage could match the might of any. He stood in the hottest part of the desert, where the sun itself could play audience to his fighting. The demons came, and Cinaed fought for days, matching the might of any who came to challenge him. This continued for over a week before Cinaed found his strength failing him. Enraged, he screamed upwards, throwing his rage to the sun itself and basking in the rage of battle. He found himself filled with a fire unlike any which had existed before. The spirit Cinaed was refreshed, and now took on even more demons at once, calling forth flames to engulf his enemies when his strength failed him, and eventually the demons had to retreat once more, lest all who had come to the surface be lost entirely. Cinaed raged at them as they fled, calling them cowards and boasting of his own strength, the strength of an Ifrit.

The rage of the demons was quickly turning to desperation, for all who had fled had thus far eluded them. They turned their attention westwards to the sea, where Nanami had taken refuge. Using their wits rather than strength, the demons poured poison into the sea, hoping to flush Nanami out before the sea could grant her power. Nanami saw this and realized that she could neither best the demons nor survive their poison, and so she dove to the deepest part of the sea, planning on denying the demons the trophy of her corpse to bring back to the Abyss. Unable to speak or breathe, the demon instead focused on the power of the tides which she had called home for some time, felt the strength of the ocean surrounding her, and, at peace, took a deep breath. It was much to her surprise that the naiad Nanami found herself able to breathe underwater as she had gained fins and gills. Nanami felt the power of the tides coursing through her. Pleased with her new gift, she ascended from the depths of the ocean and sent forth great waves, casting out the poison which had filled the ocean and dashing the demons against the shores.

To prevent another attack from the Abyss on the Material Plane, Protection intervened and forced the four escapees and Velka to sit down and negotiate a peace. Indeed, it was Protection’s influence that had changed the spirits in the first place. Velka recognized that her former Demon Lords, now Elemental Spirits, had their own agency and could do as they wished. The four Spirits were not permitted to return to the Abyss unless Velka allowed them to, but Protection offered them both free reign over the Material Plane and their own domains in the Elemental Plane (so long as they protected the element which they embodied). They, of course, agreed.

### Birth of the Spirits

In the years to come, the spirits would create Greater Spirits in their likeness to guard certain places in their absence, and through unions with mortals or transformative blessings created the first Lesser Spirits.

### Morgan (> 9,900 A.B.)

At some point, one of Nanami’s direct Naiad descendents would meet a mortal woman with distant naiad traces in her lineage. Together they would birth a child, a Greater Naiad, who had been selected in the far future by the Elder God of Life to become the Elder God of Compassion. This Naiad would be imprisoned in a Lesser Naiad-like body, and for unknown reasons left adrift on the Dilghaoan coastline to be found by human monks. The being would be named Morgan, and would later become a member of the Binturian Party and the Prophet of Life before ascending to his station as an Elder God.

### Planar War (10,015 A.B.)

During the Planar War Avani merged her form with the Binturian Meerafet, a distant descendent of one of Old Binturia’s Mortal Mages. In their fusion, they became the Pillar of Elemental Magic. This pact enraged Cinaed, who demanded that Avani come out of her mortal hiding place and fight him like a real spirit. Over the course of fighting Meerafet, who chose deliberately not to release Avani’s full power and instead keeping a solid distance from the enraged ifrit, Cinaed’s anger completely overwhelmed his body and mind. In a final burst of unyielding rage, he exploded with a force unlike anything seen in centuries. Meerafet narrowly survived the blast, but Cinaed was well and truly gone.

### Current Planes of Residence

Cinaed’s soul is presumably someplace in the Soul Plane or the Afterlife, and Avani is bound to Meerafet on the Material Plane. Nanami and Zeru both reside in their respective domains of the Elemental Plane.

## Further Information

* The Abyss
* The Binturian Party
* Elemental Plane
* Elu
* Magic
* Morgan
* Planar War
* Protection
* Spirits
* Velka