Magic part 2: About spirits

Spirit is defined as a permanent or long-lasting formation of protospirits. These fall into three categories as follows:

Artificial spirits: These are spirits created by magic-users.They vary in complexity and power by their purpose and the skill and power of their creator. There are many reasons why someone would want to create a spirit, but the most common ones are wanting to create a permanent effect or wanting to create a spell-effect beyond his or her normal means. Creating a permanent effect is fairly simple: you simply force the spell already in effect solidify into a spirit. This takes a lot of effort and usually a long time. Creating a spell-effect beyond your means is more difficult: you start by making a small part of it suspended and then solidifying it. Then you create next part and keep doing it until the effect is complete. This can take anything from days to months. At the end you simply trigger the effect and it happens, provided all the parts fit together seamlessly and you didn't make any mistakes. Otherwise the result might either be something close to what you intended or completely different depending on the degree of failure. Since solidifying the parts means it's permanent, you could then recharge it, or let the ghost of the spell simply fade away.

Natural spirits: These are permanent formations of proto-spirits that appear naturally. They vary in power from barely detectable to something that would take several magic-users decades or even centuries to match. Their effects vary from obvious(like ever-burning flame) to non-detectable. This has nothing to do with their actual power: A vast formation could appear to do nothing at all, where a small one might do something that something so small couldn't possibly do if it had been crafted by humans. Some of these are beneficial, like clearing the air or creating a barrier against nightmares. Some, on the other hand, are harmful or even deadly to anyone in their presence.

Man-influenced spirits: These are born either from carefully observed rituals and belief or from the raw influence of human emotions, thoughts and dreams. They belong to three different classes: gods, dreams and nightmares.

Gods are born from ritual following of humans from particular village or town. The villagers follow a set of customs and rituals which, due to the force of human emotions and beliefs channeled via the rituals form a god. The god begins as a simple automaton and gradually gains power and sentience, eventually reaching human-level sapience. The presence of a god acts as a ward against nightmares and more concrete dangers like cave-ins and raids as long as the rituals are being followed. It is time, rather than the number of followers, that gives a god its power. A millenia old god is powerful indeed, outmatching even the most powerful humans and protecting its home from almost all dangers. A few decades old god, on the other hand, could at best give moderate protection against nightmares. On the other hand, gods also have one severe limitation: they cannot reach beyond their area. This is usually the village or town and some of the closest tunnels and farms, but can extend several miles beyond that or be limited to the village proper. The limits seem to be completely random, but the older the god, the more absolute the limits are: a relatively young god wouldn't be able to step far beyond its area, but could influence things a day's travel away. An old god, on the other hand, couldn't step outside its area of influence anything beyond what it could see. The exception to this is if there is a shrine to the god outside its area of influence: the god couldn't actually be in the shrine, but its protection would extend to there.

Dreams are spirits created from thoughts, ideas and emotions of humans. Most of them are simple ghosts without sentience or much power beyond evoking the emotions and thoughts that created them. They and their kind can be found everywhere and they can be easily attracted or repelled with magic, as suits the magic-user. Some dreams, on the other hand, grow more powerful and eventually gain sentience. They can use magic like humans can, although it's usually limited to effects related to whatever the dream is associated with: One associated with with lust couldn't move a rock or cause two humans to fall in love with each other, but it could make someone look more attractive or make two humans drawn to each other by lust.They can also manifest physically, appearing vaguely humanoid, with associated emotions and thoughts clearly warping their form: A dream associated with lust, for example, might appear like a physically attractive, but not necessarily beautiful woman where as one associated with anger might appear as a hulking, beast-like figure. Dreams like this can't be attracted or repelled like ordinary dreams, but they can sometimes be summoned and bargained with.

Nightmares are like dreams, but created exclusively from negative emotions and thoughts. Like dreams, most of them are mere phantasms, easily repelled with positive thoughts or, indeed, any human presence at all. Also like dreams, some of them gain power and eventually sentience and ability to manifest physically. They can also be summoned, but unlike dreams, they usually can't be bargained with as most of them, while sentient, lack necessary intelligence or indeed, any motivation to see humans as anything but food or victims. These nightmares regularly are attracted to traveling routes and often assault travelers in order to kill or kidnap them for their twisted purposes. They are difficult to kill, and killing them is indeed impossible without powerful magic, but as they manifest in order to attack, they can often be repelled even without magic and they shouldn't pose any threat to a competent magic-user. Exceptions exist, of course. These are called demons, and they are very powerful nightmares indeed. Where other nightmares can't be bargained with, demons delight in dealing with mortals as long as there is gain in it. A demon can even appear inside a town if it's summoned, though they're usually reluctant to do so as their presence is enough to alert the god and even a weak god can at the very least repel most if not all demons and the stronger ones can destroy any demon outright if one happens to get inside it's sphere of influence. Where as most nightmares manifest as humanoid, with little magic in their disposal, a demon can take many forms ranging from fully human to something directly out of the worst nightmares and they have powerful magics in their disposal.