Development reference · 3 min read
Spirits
Reference tables contain changeable development values.
The road remembers every traveller who died upon it. On certain nights, it reminds the living.
Spirits are metaphysical entities born from places, events, concepts, or accumulated emotional residue. Unlike undead, which are animated remains of the once-living, spirits are emergent phenomena that may never have been mortal. The collapse of imperial wards has allowed many dormant spirits to awaken, and new ones form wherever suffering or significance concentrates.
Road and Place Spirits#
| Name | Level | Size | HP | Notable Abilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Road Spirit | 3 | Medium | 38 | Path knowledge; traveller's bane; misdirection |
| Marsh Horror | 4 | Large | 55 | Bog grasp; drowning pull; miasma aura |
| Law Spirit | 5 | Medium | 65 | Legal compulsion; oath enforcement; truthsight |
| Legal Haunting | 4 | Medium | 48 | Contract manifestation; bureaucratic torment; paper storm |
Road spirits form along heavily-travelled routes where enough travellers have died to imbue the road itself with a predatory awareness. They misdirect travellers into hazards, collapse bridges at inopportune moments, and occasionally manifest as helpful guides who lead victims into ambushes. Imperial road wards suppressed them for centuries; now they are resurgent.
Law spirits and legal hauntings are unique to the post-imperial world. They emerge from the residual magical force embedded in imperial contracts, census rolls, and legal instruments. A law spirit enforces the letter of agreements that no living party remembers making, while legal hauntings torment those who unknowingly violate defunct statutes.
Military and Historical Spirits#
| Name | Level | Size | HP | Notable Abilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shadow Cavalry Spirit | 6 | Large | 80 | Phantom charge; trample; battle echo; formation |
| Ghost Admiral | 7 | Medium | 95 | Naval command; fog bank; spectral crew; ship haunt |
Shadow cavalry spirits are the echoes of entire military units destroyed in catastrophic battles. They replay their final charge endlessly, and anything caught in their path suffers the impact of phantom hooves and spectral lances. Several major battlefields from the Iron-Bound conquest wars are permanently haunted by these formations.
Exotic and Regional Spirits#
| Name | Level | Size | HP | Notable Abilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sphinx | 8 | Large | 120 | Riddle challenge; claw attack; flight; truesight; ancient knowledge |
| Glass Serpent | 5 | Medium | 62 | Crystalline body; light refraction; shard burst |
| Cursed Raptor | 4 | Medium | 50 | Cursed talons; spectral flight; prey sense |
| Solar Beast | 8 | Large | 115 | Radiant charge; sun absorption; heat aura; Akeshi origin |
| Reef Revenant | 6 | Large | 78 | Coral armor; drowning grasp; tidal surge; coastal bound |
Sphinxes are among the oldest spirits in the world, predating the Magnus Empire by millennia. They guard sites of ancient significance and challenge intruders with riddles whose answers reveal truths about the world's hidden structure. Those who answer correctly are granted passage and sometimes knowledge; those who fail are devoured.
Solar beasts are spirits of concentrated desert sunlight found only in the Akeshi prism deserts. They manifest as leonine shapes of blinding radiance and are revered by some Akeshi sun-cults as divine messengers. In practical terms, they are extremely dangerous to engage without magical protection against fire and radiance.
Public in-game encyclopedia. Website edition: 10 October 2026.
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