Animancy

*←Back to Skills*

**Animancy** is a skill notoriously difficult to master but with unique and significant effects: allowing the user to give life and independent thought to objects and creatures. Once a mere side effect of holons exploring their own abilities (see Heaps), certain powerful animancers refined and developed the skill so that future holons could take advantage of it. Many species that exist independently in the world now were originally created by animancy.

## Known Users of Animancy

* Oriel
* Particle
* Ryba
* Komahina

## Effect on Kellogg's Ecosystem

Animancy has the power to create animates, and animates, once blessed with sentience, often have the ability to maintain their own existence. Some find ways to reproduce, and this leads to a new species being born. This power alone has caused many to deify holons, allowing the warlords to rise to power very simply. Holons have many powers, but the strongest are what define them as the dominant creatures on the planet.

### Delphi

**Delphi**, home of Oriel, became a flocking point for animancers in Aga La. There was much experimentation done, and many creatures were created and lost. Eventually, Oriel suggested strict limitations on the creation of animates by individuals in order to limit the potentially infinite population explosion and allow the ecosystem to settle.

## Techniques

### Life Whisperer

Animancers **blow life** into their creations. As they grow in strength, their basic techniques grow as well, allowing them more and more specific control over what they invent. An animancer will be naturally empathetic and aware, and spread this inventiveness to the things it creates.

### Gossip Stone

This technique was one of the first developed for regular use by early animancers. By **bestowing basic sentience** to an object or creature, the user could press it for information or ask it to keep watch on an area.

* **Sentinel Stone**: An improvement on the Gossip Stone, allowing the sentient object to stay in contact and give alerts to the user.

### Mannequin

Animancers can focus their power and indefinitely store a small part of it within a simple body, typically one crafted from a basic element or material. This mannequin often acts as a **servent or helper** to the animancer and can be tasked with simple things.

* **Golem**: Some animancers increase the strength of their mannequins, allowing them to grow in size by mixing nearby materials into their form, and hold their own in combat.

### Murmur

This technique allows an animancer to speak to the elements themselves, drawing life into them to aid them temporarily. The different natural elements (wind, water, earth, and fire) each have a form that they naturally inhabit when an animancer **murmurs to them**. It is said these forms resemble mushi.

* **Sylph Murmur**: Created from air. It is small and quick, and will aid the animancer before healing them lightly and dissipating.

### Touch of Delirium

Some animancers discovered techniques that would allow them to reverse the effects of their skill. This touch **temporarily removes sentience** from a creature, devolving them into an animalistic state. Facing a primal creature in combat, or facing an intelligent being in combat - the desired option is not always obvious, and the animancer wielding this technique should be cautious when deciding whether to target ally or enemy.