Where?In a word, everywhere.
- Lotus Blossom is a corporate director in one (or more) of the Big 10.
- Several are high-ranking assistants to great dragons.
- One particular cheery anima I met spent most of its time frolicking with dolphins in the Carribean.
- Several free spirits abide in the Manitou region, and are well respected (sometimes also feared) by the locals
- Of amusing interest is a free Spirit of Man who was once ally to a now deceased NAN lawyer. The spirit’s name is ‘Man-with-Summons’
- Another was acting as godparent to a silverback gorilla family in an African location I refuse to disclose.
- One particularly loathsome creature was working with Aztech during the Yucatan pacification (and receiving great helpings of bloody karma for his troubles).
- Karma?
- Slamm-O - Keep reading
- Ethernaut
Also, free spirits have fantastic travel abilities. As purely astral entities with no physical body to maintain, we can circle the Earth in a number of hours. I’ve stood on the tip of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, watched the sunrise from the Pyramids at Giza, and one day just for fun, I traversed the North-pole/South-Pole/Equatorial lines just like spinning a globe.
- OK, I’m jealous…
- Traveller Jones
How?Magic.
Free Spirits are not only made of magic, they can grow from it, learn from it, channel it and in some cases, feed from it.
As a natural state, any free spirit can cast and resist spells just as a practised shaman, with a spell set to complement their heritage.
Note: Beware any free spirit born in a war zone. The plethora of combat devastation I have witnessed at such hands is simply terrible.
Now, any decent mage, shaman, psychic, wu’jen, houdoun, gypsy or other various magic-user is familiar with the concept of Karma, but it has many different names: Chi, Life Energy, Mana, the Pulse, the Nexus. It’s all the same, especially to spirits. It’s just manipulated differently by the various traditions of magic.
o I beg to differ!
- Jimmy NoAs fun as it is to be an immortal creature, free spirits do not learn as they age. A free spirit’s body of magic is a static thing and requires a combination of conscious attention and magical power to alter, well, anything. This means that in order to grow (either body, mind or both) we need something more
As a static creature of magic, it’s like having all the information of everything we see and experience stored in a million little boxes in our body. We can store this information and even recall facts, some of us with perfect, eidetic clarity. However to actually make sense of the information, to comprehend the meaning, to link the boxes to one another to form skills, learn spells or increase our strength, we need Karma to ‘lock in’ the links. Without karma, even the oldest spirit would be, at best, a wealth of useless trivia.
Now, every spirit, no matter how kind, greedy, angry or benevolent, will bargain for karma. All free spirits have one or more capabilities to fulfil this bargain known as Spirit Pacts. These pacts can be benevolent, fair or disabling depending on your point of view, so I’ll let you in on some of the ones I know and you can be judge:
• Friendship pactNot my favourite as it relies too heavily on ‘allies’ which can be a relative term. The spirit weaves some of its mana into some other sapient, biological creatures, which binds its own essence closer to the physical plane. The spirit gains karma on a regular basis with this pact, however there are drastic consequences if an ally dies.
For the allies, nothing changes, except a free spirit now has a vested interest in keeping you alive…
• Dream Pact:The spirit forms a lasting link allowing it to take over the host’s body during a sleep phase. As a trade-off for the Karma, the spirit normally promises to use it’s time to benefit the host in some way, normally via an incentive of wealth.
For the allies, this requires a lot of trust, as the ally is responsible for anything the spirit does while in the host body. The legal excuse of ‘It wasn’t me, I was possessed!’ only goes so far if you’re a willing host…
• Life PactMy personal favourite, this links the ally with a measure of astral energy it can use to heal itself. The ally (even a non-Magic user) gains the ability to channel Karma directly into the link to heal some physical damage to their body. The spirit gets the Karma and the ally gets healed. What a great pact!
However, even this power can be used or abused. Common abuses surround the option of linking an ally, then using spirit powers or other manipulation to regularly keep them in painful or dangerous situations, requiring them to use Karma on the link. Not very sportsmanlike...
I prefer to give this pact to people already in dangerous professions: Defence personnel, police, firemen, shadowrunners etc. It costs nothing for the ally, but may save their life. Everybody wins.
• Magic pact:A spirit links itself to a magic-user, who can call on spirit energy to fuel spells. This makes higher order spells much easier to cast, but the extra power is addictive.
The spirit may withdraw the link at anytime, and bargaining for Karma is continuous.
There are others pacts around, but this should give you an idea. Please note that it’s very rare that a spirit will tell you everything you’re getting into with a spirit pact. What’s the old saying? If it sounds too good to be true….?
o So, does this whole file sound too good to be true to anyone besides me? A free spirit giving us the inside scoop out of the goodness of its heart?
- Snopes
o What scares me is that I already know some of this to be true due to my own experience with spirits (including a couple of anima). There are definitely things that the author isn’t saying… but what has been said rings true. I’m both enticed and scared….
- EthernautAnother thing of interest: some spirits will also bargain for knowledge, especially spells. A spirit doesn’t use formula of any sort, but if you let it thoroughly assense you while casting a particular spell, the spirit can learn from there (especially if you add some Karma into the bargain).
o Aha, case in point! I tried this bargaining with a spirit once, but while ‘thoroughly assensing’ me, it saw something it didn’t like and called off the deal, but not before flinging a few choice spells and other mojo at me. Never found out what the problem was, but damned if I’m trying that again. I know I got off lightly.
- EthernautSo, bargaining with a spirit is a mixed blessing. Depending on who you’re dealing with, it can be a blessing or a curse. But isn’t that the way with all contacts in the shadows?
o Touché.
- Snopes