Quill and Compass, Entry 17: Souls and Spirits

Before I set quill to parchment on the peoples of Gaiaxia, their customs, their quarrels, their triumphs and tragedies, I find myself compelled to step back and ask a far more uncomfortable question: what, precisely, is a mortal?

It is tempting to begin with ears and tusks, scales and skin, lifespans measured in decades or centuries, but those are only the shapes we wear. My many travels have taught me that culture is not built from flesh alone; it grows from how a society understands death, what they believe lingers after it, and how they honor, or fear, the forces that claim them when life slips away. One cannot hope to understand why some societies celebrate their dead while others burn them in solemn silence, why some cling fiercely to ancestry and others look only ever to the future, without first understanding the truths that bind all of us beneath the surface. And so, before I write of the many peoples of the Realm, I must first write of what we are made of: Soul and Spirit, the paths that await us beyond the Veil, and the unseen hands that guide, guard, or hunt us when life comes undone. This entry is not about any one people, but about the quiet architecture of mortality and the Cycle itself as I have observed it, questioned it, and, on more than one occasion, stood trembling far too close to it.

I once believed, naively, I now admit, that death arrived all at once, like a candle simply snuffed. In truth, it is more like a lantern being lowered into water. First the flame gutters, then it wavers. Only at the very end does it finally go dark, and even then, the glass remains warm for a time. There is a moment, brief, terrible, and precious, where a life may yet be pulled back from the brink if hands are swift and resolve does not falter.
I witnessed such a moment on a trade road in eastern Troxoganii. A wagon wheel failed on a steep descent, and before anyone could cry warning, the cart overturned and crushed the woman driving it beneath splintered timber and iron-bound crates. Her wife screamed for help, clawing at the wreckage until her hands bled. When we reached them, the woman beneath the wagon no longer breathed. Her chest was still. Her eyes were glassy. She was gone, and any sane person could have called it too late. But a priest of Ashar, our current God of Life, traveling with us heard the panicked pleas and quickly knelt, traced runes around the fallen woman, and began to speak; not words meant for us, but a petition spoken in an ancient tongue, something quiet, steady, powerful. He channeled the power of his patron until sweat soaked his robes and his hands trembled violently. After what felt like an eternity, the woman gasped like a swimmer dragged from deep water, clutching her savior, then her lover. She was still battered and bruised, but alive. The priest did not stand for a long while afterward… and didn't seem to appreciate my endless questions, but he obliged me nonetheless.

That was my first lesson, and one the priest made very clear to me afterward: death is not always permanent, but reversing it always carries a cost. One that his trembling hands lifted his sleeve to show me: a winged pattern seared into his arm, almost like a brand; that of a dove, the symbol of Ashar, forever marking his interference with the Cycle, sanctioned though it was, an interference nonetheless. It was one of many. My curiosity was piqued beyond measure, and I owe that priest both thanks and an apology; my naivety did not yet understand the ordeal he had endured, but he was kind enough to indulge me.

In a contrary scenario, when the body can no longer be coaxed back into life, something far greater than us begins to turn: the Cycle. Those who study such matters speak of the Soul and the Spirit as separate things, though bound together in our mortal forms. The simplest way I can describe it is this: imagine a lantern. The flame within is the Soul; memory, self, identity, everything that makes you you. The oil that feeds it, the pressure that lets it burn bright or dim, is the Spirit. Together they give shape to the living. Separate them, and the lantern becomes an empty shell. When death truly claims someone, the Soul and Spirit slip free and pass beyond the Veil, and from there the Cycle takes hold.

If the Spirit is untainted, it does not wander far. Florus, our Goddess of Nature, returns it to Gaiaxia itself, seeping back into the Realm like rain into thirsty soil. Forests thicken. Rivers swell. Beasts are born stronger than their forebears. Life feeds life, endlessly. On the contrary, if the Spirit is damaged or twisted, it is sent to Verdana, where it is stripped down and purified through the endless cycles of untamed wildlife. I have walked through regions where such energy has leaked through the Veil, and the land there is… excessive. Too lush. Too wild. Unchecked by and untouched by mortal hands, and beautiful beyond measure.

The Soul’s path is different. Most Souls are drawn to Solis, the Realm of the Gods and the shining center of all things. To call it an afterlife feels insufficient. There is no feast, no throne, no reward or punishment waiting there. Souls in Solis exist as motes of light, floating peacefully in the endless expanse, knowing neither hunger nor pain. They remember who they were. They remember their lives and their stories. And the most astonishing thing, at least to me, is that they can hear us. Not as we hear one another, of course, but as whispers through the Veil. Speak aloud of someone you loved, tell a story about them, pray to their memory, and somewhere in Solis, a Soul brightens a little in response. Curious about this theory, I once spent an evening in a village that devoted an entire night each year to telling stories of the dead around a communal fire. Every tale was punctuated not with grief, but with joy, laughter, and the occasional argument over whose memory was correct. When I asked why, their elder simply said, “It lets them stay a little longer.” For even in Solis, nothing remains whole forever. Slowly, perhaps over years, decades, or even centuries, the contents of a Soul seep outward into the endless expanse of light. Memories blur, then drift away altogether. What was once a vivid life becomes a warm impression, then finally nothing at all. What remains at the very end is the bare essence of existence, an empty shell ready to be remade. That blank slate of a Soul then folds back into Ikozra's infinite potential and is given a new form. Reincarnation is not rebirth as the same person, but a reuse of the same spark. A beautiful, humbling thought, if one is inclined toward such things.

When a Soul has served a deity faithfully in life, that deity may choose to keep it close rather than send it along the usual path to Solis and eventual fading. The chosen Soul is remade as a Scion; they're given a body once more, reshaped and strengthened, as well as a small shard of the deity’s own Spirit, making each Scion a walking conduit of divine will. Scions are few by design. A deity cannot give too much of itself away without consequence, as a result, they are rarely seen unless something of great importance is underway… or something has already gone terribly wrong. When a Scion walks the Realm, history usually follows in its wake. Unlike mortals, or even Dragons for that matter, Scions are not bound to a single Realm. They may pass between them with ease, moving from Gaiaxia to Solis and beyond as their deity commands. Some serve as messengers or wardens, others as executioners, champions, or immortal symbols meant to remind all that the gods have not gone silent, only distant.

Not all Souls are granted the peace of Solis, however, some are instead sent to the Hollow. It is a place of perpetual twilight, of thin air and jagged mountains, of valleys filled with fog that never quite lifts. The Souls sent there were twisted by corruption in life, or broke the Cycle in such violent fashion that they cannot simply be set loose again. And so the Hollow holds them, not as punishment, but as quarantine.
A Soul in The Hollow still fades, as in Solis, and it can still feel the pull of remembrance from the living. The difference lies in what it feels as it fades. Where Solis is warm and peaceful, the Hollow is heavy with dread. Old fears rise there again and again, regrets gnaw without rest, anxieties and anger echo against the gray sky until the Soul is worn thin. A kindly priest of Raluna, our Goddess of Death, once described it to me as “a fever dream that burns out the sickness,” which is a generous way to say that it sounds horrifying. Over time, the worst of the corruption is bled away into the dark abyss, along with the rest of the Soul’s contents. However, some cling so tightly to their pain and fury that they warp instead of heal, contorting their form into that of a Hollowspawn.

If you have never seen a Hollowspawn, I hope you never do. I have read accounts of creatures that looked like a knot of limbs and mouths fused together, each mouth crying with a different voice. Others walked on too many legs, their bodies bending in directions that made my spine itch just reading about it. A few are almost recognizable as they once were, if one is feeling charitable, with elongated limbs, too-wide smiles, and eyes that glow with a hungry purple light. All of them share one gnawing need: they crave Spirit. They devour it to feel whole again, even if only for a heartbeat. Most Hollowspawn that breach the Veil into Gaiaxia go on rampages. They tear through villages, temples, caravans, anything that pulses with life, desperate to cram themselves full of what they lost. Though, quite curiously, not all Hollowspawn are ravaged by this hunger in the same manner, some manage to retain echoes of who they were, clinging to a past purpose, promise, or oath like a drowning Soul clutching driftwood. Some once broke the Cycle for love or sacrifice, or even through no fault of their own as victims of dark rites.

I once heard a tale of a Paladin of Vunos who was one such victim, he clawed his way out of the Hollow, his new form a nightmarish version of his armor, one eye burning bright with the golden glow of his patron, the other that sickly purple hunger of the Hollow. He sought not the Spirit of the innocent, but that of those who condemned him to the Hollow in the first place, and he was terribly efficient; still muttering prayers and praise to Vunos as he tore his way to his vengeance. Unfortunately, once they become Hollowspawn, their intentions matter very little to the powers that be; the Cycle does not make moral distinctions. When one is slain in our Realm, its body quickly slumps into a viscous purple sludge that stinks of sulfur and rot, and its Soul is snapped back to the Hollow like a stone on a sling.

There are Souls in the Hollow that neither dissolve peacefully nor fall fully into monstrosity. They hover somewhere between, clinging to some duty or grief that corruption has not entirely devoured. These Souls sometimes draw Raluna’s eye. She offers them a bargain: they may work off their stain by hunting the very corruption they once carried. If they accept, they are remade into what we know as the Ravensworn. I have only seen a Ravensworn once, and I am not entirely sure it wished to be seen. It stood at the edge of a ruined field after a Hollowspawn raid, tall and dark as a shadow carved out of midnight. Its body was entirely black, but its face was a smooth white mask that suggested features without truly forming them. Where eyes and mouth should have been there were only shallow contours, as if someone had taken a sculptor’s first draft and forgotten to finish it. It appeared to wear a cloak of living shadow that swayed in the moonlight almost as if it were alive, in a manner of speaking. The creature did not speak when it noticed my presence. It turned its attention to me, its head canting at a slight angle that suggested curiosity, then its form unraveled and reknit itself as a lone raven, which vanished into the night sky.

Reversing death is possible, as I have witnessed and recorded in the opening to this entry. It was the priest of Ashar who helped me understand Resurrection in earnest, though I suspect he would disagree with that phrasing. He did not describe it as a spell in the way scholars are fond of categorizing such things. He spoke of it instead as a ritual, a negotiation conducted under unbearable pressure, one where every party involved knows exactly how close they are to doing something irreversible. In the case of the woman on the trade road, he told me her Soul and Spirit had only just begun to slip into the Cycle. They had not yet gone far; that closeness mattered. It meant the price was lower than it might otherwise have been. Lower, but never absent. He showed me his hands again as we spoke, still shaking hours later and recovering from what appeared to be burns no flame could make. He admitted that even sanctioned Resurrection is never gentle on those who perform it. The mark upon his arm had not been there before that day. He said it would never fade, as the others have not, they are a permanent reminder of what he's done; his words were carried with pride, but also a touch of fear. He warned me, quietly, that the farther a Soul travels, the more it costs to call it back, not only in effort, but in pain and sacrifice taken from the Realm. “Some prices,” he said, “are paid in land that withers, or in sleep that never comes easy again.” It was that moment that I had truly taken notice of the valleys beneath his eyes, the darkened circles that highlighted his patron's pink glow; he was talking from experience. He did not discourage me from learning more, but he made one thing painfully clear: Resurrection is not a defiance of death so much as a request for mercy, and mercy, even when granted, always leaves its mark.

And so, when I write of the peoples of Gaiaxia, I do so with a careful hand. Every custom I record, every feud, every festival and funerary rite, exists in the narrow space between first breath and final fading. A village’s songs are shaped by who they believe is listening from beyond the Veil. To misunderstand the Cycle is to misunderstand everything built upon it. I have stood close enough to death to feel its impatience, and close enough to its reversal to see the cost etched into living flesh. That knowledge has taught me humility where once I carried certainty. I am not merely cataloging peoples and places; I am bearing witness to lives that will one day become memory, then eventually something new. If I am careful with my words, it is because the subjects of my quill deserve no less. They burn brightly for a time, and then they pass, and the least I can do is ensure they are remembered well.

May we all live in ways worth remembering,
Yours, ever truly,
— Tobias Elanor, Bard, Scholar, Explorer Extraordinaire

© DracTheDrake

Hello hello!

I know in the last entry I said we'd cover the mortal species next, but I felt this was a necessary pit stop first. So many of the cultures of Gaiaxia have stemmed from their understanding and interpretation of the Cycle and the various deities of the pantheon that it would be a disservice to all readers not to include it.

I understand that death and afterlife are quite sensitive topics IRL, but they are an integral part of any society, so I would be remiss as a worldbuilder to know flesh it out for Gaiaxia. The system built here pulled inspiration from several real-world religions and spiritual belief systems, but is not meant to mimic nor disrespect any of them.

Thanks again for reading! Hard to believe it's already been 17 entries, they just keep flying by! Here's to seeing you in entry 18 and beyond, cheers!