On the practice of trapping the soul

 to service through song

 

I had been thinking about the ur'dead, the gar'dead, all the sorts of

undead I knew, when I realised that I had never truly explored what

science I knew about the formation of spirits. In this tome, I set forth

what I discovered about the undead nature of all spirits, including and

especially those brought forth from Serenwilde. While speculative about

some matters, I can emphatically attest to the empirical nature of the

experimentation I have performed, and will mark such accordingly. As

always, keep an open mind with all information, and this author welcomes

new developments or opinions to challenge this tome.

 

Point I - EXPERIMENTATION

 

 

It is common knowledge that the Collegium of the Forest of Serenwilde

employs spirits, kept over from the past, to teach their novices, as

well as being famous for having spirits generally a feature in the

commune as a whole. This book will focus entirely on the spirits of

shards, as animal spirits are from Awakening and are entirely different.

 

These spirits drew my attention and I flitted to the Serenwilde to

perform some experiments as to whether I could possibly classify them

under one of the various states of undeath as set forth by highmagic and

Magnagoran ritual. The generally accepted definition of undeath in

Magnagora is a creature whose soul was kept from the cycle of

reincarnation explained by Mugowumpois - reference, Book of Xyl - and

maintains presence upon the world with power to physically affect it.

Generally, undead maintain corporeal forms, yet the undead of Spectre

Isle are considered such despite their incorporeal nature. It is also

common knowledge that a Necromancer is able to converse with the undead

to influence them, and such was the point of my experiment. In my travel

through the Serenwilde, I was able to influence each spirit I met to my

satisfaction - while a novice of the commune (whom shall not be named

here) informed me that they were rebuffed because they had no influence

with 'the dead'.

 

Therefore, for all intents and purposes, a necromancer can commune with

the spirits of Serenwilde as easily as if they were undead, even if they

are not. This concludes point I.

 

POINT II - SPIRITSINGING PRACTICE

 

The spiritsingers as a guild focus mainly on calling back the dead -

their 'ancestral spirits' to guard and protect them, and to harry their

foes. However, the spirits of the dead are meant - normally - to convey

themselves immediately to the Wheel of Reincarnation and spawn anew as

new mortal beings - how then is the concept of an 'ancestral spirit'

possible?

 

Observe the Voice of the Elder God, Jagrerox. When Jagrerox was consumed

by Zenos, the Voice of Jagrerox attained a measure of the excorable

energy that was fed into Jagrerox despite being safe and quite far

away from Zenos, and was able to use that power to assist the Gylleulox

Empire in its conquest - reference, Gylleulox Archaeology, Tyria r'Ekaf,

Blasted Lands.

 

The Voice of Trialante, as the source of Spiritsinging practice, is then

suspect, as all of the Bardic Gods whom plucked their Voices out were

observed to have done such as they were being specifically targetted by

Zenos. Trialante's preoccupation with calling forth the dead to serve

the living, then, may perhaps be a tribal form of necromancy, given a

slight excorable power from the devouring of Trialante by Zenos. These

spirits emerge in cycles, stay for short periods of times, and then

disperse back into the aether when Trialante's song - excorably laced? -

no longer plays.

 

The motifs of lowmagic, being the natural currents, ebbs and flows of

reality, therefore fit Spiritsinging practice. While highmagic rituals

lend themselves well to formal binding, structured practices, and rigid

orders, a lowmagic-based 'natural' form of necromancy would not be

expected to be able to bind a soul to one place for very long. This

concludes point II.

 

POINT III - FURTHER SPIRITUAL EXAMPLES

 

Some would say that spirits have been in Serenwilde since long before

Trialante was discovered - and this is a true statement. However, it

does not invalidate by any means the concept that spirits are only

formed through exposure to excorable energy. It is common knowledge to

those versed in history that Ellindel Treeheart healed Serenwilde's fae

from the 'poisons of the Soulless that dwelled in their lands', which

would be excorable energy. As the Soulless rampaged across the First

World during the Vernal Days, many places could have been so corrupted

by the excoroperdito - especially by the insubstantial Zenos, who could

lay his Taint nearly anywhere through small cracks and crevices. Indeed,

two of Serenwilde's spirits - influencable by the necromancer - are the

two last sileni, a species sharded from a Keeper that barely escaped

Zenos devouring the rest of their kind. The wheel of their reincarnation

stopped by the extinction of their people, they are trapped within

Serenwilde eternally - perhaps due to excorable energy, perhaps due to

simply being unique in the last of their kind to die natural deaths.

 

All other spirits upon Lusternia are easily linked to excorable energy.

Gruvar, the shaman of Fain, is in spiritual form along the Shallach

River. The ghosts of the Paavik noble house are krokani, as well, and it

is common knowledge that the orclach and the krokani are the two only

natural species to contain excorable power - one from their eye, one

from Orlachmar's resurrection. If it is a state of contention as to

whether the krokani's eye is truly excorable, well, they also keep

something very Soulless under Castle Djarrakh, very near to Paavik. (For

the purposes of my studies, humans, viscanti, and illithoid do not count

as 'natural' for understandable reasons.)

 

The fact that the excorable power dwells deep under the earth,

corrupting up above, which is what precipitated Ellindel's

interventions, as well as the natural excorably inclined species of

krokani and orclach further support the idea that, though Serenwilde did

not make active use of tribal necromancy or sharded spirits until the

voice of Trialante arrived, that does not preclude the existance of such

within Serenwilde. This concludes Point III.

 

TRIBAL NECROMANCY - CONCLUSION

 

The facts set forth in this tome are only able to be explained if

Trialante, speculatively, is touched by the Soulless. Therefore, if

Serenwilde desires to be a pure nation, it would exterminate the bardic

guild of the Spiritsingers within it that unknowingly uses the

excorable power of the Elder God it harbors to violently tear the

spirits of their ancestors from the cycle of reincarnation to serve

their whims through song.

 

If there is an alternate conclusion, I would be happy to hear it. This

form of tribal necromancy serves the Serenwilde well in both protecting

its borders and fighting against the Soulless, and I hope that by

pointing these facts out to the Basin at large, our peoples may know

that, even though called by different names, necromancy is one of the

most powerful tools mortals have available in defeating our eternal foes

- for the soul itself is eternal.