Some Interesting Things I've Tried... 1) corresponding 5 warriors, 5 spellcasters, and 5 'other' to the points, the outer edges, and the inner edges on a pentagram. To do this, however, one needs to designate one set of 5 to be the points, and there's no well-defined way to make that choice arbitrary. 2) dividing adepts into facets, with each facet having an inernal, physical, and metaphysical expression., i.e. * The warrior internalises control, mastering himself with utmust discipline. The smith physicalizes, externalizes control, crafting tools to hold his power. The Elementalist seeks metaphysical control over the building blocks of reality, the five elements. * The archer internalizes understanding, relying on his own personal senses and his straightforward sense of himself and the world. The seeker physicalizes and externalizes understanding, gleening knowledge from ancient artifacts and old tomes, laying down knowledge for the time to come. The wizard seeks metaphysical understanding of names and patterns. * The skyraider internalizes separation into part of his cultural identity, seeing himself and his people separate from those they act upon (raid) distancing his society from other's society. Air captains separate themselves from most of their brethren, bringing law to the sky, byt they must still separate themselves from the common people to bring safety to them. The theif physicalizes and externalizes separation, separating himself from everyone and everything, depending only on himself. The illusionists seeks metaphysical separation, separating people from their perceptions, emotions, and luck, and even separating the attributes of a thing from the reality of it. * The swordmaster internalizes interaction, dealing with person interactions--seduction, charm, and the interplay between two duelists, attacker and defender (rippost!). The Troubador physicalizes and externalizes interaction, in the form of song, story, or written word, painting archetypical interactions in the public consciousness. (no mage known here. Shaman does metaphysicalize interactions, and filled this place until I realized we'd seen non-namegiver shamen) * The cavalryman internalizes alliance, becoming one with his mount. The beastmaster externalizes and physicalizes alliance, forming bonds with the many creatures of the world. The nethermancer seeks metaphysical alliance and understanding of the creatures of the spirit world. so the five aspects are control, understanding, separation, alliance, and interaction. Corresponding to Elementals, Thought forms, Invae, Loa, and Nature Spirits?...what of wu-jen? Or if they are in that 5, what of Thought Forms? Or do they correspond to the 5 elements? Earth, Fire, Air, Wood, Water? *Thought Forms are spells, not spirits. The psychics are confused.* 3) There are 15 disciplines. There are also things called half-adepts, who I suppose one could say have a half-discipline. Well, there are 15 possible ways of picking two things from 6 possible choices...(as well as 15 possible ways to pick 4 things from 6 choices...there might not be a 1-to-1 correspondance between passions and disciplines...each passion favoring 6 discipline, each discipline favoring 6 passions). Need to play with more, rife with numeromantic possibilites. Any obvious occurances of 6 or 20 in the world? And why do humans have 7 segments? *LED Displays* 4) There are 12 Saints from Nexus. There are three wyrm gods (mad passions?). This sums to 15. Coincidence? *No* 5) There are adepts, who are empowered by having a discipline. There are half-adepts, who presumably use the same power source. There are also a few wierd things out there that use the same way of doing things as adepts, but don't have a discipline (Ork Liberators, Journeymen, shamen?), there are also questors, and the Passions they draw power from. Horros may also be related, in some way yet to be guessed. There are spirits and Born Mages (who seem to be closely related to spirits, somehow), as well as various magical animals (who are probably tied up in the spirit/born mage thing somehow). Finally, there are Dragons, who are not name-givers, but name-makers (at least by their own claim), invented disciplined magic (I think), and may or may not be related to the Valheru (the other prime candidate is the Horrors...) It might be possible that there are two Major Ways of Doing Magic, which I'll call Name and Feel. Passions are the essence of the Named way (or perhaps they do things by Feeling, but others Name their actions and use them thusly?), and adepts, half-adepts, assorted wierdness, and all that, are practitioners. Spirits and Born Mages, on the other hand, do it by Feeling, becoming the magic as they do it, or at least channeling it through their own selves rather than calling upon some abstract names. Some Hermetics try, but they still can't write in astral space. Magical Animals use Feel, since they aren't namegivers. *Passions are Named Feelings, an attempt by the Dragons and the Adepts to force the world to fit their theories, to be seen through their lens.* Dragons seeme to have mastered both forms of spellcasting, at least. Name and Feel are both important to them...they can do magic, they can make magic, but also, they Are Magic. Horrors seem to be somehow related to passions. If the pasisons are pieces, then perhaps it is a game of Names (passions seem to always be namegivers), with "Horror" as one side (or possibly as simply a force in game, like entropy, or randomness in solitare, that the people playing are trying to beat). Magic by Feel doesn't seem to be directly related to the rules of this game in any particular way...it might be said that Names are the rules, and Feelings make the board and the pieces. Who invented the game? The Valheru? Did the Valheru split into Horrors and Dragons? Are there "Horror Disciplines"? Is "Wormskull" more closely related to Earth Elemental or Warrior Adept? Is the greeness of the pig more than the madness of the designated hitter rule? And why aren't I asleep? Oh, that's right. I just woke up. jesse cox. .
What are the confirmed spirit types in each world? Currently, my list for both worlds is Spirits of Humanity (and their overarching forms, the loa), Genus Loci (spirits of places, and their overarching forms, the Animal Totems), Spirits of a Substance (elementals, wui-jen...these seem very similar, contradict me if I'm wrong), and Bug Spirits (also called invae). Are there any others? Finding some sort of spirits of knowledge would really round out the theory. I really doubt that horrors want to be the "fifth type of spirit" in this theory...I'd guess most are creatures touched by taint, in an analogous way to how adepts are touched by karma. --jesse cox. ...or, we could not have a 5th type. Seeker, Archer, and Wizard are the axis most immersed in the Named paradigm of knowledge, and are not modified along the lines of one of the four major spirit types.--jesse (oh, and just so I have it recorded here: flesh--alliance, loci--interaction, control--substance, bug--separation, knowledge--(none)) Chart should be reconstructed: columns are Passions, Disciplines, Saints/Wyrms, Loa, Totems(?). Also look at 5-fold division of Discipline Magic Spheres.--zebediah. Doesn't it strike you as odd that spirits of places are associated with Animal Totems? :) --bts Umm...animal (and plants in a few cases) are the ubiquitous denizens of terrains? Each type of animal usually has variants that populate several terrains, making their habitats a good overarch for terrain spirits? I just sort of accepted that as a facet of the metaphysics. If there's something there to seriously poke at, I'll try thinking about it in a bit--I think I'd need more info, or a good kick in that direction (seeing an honest-to-get animal spirit, not just a terrain spirit in the shape of an animal (which I think is pretty common), would be a pretty good kick. Also, spirits of places seem to be associated with nonanimal totems as well, see some of the druidic stuff.--jesse JesseNonmagicianDisciplineSpellcasting