Being
Body
The body, or shell, is the physical component of the being and is how they interact with the world at large. There are widely accepted to be two types of shells: material and energetic. This labeling is moderately misleading as both types require some use of both matter and energy. The difference is in which the particular being uses as building material and which it uses as fuel.
Material beings, mortals, primarily build themselves a matter-based shell that is powered by the energy produced in various chemical interactions. For the most part they are built to perceive and understand material events and interactions while the activity of energy is generally only indirectly perceptible to them: they see the results of the energetic actions as it affects the matter around them.
Energetic beings, spirits, primarily build themselves an energy-based shell that is kept sustained by consumption of matter going on around and within them. They, like the mortals, are generally only capable of directly perceiving energy while the existence of and activities of matter can only be indirectly determined by observing its effect on the energy surrounding them.
In essence, a mortal will see an apple, consume it, taking some of it for building material and convert the rest into the energy necessary for its survival. Meanwhile, a spirit will see a handful of heat or motion and consume that, using some for building material and converting the rest into matter. The process of the mortal eating is perceptible to the spirit in terms of the heat produced and the matter produced by the spirit might be perceptible as a ripple of sound or mirage or a speck of dust.
Mind
Contrary to what many think, the mind is not actually the thoughts and personalities of the being, but is more akin to a very complex program, or series of programs, through which the soul interacts with the body and therefore the physical world.
Everything the body sees or feels is processed through the mind to the soul, and all the soul’s intents and actions are processed through the mind back to the body. This extends even to the soul’s image of what the body is or should appear to be.
When there are faults in the mind, then information is improperly carried between the soul and the body. This is most obvious with extreme faults, such as mental delusions that relate to complete breaks from the reality the body exists in, but is equally dangerous with small faults. An example of such a fault could be found in an urge to finish reading anything you start to read, a fault that can lead you to potentially dangerous habits, such as looking away from the road to finish reading a billboard while you are driving.
The mind is constantly being refined, or corrupted, over the course of a person’s life. As new capabilities are learned, the soul essentially writes new programs to initiate the body into using those skills. For example, most people would have a mind fragment devoted to drawing, however, for most of us, that fragment’s instructions results in an automatic process to produce a rough outline of what we are trying to create. For a master artist, there is not just one fragment that can generally be called “drawing”, there are instead many mind fragments that might easily be labeled “perspective”, “angles”, “proportion”, “hand coordination”, “tool choice” and the like.
This is because the common person, who has never developed their artistic abilities, generally makes only one real decision: “I want to draw such and such.” The master artist, by comparison makes several decisions before he or she even puts their tools to their medium and they continue to make several decisions as they draw the first line. There is a great deal more will and choice involved than in the common wish to draw a general picture. Their “program” is much less user friendly from an outsider’s perspective, it looks almost like magic to them, while producing much more quality results.
Mortals and spirits alike go through most of their lives trusting many decisions to mind fragments designed to deal with specific situations. These fragments are often called “instinct” or “habits”. For example, most people will wake up each day and do pretty much exactly what they did the day before with very little variation. The amount of actual decision making is usually pretty minimal. Life presents a situation and the mind has a fragment already in place to deal with that situation.
When previously unknown situations arise, the being either does nothing while the mind tries to formulate the nearest response that seems appropriate, or else the soul starts taking more direct action in the course of the situation.
Soul
The soul is a much more mysterious aspect of the sentient. Those aware of “mana” know that it exists, but have very little idea of what it actually is. Many mistake the aura of a being for the soul. All things seem to have a soul, though the soul of a sentient is much more thoroughly a part of the whole than it is with non-sentient life.
For example, a common cat’s soul could almost be likened to person with a remote control device running primarily through instinct and making only a few really general decisions overall. By comparison, a human being’s soul is actually wrapped up within the mind and body.
While most sorts of aberrant behavior can be traced to gross imperfections in the mind, there are souls that willfully make decisions that could be called evil.
Dual-Shell
A theory exists that there is a third type of being, one that has two interwoven bodies. This has been faked in the past by the use of Comergeance, but a true dual shell would not be a mortal and spirit sharing the same space while within either the Mortal (corporeal/incorporeal) or Spirit (astral/ethereal), but would be a single soul with a shell that existed within both parts of its current world at one time.
A dual shell living in the Mortal world, for example, would have equal presence in both the corporeal and incorporeal parts of that world.
The immediate benefit of this is the ability to interact with pretty much anything.
A mortal sorcerer might be able to shift his body out of the corporeal into the incorporeal, for instance, and an avatar from the spirit world might also observe from that facet. Both would be untouchable by mortals within the corporeal and, likewise, neither would be able affect any of the said mortals without making use of some other mana-related power. In addition, while mortals occasionally perceive the incorporeal, they usually do not, so, unless they wish it, both the sorcerer and the avatar would be invisible most of the time.
A dual-shell, however, could touch either individual with no problem, possibly without even being aware that they are doing anything special.
This also means that they are unable to ever become insubstantial to mortals at the same time that they are able to perceive them. The dual shell would have to cross the Mirror completely into the Spirit in order to become insubstantial to mortals. However, in so doing, they would lose all contact with the Mortal.
In addition, the dual shell is likely to be find themselves obstructed by things that others simply are not aware of. For example, an electrified fence would not likely electrocute the dual-shell but it might act like a solid wall of painful thorns, cutting the spirit body of the dual shell. In Comergeance this would cause cuts to appear on the partner of the spirit as well, as such, on lookers would see the individual reach out to touch the wire and then start to bleed rather than jerk about.
As there has never been a proven dual-shell, further discussion of their abilities and limits is largely theoretical.
World
The world is separated into two parts collectively called the Mortal and the Spirit. The division between these two parts is largely called the Mirror. The division is largely one of perception. Mortals and spirits exist within the same space but rarely if ever become aware of each other.
Mortal
The mortal world is split into two parts itself: the corporeal and the incorporeal. The corporeal is encompassed by all the matter that people commonly see every day. Dirt, trees, brick, clouds and so forth. The incorporeal is encompassed by rare interactions of energy.
For the most part, the incorporeal is uninhabited, though spirits aware of able to move to the mortal realm often take up residence in that part of it.
Technically, as the incorporeal is energy rather than matter, it should be completely imperceptible to most mortals while visible to most spirits. However, there is something about the energies of the incorporeal that is somehow out of sync with the energies of the astral and more in sync with matter. As such, mortals, even those unable to use mana or shift their perceptions, see the incorporeal much more frequently than spirits. Of course, since there is so often nothing there to see, hardly anybody is aware that they are seeing anything at all.
Spirit
The spirit world, like the mortal, is split into two parts as well: the astral and the ethereal. The astral world is encompassed by a large variety of energies that we have only abstract terms for. Emotions, events, intentions, actions, life and natural processes all produce their own unique energies which are often used to build cities and the like amongst the spirits.
The ethereal is quite similar to the incorporeal in that it is primarily matter that is somehow out of sync with the vast majority of matter but closer in sync with much of the astral. Like the incorporeal, most spirits, if they observe a patch of perceptible ethereal matter, see nothing because there’s usually nothing there substantial enough for them to perceive.
Mirror
Some few mana-users have managed to draw out the process of shifting their perceptions and body from mortal to spirit and witnessed the Mirror enough to know that it is its own region with its own rules. Spirits and mortals of particularly strong will have even been able to stay within the Mirror for extended periods of time, though that can be considered dangerous.
Being in the Mirror is almost the same as being both everywhere and nowhere.
When one is in the Mirror, their perceptions are focused on neither matter nor energy but rather on what many believe is possibility.
The dreams, wishes and memories of the world at large have an impact on the Mirror, creating distinct sub-realms that follow no logical physical geometry the way that the Spirit and Mortal worlds do. Many Mortal legends of the various spirit worlds, and likewise legends within the Spirit, actually seem to more discuss the Mirror.
In the Mirror, for instance, it is entirely possible to have a battle with a beast or a conversation with a famous, long dead historical individual. However, the beast is likely to be an amalgam of the subconscious fears and anxieties of a large number of people. For example, all the arachnophobes in the world have spawned entire regions of the Mirror strung in monstrous webs. Likewise the historical figure is also an amalgam of the stories, memories and legends collected around that person.
Most of the things met in the Mirror are simply projections of the massive, shared subconscious of both Spirit and Mortal, but ever since beings started to become aware of and manipulate mana, thus allowing them to cross their perceptions and bodies from Mortal to Spirit, there have been mortals and spirits inside the Mirror.
For the most part a Mortal or Spirit spends so little time in the Mirror that it is only a flicker of perception that is quickly forgotten. However, some take prolonged trips into the Mirror and come out either enlightened or deceived dependent on how well they are aware that what they see is merely an accumulation of individual perceptions.
Perception Shifts
The most common way that an individual shifts is to change only their perceptions. Every individual does this to some degree unconsciously every so often. Mortal perception shifts into the incorporeal naturally and spirit perception shifts into the ethereal naturally, as previously described. However, with training or an innate talent, the shift can be done deliberately. In fact, it is possible to shift all the way through the mirror into the other side of the world.
In a perception shift, the overall body remains in the same facet of the world that it started in. There may be some physical signs that the shift happens, commonly in humans this involves changes in the eyes as vision is the dominant human sense. For the normal, unconscious shift these signs are both minimal and short in duration, most would never notice them.
When a perception shift extends only into the facet paired with the one currently resided in, the individual remains able to perceive the world about them, though it might be fuzzy and sound somehow hollow. When a perception shift extends all the way into the opposite pair, then perception of the world around is usually lost for at least one sense. Again, in mortals, this usually means that they can see into the astral and ethereal while hearing the corporeal and incorporeal.
This is not the same as clairvoyance or other such distance sensing abilities. A perception shift only shows the individual what is going on in the other facet of the world in space immediately surrounding them. Distance sensing requires projection.
Body Shift
A body shift is much more rare and only happens in mana-active individuals. The most basic form of this is generally regarded as the ability to become insubstantial. For mortals, this means shifting one’s body into an energy shell that matches the sync of the incorporeal facet. For spirits, it means becoming ethereal matter. This means the ability to walk through walls and other such structures.
The more complete body shift comes when an individual shifts completely from the Mortal to the Spirit and starts walking amongst the other beings.
Any time a spirit or mortal knowingly interact, at least one of them has to be able to have shifted completely from one world to the other. This fact tends to make it seem as if this were a very common ability amongst spirits, however, the spirits that are able to come into and live in the Mortal are only a small fraction of the percentage of spirits that live in the Spirit. Likewise, those mortals able to cross over to the spirit make up the barest fraction of a percentage of the mortal population.
Comergeance
Comergeance occurs when two beings in the same world, but different facets share the same space in a manner more than temporary or accidental. It is more commonly known as “possession”.
For example, a spirit or incorporeal mortal might comerge with a corporeal mortal and allow the beings to at least simulate having a dual shell. This allows for protection from more variety of attacks and makes it easier to protect and aid each other. In this application, the beings blend their minds in order to be more fully aware of what their partner is aware of and better able to blend their powers.
The most sinister and famous application, as previously stated, is possession. Possession occurs when the second being is not entering as a willing and equal partner, but is shifting into the victim and supplanting their mind in to control the other’s. In this way, the possessing individual is staying within the victim and using them as a shield and power source.
Mortals most commonly believe that the only way possession happens is when a spirit, usually a demon, possesses a mortal, however, just as many mortal self-styled sorcerers have passed over to the Spirit and taken possession of a spirit.
Possession has long term consequences for the victim even after the possessing entity is removed. Amongst other things, they will almost always be mana-active afterwards due to their mind duplicating various fragments of their attacker’s mind. This can also mean a duplication of behavior patterns that can seem like a return of the possessing entity. In either case, without training or working through things, the sudden acquisition of new behaviors and abilities is a dangerous combination.
Loss of power can always be repaired. New and sudden power can be incredibly self-destructive without help.
Responsible exorcists should take in former victims and help them adapt to new abilities and eliminate unwanted involuntary behaviors.
