#spirits.

[godsickk]

unb0und. While the general trend is that more powerful psychics attract more powerful spirit partners, the process by which that attraction occurs is mysterious, inexact, and only partially understood, even after literal ages of study. “What causes partnerships? What caused that spirit to bond with that particular human?” is sort of like that setting’s version of the god question in our world in its importance, how long it’s been debated, how humanity has yet to agree on a single answer, and how there are many different answers and even more interpretations of those answers.

That aside, what this means is that though a trend exists, exceptions can and do happen. Human/spirit partners can be mismatched in power level -- a human whose supernatural abilities are too much for the spirit to handle, or a spirit whose presence is too much for their human partner. If it’s the former, there’s a chance that bonding will kill the spirit partner; they might become overwhelmed during the process and end up not being able to maintain their boundary of self during contact, which can cause them to simply dissolve out of existence and revert to formless ether. If the bonding is successful, both the human and spirit will be weakened. The human will feel more drained by their abilities, since their partner can’t fully compensate for the energy cost. If the human partner overextends themselves when using their abilities, or if the spirit partner simply can’t keep up with the ambient drain of the human’s abilities, one partner could end up sapping the other’s vitality in order to maintain themselves (this can become fatal if left unchecked). While this isn’t an ideal situation, it’s not a death sentence, either; with effort and communication, a pair of partners in this situation can strike a balance and achieve a healthy life together.

The other situation is much more dangerous. If the human’s consciousness is overwhelmed, the spirit will spill over into their physical body and essentially overfill it, which can have potentially fatal effects -- a slowed or stopped heartbeat/bloodflow, dangerously high blood pressure, ruptures, internal bruising or bleeding, brain damage, and so on. If the human survives the bonding process, their abilities will increase in potency, but will also become more volatile and harder to control (the consequences of this can range from social disgrace to genuine danger to oneself and others). Frequent accumulation of built-up energy and the necessary discharge thereof will become an issue, and can have negative health effects over time.

There are also cases of people with supernatural abilities who never form a partnership, and people without abilities who do. People in the former situation are often prescribed medication that dampens their abilities and lessens the associated energy drain; Mu, who lost her spirit partner, takes said medication to compensate for having lost their energy, but not the augmented (and therefore more draining) powers from during their partnership. If the latter happens, the human partner is unlikely to survive; in the rare instance that they do, their life will be difficult and painful.

[godsickk]

Spirits are entirely genderless - to them, the whole concept of it is totally alien. They also have a different perception of time; instead of experiencing it linearly, they see it as a fractal. Every decision humans make causes the fractal to branch and split anew, and spirits are in a permanent state of perceiving the entire thing at once, both before and after the decision is made. Technically, this means that they can see the future and could theoretically affect it, but they perceive so much all at once that, in their temporal sense of scale and importance, it’d be like you trying to get one ant out of thousands to move in a specific direction just because. In other words, not worth it.

[alexcandm-finally]

oooo~ looks like someones got a LOVERRR 👀

THEY ARE NOT MY LOVER OH MY GODS-

[godsickk]

unb0und. Humans in a spirit partnership become slightly unanchored from time. They live far longer than average -- often around 200 years (though some are exceptionally long-lived even by these standards; Rikka, for example, will live to see 500) -- and generally stop aging around their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Barring death by disease, sudden illness, or the like, partnered humans also know when their time is coming to die; they don’t know exactly when, but when the time draws near, they will know that it’s happening soon, and that they need to start making preparations for it. Partnered humans frequently see to their own funeral arrangements, and when the moment of their death comes, they just kind of....stop breathing. That’s it. It almost seems less like dying and more like abandoning a physical vessel -- which isn’t that far from the truth.

When a partnered human dies, their spirit partner dies with them (spirits cannot die otherwise, save for exceptional circumstances). Upon death, a spirit loses their form and dissolves out of existence. Their discorporated matter is reabsorbed into the spirit world; this is how the spirit world renews and maintains itself. Eventually, new-made spirits shape themselves into existence out of that same material. Without human partnerships to dissolve existing spirits back into raw ether, the spirit world would gradually fade away as it ran out of the substance that forms it.

[godsickk]

Required blood sacrifice might seem awful, but it’s been a part of Nina’s world since the dawn of existence. This means that everyone is so used to it that, to them, it’s nothing wrong or even particularly remarkable - just a fact of life. There’s also the part where it’s needed to keep both the spirit and physical worlds from tearing themselves apart.

Spirits have a kind of ‘sacrifice’ on their own end in the form of spirit-human partnerships, where a spirit essentially leaves their sphere to become anchored to a physical object and a human partner. Not only do they leave the spirit world behind - they’re also subjected to the physical passage of time and die when their human partner dies. (Normally, spirits have an alien perception of time that basically renders lifespan and the concepts of past, present, and future meaningless.) When a spirit dies, their being dissolves back into the spirit world and becomes raw matter for new spirits to form out of. Spirit-human partnerships are as important for keeping the two spheres in harmony as blood sacrifice is.

[godsickk]

Long post (just under 1k) under the cut about spirit-human partnerships, specifically about spirit vessels.

In most spirit-human partnerships, the human rarely lets their partner’s vessel out of their sight and carries the vessel with them almost constantly. Regardless of the human’s preexisting psychic powers, they and their spirit partner develop a kind of shared telekinetic bond with the vessel; the spirit is able to move it about in relation to their partner, and the human always has a sense of where the vessel is and is able to hold it and pull it to them telekinetically. It’s just one facet of the intimate relationship customary between the partners and the vessel.

Spirits don’t have the same sense of where their vessel is because of how different their sense of ‘where’ is. The physical world is as nebulous and immaterial to them as their world is to humans, so the where of the physical world just doesn’t matter to them. As long as they can sense that their vessel is in close proximity to their human partner’s soul (or that the human knows exactly where the vessel is), things are fine.

Although spirits don’t care about the where of the physical world, for those who are in a partnership, their vessel becomes the center of their world in the spirit world. They’re anchored to it, and it serves as a focal point through which the spirit becomes enhanced, amplified (think of how a magnifying glass takes in formless light and focuses it into a tiny, superbright point). Becoming tied to a vessel changes a spirit’s being so much that they can’t not come to center themselves around it.

Nina’s relationship to Zero is massively fucked up, but her relationship to their vessel is almost typical - she always has the bass guitar with her and is never seen without it. She always knows exactly where it is. When she’s not holding it in hand or using it to fly or doing anything with it in general, she keeps it telekinetically ‘pinned’ against her back, which is why she can carry it at her back even though the bass doesn’t have any straps. Like many human partners, she is very territorial over Zero’s vessel (to a greater-than-normal degree, in fact). Zero has also been affected by the vessel - their acid-green color is the result of a gradual change to reflect the color of the vessel, and the vessel is what allows Nina to conduct Zero’s energy directly into the physical world. However, as Nina and Zero’s selves grow more and more intertwined, Nina’s body gradually becomes the new vessel for both Zero and her own soul, and the bass guitar goes dead.

Some of my other characters’ relationships to their partners’ vessels:

Rikka’s relationship to Loam’s vessel is unusually intimate because their vessel is literally part of her body. It’s actually a source of comfort for her - she likes the closeness. The telekinetic connection is also really useful for keeping her hair out of the way and dealing with its sheer length. Rikka’s hair is echoed in Loam’s long, flowing shape and the way they’re composed of ‘strands’ made of vines, tendrils, ferns, etc.

Mu and her partner had a normal, healthy relationship, including with regards to her partner’s vessel. Part of the reason Mu always wears her scarf now is because of how much she misses the closeness she and her partner once shared. Wearing the scarf eases that pain just the tiniest bit.

Any vessel is going to become very deeply imbued with the spirit anchored to it - the object becomes saturated with the spirit’s nature and presence. It’s sort of like an electric charge and sort of like an aura. The upshot is that touching a spirit’s vessel means that you’re indirectly touching the spirit itself, which is fine for the human partner, but for a random stranger, not so much. Touching a spirit’s vessel without being that spirit’s human partner violates the spirit, the human, and a fuckton of social customs. It’s just universally recognized that you Do Not Touch It.

There are some exceptions to this, such as when a vessel is used as a weapon - in this case, that touch is intentional, and the vessel is actively touching rather than passively being touched. Accidentally brushing up against a vessel is also not as bad as willfully laying hands on it, since it was done without intent to violate (however, it absolutely should still be avoided whenever possible). Touching is also considered acceptable if both the spirit and human partners have consented to that person touching their vessel. This is a deeply intimate act.

Since to touch a spirit’s vessel is to indirectly touch that spirit, anybody touching the vessel creates a mutual exchange where their selves brush together. For a human partner, this is a non-issue, since the two of them are already bonded, but for a third party, the sudden vulnerability and alien presence can be seriously jarring. This is the main reason Nina is so abnormally territorial over Zero’s vessel - she knows full well that if this were to happen with Zero, the consequences for the other person would be disastrous if not outright fatal. Nina is the only person who can handle contact with Zero; anyone else would die, be driven insane, or suffer some other form of permanent damage.

[godsickk]

Every spirit in Nina’s canon has the name that their partner assigns them and their real name. The first is usually a single one- or two-syllable word that somehow fits the nature of the spirit or the partnership.

Examples: - Nina calls her partner Zero because it’s what she feels she’d be without them and because it sounds kind of menacing to her. - Asaau calls his partner Warden because to him the term fits the distant, half-disdainful authority with which the spirit treats him. - Rikka calls her partner Loam because of their powerful connection to plants and growth and how that dovetails with her own love of gardening/botany.

A spirit’s real name is much, much longer and requires sounds that human voices just can’t create. Even for the parts that people can voice, it often requires multiple people (anywhere from a handful to hundreds, thousands, or more) working together to produce the right sound.

- Zero’s real name takes a day and a night to pronounce; some of the sounds needed are those of crushing bones, splitting atoms, and fangs grinding against fangs. - Mu’s took just too long to finish in one breath; its sounds included wind over the surface of a lake, moonlight flashing off fish scales, and the sigh of someone in deep sleep. - Warden’s real name is as long as it takes for a passionate plea to authority to go ignored; its sounds include the sound of a fresh stick of incense igniting, echoes off of marble, and the sound of a knife blade parting air. - Loam’s is spoken in the time it takes a new leaf to unfurl; some of its sounds are that of bare feet through grass, a seed husk splitting open, and the sound of growth itself.