ASPECTS
“Delusion can become reality, if faith in this delusion spreads far enough.” – Errus the Mad, Introduction to Post-Aetherfall Aspects
Strong collective faith is natural and primal. Born of strong feelings such as fear, hope, anger or despair, this faith is a mechanism by which all sapient creatures protect their minds from the inevitable. Tribes of all races have since times immemorial formed cults and religions and worshiped deities that were reflections of natural events or an outlet for the tribe’s prayers.
Before the Great Mage War caused the Aetherfall; a cataclysm that disturbed the Heart of Vaira, releasing massive amounts of mana into the atmosphere; the beliefs were just that – hopeful prayers thrown into the air, no deity-like being in sight. However, post-Aetherfall, the excess mana allowed these beliefs to materialize. What once was just a shoddy wooden idol of a local village god can now often take physical form and grace their believers with their presence.
We classify all these post-Aetherfall beings as mana aspects, although they’re also known as spirits, deities or fairies. Many communities whose faith materialized an aspect erroneously believe that it was their deity that allows them to exist, while in reality it is the other way around – it is their faith that created the deity in the first place.
While the aspects are created to reflect the idealized image of their zealots’ beliefs, they often mirror their believers flaws as well, with results being unpredictable, fickle and dangerous.
As Master Errus states in his Introduction, the classification of aspects into lesser and greater doesn’t have a quantifiable quality to it. How do you measure faith? However there is a clear threshold between a local deity, barely distinguishable from a regular creature, and a powerful manifestation of a globally shared belief.
Minor Aspects
Minor aspects, often defined as local, are usually contained within a single community. A country, town, village, tribe, or sometimes even a single individual wish a minor deity into existence. For instance, Zev Deepwood tribes are known to be able to communicate with their so called guardian spirits, sometimes even materialize them. In the same vein, a pack of werebeasts might be able to will an Alpha into existence.
Shaeihan d’ath Yrviel in his travel journals mentions many tribes with their local deities. From among them there’s supposedly a village of Loppi in far east of Apteros, comprised of exclusively female cult members, that were able to materialize two male dragon-like deities for the sole purpose of procreating with them in a daily public ritual. While that sounds difficult to comprehend, Master Shaeihan has been a reliable source, and Loppi are known for dangerous sexual behaviour and general lack of self-awareness.
Major Aspects
While minor aspects are localized and generally have been only able to materialize post-Aetherfall, major aspects had strong imprint before the cataclysm, with some reports of materialized apparitions dating thousands of years in the past.
Major deities are the result of beliefs that are tied to phenomenons globally experienced by every being, such as weather, soil or even the concept of life itself. When a living being sees lightning, hears the thunder, or feels the rain on the skin, the subconscious reaction is to tie it to a greater force. Surprisingly though, there’s a noticeable lack of a materialized god of thunder. It is unknown why these aspects do not typically personify, but it is hypothesized by Master Errus that since even non-sapient beings, such as plants, can experience these natural phenomena, the forms of the major aspects get decentralized. It’s definitely difficult to imagine plants having a consistent image of a rain goddess.
Major Aspects – Fairies
Concepts such as weather are universal to all living beings. However, there’s another set of global concepts that are only present in sapient beings, and they are base instincts or vices. Inner hungers such as Greed, Pride, Wrath, or Lust are natural feelings that are understood by everyone, regardless of race or upbringing.
These strong emotions have given birth to several powerful beings, sometimes referred to as Fairies, but they’re aspects all the same. If you think that accumulating the whole world’s primal instinct into a single, anthropomorphized creature is a recipe of disaster, then you would be right in that assumption. Unleashed vice spirits are mana dense, unstable, fickle and ready to explode at any moment. Fortunately for everyone, as a miraculous defense mechanism, when they compress their form into a small humanoid, the mana density becomes just great enough to be stable.
Master Errus called it the Event Horizon – the mana density is perfectly compressed to suppress the natural particle flicker and stabilize it. Any less and it radiates misfortune. Any more and it implodes.
While it can be beneficial to have a major spirit around for the benefits they provide in their stabilized forms, it can easily become a double edged sword if it destabilizes, so interacting with fairies is ill-advised and heavily discouraged.