Category: The Spirit Realm
The Spirit Realm
Overview
The Spirit Realm is a plane of existence that is overlaid upon the Living Realm. It shares all of the non-living, physical structures of the Living Realm. It is inherently connected to all living creatures. They are tethered to this plane through their souls, and when their lives expire, their souls return them to the Spirit Realm. Thus, the Spirit Realm is filled with souls, ghosts, spirits, wraiths, specters, haunts, spooks, phantoms, poltergeists, etc. The Spirit Realm is not a colorless void of blacks, whites, and greys, but rather is a realm where colors seem to be opposite or contrasting to what they seem they should be in the Living Realm. The Sun and Moon still cross the sky, mountains still stand tall, but everything is painted in an unfamiliar kaleidoscope.
Special Attributes
Narrow Time: Time functions very differently in the Spirit Realm than it does in the Living Realm. Most
History of the Spirit Realm
Inhabitants
Soul – This the most basic form of all beings. Every living being contains one, and while in the Spirit Realm, they appear as simple, glowing orbs. A soul without any Spiritual Body is unable to interact with anything and cannot be interacted with. However, the Soul is able to observe, and eventually make the choice to reenter the Living Realm through Reincarnation. Doing this consumes a large portion of Spiritual Energy, which is most often built up intrinsically through the past lives of a soul. The more past lives a soul has lived, the more Spiritual Energy it can build up. The amount of Spiritual Energy spent is what determines the complexity of the lifeform one becomes when they reincarnate. If a soul spends only a small amount of energy, they may reincarnate as grass or a beetle. However, a soul that has passed through thousands of past lives could spend a large amount to become a sentient being. Many of the races in Owasiwa first spawned into existence through this method.
Spirits and Ghosts – This is a broad category of being, summing up all of the Souls that expend Spiritual Energy to maintain a Spiritual Body within the Spirit Realm and/or Living Realm. This gives them the ability to interact in different ways without having to reincarnate. While it does cost Spiritual Energy to maintain these forms, it also often allows for other methods of gaining Spiritual Energy from other sources.
Access
Cultural Significance
What is the Soul?
The Soul is a nexus of connections to all of the planes of existence. Every soul is formed when the Living Realm, the Spirit Realm, the Dream Realm, the Magic Realm, and the Soul Realms have all aligned in a way that all of them intersect. That intersection creates a massive outpouring of all known types of energy, and when the realms move away from each other, they leave behind a number of new souls. This is a natural process of the world and is not controlled by any entity.
The Soul is born with an intelligence of its own, and new souls do not have much of it. Souls, by themselves, are simply observers of the world around them. They appear to most as a glowing ball of light formed by an infinite amount of colors. And while they can be observed through all the senses one might have, they cannot be directly interacted with, nor can the soul interact with the world. Where the soul is born it remains.
However, souls do have the choice to become more than they are. This choice is allowed due to the soul’s inherent ability gather ambient Spiritual Energy from the world around them, typically from within the Spirit or Living Realm, as these two realms have the most of this type of energy freely available. The soul can use this absorbed energy to form or attach to a body. This energy is typically stored up over many incarnations and lifetimes. Once the energy is absorbed into the soul, it is protected, it cannot be stolen or harnessed by an external force. Only the soul can spend its own Spiritual Energy. The more Spiritual Energy the soul has, the greater its own sentience and intelligence can be, allowing it to form or join more advanced forms of life.
The first type is Conception. When a living being goes through the act of conceiving, be it the creation of a fertilized seed, egg, or through more typical mating, there is always that moment where the new being is conceived. This moment releases a large (proportionate to the being) amount of Spiritual Energy through the Spirit Realm, calling out for a soul. First soul to answer follows the energy back to the source, and claims the newly formed body for itself. This style is the most common because it uses the least amount of Spiritual Energy for the soul, and actually grants it more.
The second type is Spawning. Spawning is when the soul spends massive amounts of its Spiritual Energy to form a living, physical body of its own. This method is the most cost intensive style for a soul, and it is how every single living species came into existence for the first time. And once the first of a species is formed, it is seemingly easier for other souls to Spawn as that species too, until Conception is possible for it.
The third type is Spiritualizing. Spiritualizing is when the soul spends a moderate amount of its Spiritual Energy to create more ethereal body of its own. This creates the body for all of the ghosts and spirits that are known in the world. As ghosts are not alive, they can only inherently gain Spiritual Energy in the Spirit Realm. And not being alive also means they must continuous spend Spiritual Energy to maintain their ghost form, unless they revert back to a Soul. However, this has led to a development in ghosts and spirits that has led to them specializing and differentiating themselves from one another. Ghosts and Spirits are able to actively absorb Spiritual Energy from other sources so as to maintain their spiritual body and store extra within their soul for safe keeping. One class of ghost might absorb extra, ambient spiritual energy from a specific realm of living beings, thus becoming Nature Spirits, while another might possess a living being to steal the energy that being might absorb, becoming a Phantom. Each type of ghost and spirit is differentiated by a different style of acquiring Spiritual Energy, and it is believed that there are many types of ghost not discovered.
If the body a soul is in is destroyed or otherwise unable to remain whole, then the soul slips back into the Spirit Realm to wait, and make the choice of reentering the life cycle, become a ghost, or remain as a soul.