Deities and Spirits

the Green Woman of the Erkenheld Forest

Deities, also called spirits, are beings of pure magic. There is no definitive difference between a deity and a spirit, but those beings attached to larger and more powerful magical sources (for example, the Great Land Sea) are usually called deities, while the beings of smaller, less potent sites (a stream) are referred to as spirits. Though they have a visible, and often tangible, form, they do not have a corporeal body. By this, it is meant that they do not have have the sort of finite, organismal body that elves, humans, and animals do: they have no organs, the do not need to eat or breathe, and harm to their physical self cannot kill them. These beings are, in this sense, invincible to attack, but not truly immortal as there have been a number of documented 'deaths' of spirits.

Not much is known of these strange creatures, but it is thought that they are born out of, subsist on, and in many ways are a particularly potent magical source. Elvish folklore explains that the world is composed of two levels: the grounded and the veiled. The grounded is everything mundane, such as the body, the forests, and sky (a division similar to that described by the magi concept of aether). The veiled is a magical realm that is governed by its own rules, and is only tentatively connected to the grounded world. Elves explain that on rare occasions, the veiled and grounded worlds collide, and the place where they intersect becomes a powerful source of magic that shapes everything around it. When this happens, the veiled send one of its own beings to tend to and protect the magical link between the two realms.

The forms deities take are not functional, as it were. Their forms are generally a reflection of the specific kind of magic they are associated with or the place or creatures they are tied to. The beings display attributes of whatever they have a particular affinity for, thus spirits of the wind are fluid and gaseous in composition (see left), while the Green Woman of the Erkenheld, the protectress of the flora of the forest, exhibits plant-like features. The forms a deity can assume are wide and varied, and some choose to change forms often, while others rarely do. Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest that those beings associated with the social graces class of magic can sometime assume a corporeal form, but rarely due since it makes them vulnerable to attack.

They do not reproduce (and, thus, are not members of a species, per se) and have no names for themselves except for those corporeal beings give them. These beings are fundamentally alien to the corporeal creatures they interact with: they possess a totally different sense of time, and being truly singular beings, often seem to have problems sympathizing with whomever they are speaking to.

See Also:
The Sprite Queen
Skillililinia