PDA

View Full Version : Creatures for the Spiritworld



Yora
2014-08-27, 07:26 AM
In my campaign, the Spiritworld plays a major role and is the primary otherworld. There aren't really any heavens or hells like in D&D. It's a kind of paralel world where the forces of nature and magic are much more powerful and which is the native home of spirits. Place spirits can affect the plant and wildlife and the weather in the normal world to some extend and they are aware of what's going on in the area that corresponds to their domain in the Spiritworld. Other spirits can roam around the Spiritworld as they please, and sometimes even visit the normal world.
The Spiritworld is very dangerous for normal people, as the weather tends to be extreme and animal spirits much stronger than their mortal counterparts. Also, dealing with spirits is always dangerous, as their motives and priorities are very difficult to predict and most of them are not particularly careful about not harming mortal creatures. Some are outright evil and want to cause destruction, but most are dangerous because they are seemingly erratic and don't bother with the wellbeing of mortals. A few actually mean well and know they need to be careful when dealing with mortals, but you can never know what kind you are dealing with.

While D&D has thousands of monsters, fey and spirits are something that doesn't really show up among them. It's all angels and demons. Pixies, nymphs, and satyrs are fine, but not a lot to populate a whole Spiritworld with dangerous creatures. I am looking for creatures that are to some extend strange and enigmatic, but still appear as beings of nature. I got a few, but these are mostly still very human-like.

Treant: I think the original concept from Lord of the Rings works very well. They simply don't care for humans and only deal with them when they get too annoying. Otherwise they keep to their own business.
Fair Folk: Probably the most human-like fey in appearance, they are still enigmatic and think in strange ways, often lacking compassion for weaker beings and sometimes even being fond of cruelty. Their apparent normality could easily fool people into thinking they can be reasoned with like other normal people, which may turn out horribly wrong. They are like mad kings, feeling superior and entitled, but also susceptible to flattery. They may order punishments and rewards on a whim, and often they are not too concerned about others ending up dead or cursed in some way. The eladrin from Planescape seem to be quite similar, with the primary exception of being explicitly good. Without that trait, they should be able to fill that role quite well.
Oni: While it may be a more recent development, Oni are not always evil. They are very strong, easy to enrage, not very patient, and while not exactly dumb, they tend to not know a lot about human ways. That's already a lot of potential danger and some of them are actually evil and looking for death and destruction. Having any oni nearby is a substential threat, but outright trying to kill it may not always be the best first approach to the problem. And if one is lucky and can come to an arrangement with them, they can be very powerful allies that keep the area free of other monsters and bandits.
Naga: The Naga from South Asia are often ambivalent. They are often shapeshifters who can take human forms and can bring both prosperity when treated well, as well as disaster and disease when they feel disrespected.
Rakshasa: Bestial humanoids known for cruelty and great power, with the capabilities of being both very smart and decadent. I think they make great tyrants for small fey kingdoms.
Nymph: A type of nature spirit with the ability to take the shape of a beautiful women. While the most common types are the spirits of trees, rivers, or mountains, you could have nymphs of almost any natural features. The fantasy creature is usually very intelligent and has considerable magical powers, and often serves as a kind of inofficial ruler over the lesser spirits living nearby.
Spriggans: I quite like the more recent interpretation of plant-like beings with the appearance of androgynous humanoids. While they look human-like, they usually don't talk and care only about protecting their parts of the forest by having some control over the plants and animals.
Black Hound: Large black dogs that appear at night and have some ability to sense coming deaths. Often they create supernatural fear in anyone who sees or hears them up close.
Hag: An ancient witch who may or may not have been born as a mortal woman long ago. They are cruel and evil, often cannibalistic, but also know many old secrets and may make deals for their magical services if one is desperate enough.

Millennium
2014-08-27, 07:45 AM
IIRC, one of the books has templates for making elemental versions of other creatures, including some elements that don't fit the standard model. Stacking up some templates onto animals native to a place can make for interesting spirits: for example, Wood Elemental and Legendary Creature on a stag can work well for a (somewhat cliched) forest spirit.

Golems need a little work to be used as spirits, since they shouldn't be mindless, but because they can be made of so many different things, a sentient golem can work well as the spirit of something manmade: use the same material that was used to build the site, or to make some prominent feature of the site. Fiend Folio's stained glass golem, for example, can be used as the base of a cathedral spirit. For a darker spin on things, you could instead stat out whatever spirit would have been appropriate to this site before the humanoids came, and then apply the appropriate half-golem template (again, from Fiend Folio) to that spirit.

Elementals (and elemental weirds) can also be interesting, with a little work. The spirit of a waterfall, for example, might be a very large water elemental without a fixed body: whatever water is falling at that moment comprises its form, and if it could all be stopped, even for a moment, that would kill the spirit. Players might not notice that the waterfall even has a spirit at first, until a face appears in the falling water and starts talking to them.

Mastikator
2014-08-27, 07:48 AM
What about landscape based creatures, like a snakelike water spirit that takes the form of a river when idle, pulls things underwater that gets into the water and may become angry and rise up like a colossal water snake?

Garimeth
2014-08-27, 08:29 AM
So I think there is a distinction between spiritworld and fey, but i don't want to split hairs.

For spirit world I think like Spirited Away and when Aang goes to the spirit realm in Avatar, for fey I think more like the nature specific stuff. This is actually something I'm kind of running on the back burner for my next game. I would grab some Oriental themed source books (Rifts books for China, Japan and England may give you some great ideas, but would have to be converted).

As far as a specific creatures though you could use Tengu, the Kirin, dryads, awakened dire creatures, unicorns/pegasus/griffons, Rocs, brownies, and intelligent spells.

There is some real good stuff in the AD&D Monstrous Manual - they actually would describe how the creatures lived and their society and ecology. Prolly not too hard to find a PDF or online version of it.

Yora
2014-08-27, 08:43 AM
Oh yeah, elementals are something I totally forgot. I don't think they even need any special variants, as GM you just have to think of other bodyshapes than giant apes. Fire elementals work great as giant bats, and water elementals are perfect as liquid snakes.

Another creature I forgot are kitsune and other shapechanging animals. Kitsune are foxes that can turn into humans, are extremely clever, long-lived, and become powerful sorcerers as they age. Though they are classic trickster spirits, they are often good people who enjoy living among humans in disguise. Only problem is that they tend to be too human and friendly. While in old stories the revelation of having married a disguised fox woman is seen as a major shock and eternal curse on the family, later ones sometimes have the husband being quite cool with it and deciding to keep her. Which doesn't exactly help making spirits appear alien and otherworldly.

Starshade
2014-08-27, 09:36 AM
Psionic Creatures like Thought eater, Thought slayer, Intellect devourer, Brain moles and Udoroot?
The eater and slayer is both specialized predators, the intellect devourer a parasiteish predator, while Brain mole is a telepathic, mole. And an Udoroot is basically a plant who can get more fertilizer.

Mastikator
2014-08-27, 09:56 AM
Psionic Creatures like Thought eater, Thought slayer, Intellect devourer, Brain moles and Udoroot?
The eater and slayer is both specialized predators, the intellect devourer a parasiteish predator, while Brain mole is a telepathic, mole. And an Udoroot is basically a plant who can get more fertilizer.

Speaking of psionic creatures, what about psychic moss that lives in the spirit world that feed off thoughts of sentient creatures in the mundane world? Symptoms could be intense vivid nightmares for everyone who sleeps in the area, and eventually going mad. The moss might be food for psionic animals in the spirit world, who occasionally manifest as ghosts on the mundane world in the form of whatever nightmares people were having. It would prevent the moss from exterminating entire villages/cities, but also when the spiritual moss-plague hits, people believe their nightmares eventually come awake, and trying to kill the manifestations obviously only makes things worse.

LibraryOgre
2014-08-27, 10:26 AM
I'd toss in dryads, brownies, nixies, grigs, etc.

Basically, let them live in the spirit world "next" to people, and sometimes come through weak points, like crossroads, river confluences, and at dusk and dawn.

Thinker
2014-08-28, 02:12 PM
In my campaign, the Spiritworld plays a major role and is the primary otherworld. There aren't really any heavens or hells like in D&D. It's a kind of paralel world where the forces of nature and magic are much more powerful and which is the native home of spirits. Place spirits can affect the plant and wildlife and the weather in the normal world to some extend and they are aware of what's going on in the area that corresponds to their domain in the Spiritworld. Other spirits can roam around the Spiritworld as they please, and sometimes even visit the normal world.
The Spiritworld is very dangerous for normal people, as the weather tends to be extreme and animal spirits much stronger than their mortal counterparts. Also, dealing with spirits is always dangerous, as their motives and priorities are very difficult to predict and most of them are not particularly careful about not harming mortal creatures. Some are outright evil and want to cause destruction, but most are dangerous because they are seemingly erratic and don't bother with the wellbeing of mortals. A few actually mean well and know they need to be careful when dealing with mortals, but you can never know what kind you are dealing with.

While D&D has thousands of monsters, fey and spirits are something that doesn't really show up among them. It's all angels and demons. Pixies, nymphs, and satyrs are fine, but not a lot to populate a whole Spiritworld with dangerous creatures. I am looking for creatures that are to some extend strange and enigmatic, but still appear as beings of nature. I got a few, but these are mostly still very human-like.

Treant: I think the original concept from Lord of the Rings works very well. They simply don't care for humans and only deal with them when they get too annoying. Otherwise they keep to their own business.
Fair Folk: Probably the most human-like fey in appearance, they are still enigmatic and think in strange ways, often lacking compassion for weaker beings and sometimes even being fond of cruelty. Their apparent normality could easily fool people into thinking they can be reasoned with like other normal people, which may turn out horribly wrong. They are like mad kings, feeling superior and entitled, but also susceptible to flattery. They may order punishments and rewards on a whim, and often they are not too concerned about others ending up dead or cursed in some way. The eladrin from Planescape seem to be quite similar, with the primary exception of being explicitly good. Without that trait, they should be able to fill that role quite well.
Oni: While it may be a more recent development, Oni are not always evil. They are very strong, easy to enrage, not very patient, and while not exactly dumb, they tend to not know a lot about human ways. That's already a lot of potential danger and some of them are actually evil and looking for death and destruction. Having any oni nearby is a substential threat, but outright trying to kill it may not always be the best first approach to the problem. And if one is lucky and can come to an arrangement with them, they can be very powerful allies that keep the area free of other monsters and bandits.
Naga: The Naga from South Asia are often ambivalent. They are often shapeshifters who can take human forms and can bring both prosperity when treated well, as well as disaster and disease when they feel disrespected.
Rakshasa: Bestial humanoids known for cruelty and great power, with the capabilities of being both very smart and decadent. I think they make great tyrants for small fey kingdoms.
Nymph: A type of nature spirit with the ability to take the shape of a beautiful women. While the most common types are the spirits of trees, rivers, or mountains, you could have nymphs of almost any natural features. The fantasy creature is usually very intelligent and has considerable magical powers, and often serves as a kind of inofficial ruler over the lesser spirits living nearby.
Spriggans: I quite like the more recent interpretation of plant-like beings with the appearance of androgynous humanoids. While they look human-like, they usually don't talk and care only about protecting their parts of the forest by having some control over the plants and animals.
Black Hound: Large black dogs that appear at night and have some ability to sense coming deaths. Often they create supernatural fear in anyone who sees or hears them up close.
Hag: An ancient witch who may or may not have been born as a mortal woman long ago. They are cruel and evil, often cannibalistic, but also know many old secrets and may make deals for their magical services if one is desperate enough.

In Why I'm Not Muslim by Ibn Warraq, Jinn are described as:

Arabs before Islam already had a confused notion of a class of shadowy beings "everywhere present yet nowhere distinctly perceived," the jinn or djinn. The word jinn probably means covert or darkness. Jinns are the personifications of what is uncanny in nature, or perhaps the hostile and unsubdued aspects of it. In heathen Arabia, they were seen mainly as objects of fear; it was only with the advent of Islam that they began to be seen, on occasions, as benevolent as well. For the heathen Arabs, the jinn were invisible but were capable of taking various forms, such as those of snakes, lizards, and scorpions. If a jinn entered a man, it rendered him mad or possessed. Muhammad, brought up in crass superstition, maintained a belief in these spirits: "in fact the Prophet went so far as to recognize the existence of the heathen gods, classing them among the demons (see sura 37.158). Hence these primitive superstitions not only held their ground in [Muslim] Arabia but were further developed, spread over the rest of the [Muslim] world, and often combined with similar, in some cases much more elaborate conceptions which prevailed among foreign peoples." Professor Macdonald recounts how the poet and close friend of Muhammad, Hassan ibn Thabit, first came to write poetry under the influence of a female jinn. She met him in one of the streetsof Medina, leapt upon him, pressed him down and compelled him to utter three verses of poetry. Thereafter he was a poet, and his verses came to him . . . from the direct inspiration of the Jinn [Djinn]. He refers himself to his "brothers of the Jinn" who weave for him artistic words, and tells how weighty lines have been sent down to him from heaven

I also think that you should invest heavily in researching undead creatures from other stories and adapting them for your own depictions. Sirens, banshees, talking beasts, sphinxes, chimeras, vampires, wraiths, zombies, etc. could all have a place within your spirit world.


So I think there is a distinction between spiritworld and fey, but i don't want to split hairs.

For most practical purposes, there is little difference between fey and spirits in mythology and folklore. Cultures that believed in spirits often associated spirits with everything from the fantastic to the mundane - such as having a spirit of the mountain that was personified by a goat-like man as well as a household spirit that cleans up messes and misplaces objects at night. This matches up pretty well with fairies like brownies and gwyllion. There are also a lot of similarities between legends about fey and those about undead, especially ghosts. What is the difference between the Headless Horseman and a similar tale of a Redcap? How do you classify a banshee? A ghost or a fey? It is normally considered a fairy, but is not that different from a ghost. I've read it suggested many times that fey stories often originated as ghost stories anyway.

Geostationary
2014-08-28, 06:09 PM
Other things you could do!

Full-on animism. Does it exist in the world? It has a spirit. Spirits get uppity and act against their nature or in the wrong contexts? Things get weird in sometimes productive ways.

Hand-in-hand with that, though this can be done independently, conceptual spirits! Why do things grow? Growth spirits, obviously. Want to know things? Find something representative of knowledge, or ask something like the Dark- they get around, so maybe they'll have seen what you want to know. Grove's sick? Go and relocate/murder yourself a spirit of pestilence. Their nature and inspirations need not be obvious; the weird ones that people can't quite nail down are always fun! Why's this dude steal faces? I dunno, it's his hobby or something. Now go ask him things.

Both of these also fit in well with the classes of beings that you're already using/looking to use.

Curbstomp
2014-08-29, 04:28 AM
So... is this for 3.X D&D?

Spirit Shaman seems like a strong class for your world.

Also don't forget to look in each MM, Frostburn, Sandstorm, Stormwrack, etcetera by creature type. Any of the Fey will do.

Yora
2014-08-29, 04:46 AM
Other things you could do!

Full-on animism. Does it exist in the world? It has a spirit. Spirits get uppity and act against their nature or in the wrong contexts? Things get weird in sometimes productive ways.

Hand-in-hand with that, though this can be done independently, conceptual spirits! Why do things grow? Growth spirits, obviously. Want to know things? Find something representative of knowledge, or ask something like the Dark- they get around, so maybe they'll have seen what you want to know. Grove's sick? Go and relocate/murder yourself a spirit of pestilence. Their nature and inspirations need not be obvious; the weird ones that people can't quite nail down are always fun! Why's this dude steal faces? I dunno, it's his hobby or something. Now go ask him things.

Both of these also fit in well with the classes of beings that you're already using/looking to use.

But how to make them into creatures, and what would they be like?

Thinker
2014-08-29, 11:23 AM
But how to make them into creatures, and what would they be like?

Growth spirit - Possesses/occupies an object and can animate for the duration of the possession. Can enlarge or shrink the object as necessary. Primarily concerned with making sure everything is the proper size at the behest of some sort of overlord or deity. Rogue growth spirits are known to terrorize areas, growing and shrinking things, seemingly at random. The growth process does take some time and effort, leaving the spirit vulnerable during the process.

Oracle Mouth - A spirit that takes the form of gases, especially in volcanic areas. Oracle mouths gather and fill the minds of those who breath its air with visions. These visions are seemingly random and can take a physical toll on those who partake of them. Only people with adequate training can properly interpret the visions and know how to resist its physical maladies. Oracle mouths are mostly stationary, but are known to move infrequently. Use this as a plot device, not as an antagonist.

Pestilence - A spirit that possesses travelers to spread disease and harm to others. What they do is not done out of malice, but out of their nature. The traveler is rarely affected by the spirit and is often unaware that the spirit has possessed him/her. Only those sworn to the god of medicine or shamans properly in touch with nature can identify a pestilence. Normally, the only way to stop this spirit is through an exorcism. Once it has left a host, a pestilence spirit will attempt to retreat. It is still deadly in its spirit form, however its effects aren't always realized for several days.

Virus - A spirit that sows minor disease among a populace. It visits homes at night and infects people with colds, coughs, and the like. It likes to sow mischief and pull pranks on the ill. It is said to target relatives of those it has already infected. Physically weak, the virus is able to escape from most harm by turning invisible, but it is turned visible again and is especially vulnerable to fire.

drew2u
2014-08-29, 04:04 PM
You may also want to look at Mushishi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushishi) for creature ideas.

Yora
2014-08-29, 05:12 PM
Oh,that sounds really cool.I'll look into it tomorrow.

Other creatures that occured to me are phase spiders and blink dogs. They are not actually fey in D&D, but I think would work quite well.
Arenea also look just perfect: Intelligent spiders with arms who can shapechange into humans? Everything about that just screams spirit.
Lamia/Gorgon/Medusa could also be some kind of evil spirit creature instead of a curse.

Today I've come up with Monkey-Imps, lemur-like creatures that normally flee from people, but are intelligent enough to understand simple concepts like 3-year-olds if they can be tamed. They make great assistants for powerful spirits or witches. I think they should also have at least one special power, but invisibility seems kind of overused. Maybe an ability to sense invisible spirits nearby in the mortal world, which allows them to allert their masters for hidden dangers.

Another idea I have is for a large glowing moth, that drains sanity from nearby people and gains strength from it, even when it's in the spiritworld. Getting close to one in the spiritworld, or having it come over into the mortal world, makes the effect even stronger, and can kill in a few minutes. If swarms of up to a few dozens gather, they can curse a whole town. They do not communicate in any way comprehensible to humanoids, and the only way to glimpse at their thoughts is with telepathy, which has the same mind draining effect as being close to one. But they still appear to be quite intelligent, and unfortunately rather malicious or at least unpleasant. Sometimes they seem to actively trying to destroy settlements, at others they are just passing through an area, making a short stop for a few days while they regain strength.

LibraryOgre
2014-08-29, 07:32 PM
Another idea I have is for a large glowing moth, that drains sanity from nearby people and gains strength from it, even when it's in the spiritworld. Getting close to one in the spiritworld, or having it come over into the mortal world, makes the effect even stronger, and can kill in a few minutes. If swarms of up to a few dozens gather, they can curse a whole town. They do not communicate in any way comprehensible to humanoids, and the only way to glimpse at their thoughts is with telepathy, which has the same mind draining effect as being close to one. But they still appear to be quite intelligent, and unfortunately rather malicious or at least unpleasant. Sometimes they seem to actively trying to destroy settlements, at others they are just passing through an area, making a short stop for a few days while they regain strength.

I want to say that there was something like this in the 3.x FR books... one having to do with the Underdark?

Geostationary
2014-08-29, 08:26 PM
But how to make them into creatures, and what would they be like?

I tend to go top-down. So, I have [spirit]- what's it do? What's it's whole shtick, and is there anything I think that'll be relevant? Then stat it as appropriate.

Let's talk about the Dark. It's that thing that follows light, closely associated with the Night, and it gets around- it's pretty ubiquitous. So what can I say about it?

It probably knows a lot, being privy to conversations in poorly lit places
It's fast, and probably hard to see
Light doesn't hurt it, but it certainly banishes it
There's no real substance to it
I also envision it as being rather quiet and unassuming unlike that showoff, Light
It has a sinister reputation, deserved or no

So we need a creature that's intangible and fast, exists in/as shadows, knows a lot (connected to all the darkness, be it a local incarnation or the full-on Dark in all its majesty), and is also somewhere between easy to miss and metaphysically hard to notice. So you stat something that does that, along with any other personal changes you wish to make and any idiosyncrasies you wish to insert such as summoning rules or other banes of or wards against the Dark. Basically, go crazy with your homebrewed monstrosities and pilfer extant powers and creatures as needed.


You may also want to look at Mushishi for creature ideas.
I second this idea. Mononoke (not the film) is another good show for this, along with any sort of crazy spirit folklore. Also, while creatures can be overtly associated with various ideas and concepts, this is in no way necessary- it really depends on what you want to do and how your setting works.

LibraryOgre
2014-08-29, 09:36 PM
Another suggestion: Simply use some Awakened Animals (or the equivalent), and call them "spirit animals". They can talk and think and mostly act like animals.

EDIT: Some of my thinking on this (and the Dryad suggestion) comes from Quest for Glory. In Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero, you wind up finding a fox along a road, caught in a trap. You can just kill him, but he asks you to free him and, hey, you're a hero. So you do, and he tells you about the Dryad, who tells you how to create a potion that will let you free the Baron's daughter from a curse put upon her by Baba Yaga (making Hags another great option for spirit creatures).

Talking animals? Totally a spirit world thing.

Jeff the Green
2014-08-30, 12:05 AM
Well, you've got Greek, Celtic, and Japanese. How about some Roman: Lares, manes, lemures, and penates were generally held to be (very minor) gods, but work equally well as sprits.

Or Native American: Wendigo, thunderbirds, white buffalo woman, yee naalglooshii, coyote spirits, camazotz (bats with human heads), mishibizhiw (kelpies, but jaguars), and any number of others are good options.

Yora
2014-08-30, 05:29 AM
Animals with high intelligence and good resistances always work, and I think they probably make up the majority of spirits. But I always like to have some unique creatures as well.

Roman spirits seem a bit problematic, because you just don't think of nature when you think of Romans. What I know about Roman spirits all makes them sound like concepts of civilization.

Jeff the Green
2014-08-30, 09:06 AM
Roman spirits seem a bit problematic, because you just don't think of nature when you think of Romans. What I know about Roman spirits all makes them sound like concepts of civilization.

Sort of, and sort of not. While the lares, manes, and penates were domestic, they weren't civilized. They were familial deities, possibly even the spirits of ancestors. Whatever they were, they were di inferi, what the Greeks would have called 'chthonic' deities—spirits of the earth and the underworld. Compare brownies, hobs, and ancestor spirits.

Lemures were straight up vengeful ghosts.

Also, while the Romans may have claimed to be urbane, their deities weren't. Many had some connection to the land, some of it quite strong. The Rex Nemorensis was a priest of the bull-headed Diana, all of whom were slain by the next Rex in a sort of human sacrifice in a sacred grove. One of the more important deities was Magna Mater, an alter ego of Cybele, goddess of mountains, fertility of the wild and untamed, and lions. Faunus was the horned-god of wild hills and plains who had some power over dreams, and Bacchus was a wild, terrifying god attended to by centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, and maenads.

Slipperychicken
2014-08-30, 01:19 PM
You could use some Half-X templates on normal creatures to help pad out the spirit-world's fauna.

For example, you could throw in a HD-advanced Half-Dragon Vampire T-Rex to get a big freaky creature which lives in the shadows, devours mortals, has mystical powers, and is strangely intelligent. You could fluff it as being covered with jet-black feathers to help emphasize how fantastical it is.

Yora
2014-08-30, 02:30 PM
I made a list of all the spiritworld creatures for my setting and get to 27 forest spirits (plus spirit animals) and 22 underworld spirits. With only 13 and 9 of them being more or less humanoid.
Which I think seems like a pretty solid base to run campaigns with.

I think where there is still the most room for expension would be creatures of animal-like level. Most I have are either humanoid, giant size, or insubstential.
In the animal category I only have shadow mastiffs, yeth hounds, monkey imps, phase spiders, riding weasel-tigers, purple worms, magic squids, and huge hives of telepathic beetles.
Something in that direction would be super helpful.

Jeff the Green
2014-08-30, 06:12 PM
Hmm. Coyote spirits, camazotz, and mishibizhiw are all (basically) animal-shaped.

There's Laelaps, the dog that would always catch what it was hunting and the Teumessian fox, the giant fox who could never be caught. (Their respective abilities were given by different gods who weren't paying attention to what the other was doing and Zeus eventually had to solve the paradox by sticking them in the heavens as constellations.)

Striges (s. strix) were owls who drink the blood of infants.

Berserkers had fylgja (s. fylgjur), animal spirits that possessed them to make them invincible and strong.

The rainbow serpent is a spirit of rain.

Sleipnir, Jörmungandr, and Fenrir could be argued to be spirits. They all have a certain tie to nature: Sleipnir has a particular connection to Bifröst, the rainbow bridge; Jörmungandr encircles the earth and is tied to the ocean; and Fenrir causes eclipses by eating the sun and moon.

There are Veðrfölnir (a hawk), an unnamed eagle, and Ratatoskr (a squirrel) all living on Yggdrasil. Ratatoskr carries (insulting) messages between the eagle and Níðhöggr.

LokiRagnarok
2014-08-31, 03:20 AM
Speaking of psionic creatures, what about psychic moss that lives in the spirit world that feed off thoughts of sentient creatures in the mundane world? Symptoms could be intense vivid nightmares for everyone who sleeps in the area, and eventually going mad. The moss might be food for psionic animals in the spirit world, who occasionally manifest as ghosts on the mundane world in the form of whatever nightmares people were having. It would prevent the moss from exterminating entire villages/cities, but also when the spiritual moss-plague hits, people believe their nightmares eventually come awake, and trying to kill the manifestations obviously only makes things worse.

There is a similar concept in the Night Watch books by Lukyanenko. There is moss in the Twilight world (which magical beings may step into) which feeds off negative emotions and idle magical energy. Both Light and Dark mages consider it good practice to burn it out when in the Twilight and they have energy to spare.
In places with a high flow of magic (think leylines, regularly used ritual sites, active temples,...) the moss will be absent, because the ambient magic is too strong for it to bear and feed off.

Yora
2014-08-31, 06:04 AM
The Metro games have a couple of rather weird spirits.

Annomalies are balls of lighting that float around, zapping and killing almost anything moving within a couple of meters around it. If you keep still and let it pass by, it ignores you and just continues along its way.

The Great Door appears to be some kind of demiplane that overlapps with an old tunnel. When you try to go through it, you get pulled into some kind of otherworld, which is just one straight passage with a big red glowing door on one end and a big blue glowing door at the other. It tries to both physically and mentally draw you into the red end, which kills you and leaves your dead body in the tunnel in the normal world. If you can make it to the blue end, you return to the normal world at the other end of the tunnel.

The River of Fate is an underground river system that also serves as some kind of portal to an otherworld. It somehow senses when you really need to fix a mistake of your past, sucks you under, and drops you into some recreation of the original situation, which allows you to alter the past. It might also drop you into a place in the future, showing you an accident or catastrophy, so you can prepare for it and try to avoid it when the time comes. When it considers its work done, it sends you back into the normal world at any point on the river that is closest to the place you need to go to.

They have no bodies, they don't talk, or make their intentions known in any way. But if you're smart, you can take advantage of the strange things they do.

Garimeth
2014-09-02, 11:22 AM
For most practical purposes, there is little difference between fey and spirits in mythology and folklore. Cultures that believed in spirits often associated spirits with everything from the fantastic to the mundane - such as having a spirit of the mountain that was personified by a goat-like man as well as a household spirit that cleans up messes and misplaces objects at night. This matches up pretty well with fairies like brownies and gwyllion. There are also a lot of similarities between legends about fey and those about undead, especially ghosts. What is the difference between the Headless Horseman and a similar tale of a Redcap? How do you classify a banshee? A ghost or a fey? It is normally considered a fairy, but is not that different from a ghost. I've read it suggested many times that fey stories often originated as ghost stories anyway.

Sure, but I just feel like their is a bit of a different "feel" to them. Just like jerk chicken and chicken fajitas are both spicy chicken, but they taste different.

Analogy fail, but I think you know what I mean. Admittedly though this could just be my bias.

Garimeth
2014-09-02, 11:26 AM
EDIT: Some of my thinking on this (and the Dryad suggestion) comes from Quest for Glory. In Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero, you wind up finding a fox along a road, caught in a trap. You can just kill him, but he asks you to free him and, hey, you're a hero. So you do, and he tells you about the Dryad, who tells you how to create a potion that will let you free the Baron's daughter from a curse put upon her by Baba Yaga (making Hags another great option for spirit creatures).

Those games were awesome, never did get to play V.

LibraryOgre
2014-09-02, 11:31 AM
Those games were awesome, never did get to play V.


GOG.com has them all! $10! (http://www.gog.com/game/quest_for_glory)

And someone made a VGA Trial By Fire! (http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/)