/lit/ - Literature

>>18665429
Hey, I'm working on a setting where everything has a corresponding spirit, a bit like a combination of Plato and Shinto, with a hierarchy where each spirit is aligned with at least one of several spirits at the top of the hierarchy, who are essentially the gods of the setting. The thing is, I'm stuck on what aspects of existence should get a spirit at the very top of things, and I don't want to have too many to keep things from getting too complicated. I'm thinking that there'd be at least one that came into being relatively recently, corresponding to mortal thought and emotions as they grew to prominence and new spirits corresponding to them sparked into existence, but besides more abstract things like time, space, gravity, and so on, do you have any ideas on how I can divide things please?


In the last thread I asked this in, someone suggested 6-15 major spirits, what do you think, should I do more or less, and do you have any suggestions for their natures (someone in the last thread suggested self-awareness/being)? What about making things increasingly abstract as they get more powerful?

>>18654708
Hey, I'm working on a setting where everything has a corresponding spirit, a bit like a combination of Plato and Shinto, with a hierarchy where each spirit is aligned with at least one of several spirits at the top of the hierarchy, who are essentially the gods of the setting. The thing is, I'm stuck on what aspects of existence should get a spirit at the very top of things, and I don't want to have too many to keep things from getting too complicated. I'm thinking that there'd be at least one that came into being relatively recently, corresponding to mortal thought and emotions as they grew to prominence and new spirits corresponding to them sparked into existence, but besides more abstract things like time, space, gravity, and so on, do you have any ideas on how I can divide things please?


In the last thread I asked this in, someone suggested 6-15 major spirits, what do you think, should I do more or less, and do you have any suggestions for their natures besides the one(s) related to thoughts and emotion? What about making things increasingly abstract as they get more powerful?

>>18643398
I'm working on a setting where everything has a corresponding spirit, a bit like a combination of Plato and Shinto, with a hierarchy where each spirit is aligned with at least one of several spirits at the top of the hierarchy, who are essentially the gods of the setting. The thing is, I'm stuck on what aspects of existence should get a spirit at the very top of things, and I don't want to have too many to keep things from getting too complicated. I'm thinking that there'd be at least one that came into being relatively recently, corresponding to mortal thought and emotions as they grew to prominence and new spirits corresponding to them sparked into existence, but besides more abstract things like time, space, gravity, and so on, do you have any ideas on how I can divide things please? For clarity, think of the hierarchy of being more like the relationship between cells and organs within the "body" of existence. Basically, the spirit of say, a leaf on a tree, will be so low down the totem pole in terms of intelligence (so much so that it's dubious that it 'can' think any more than the leaf itself could) and power that any kind of attempt at communication or using it in magic is an epic waste of time and energy. But all the leaves, while separate, are still part of the tree, whose own spirit will have more power and intellect, though most would still not be sapient. Similarly, the tree is a individual living thing, but still part of the forest as a whole, and the spirit of the forest will thus have more power than every tree combined, since it's also composed of the animals, fungi, etc. Similarly, the spirit of a single stone would be below the spirit of a mountain that it rests upon, which is dwarfed by the spirit of the mountain 'chain', and which in turn is only a part of the spirit of the 'continent', and so on. Make sense?

>>18635417
I'm working on a setting where everything has a corresponding spirit, a bit like a combination of Plato and Shinto, with a hierarchy where each spirit is aligned with at least one of several spirits at the top of the hierarchy, who are essentially the gods of the setting. The thing is, I'm stuck on what aspects of existence should get a spirit at the very top of things, and I don't want to have too many to keep things from getting too complicated. I'm thinking that there'd be at least one that came into being relatively recently, corresponding to mortal thought and emotions as they grew to prominence and new spirits corresponding to them sparked into existence, but besides more abstract things like time, space, gravity, and so on, do you have any ideas on how I can divide things please? For clarity, think of the hierarchy of being more like the relationship between cells and organs within the "body" of existence. Basically, the spirit of say, a leaf on a tree, will be so low down the totem pole in terms of intelligence (so much so that it's dubious that it 'can' think any more than the leaf itself could) and power that any kind of attempt at communication or using it in magic is an epic waste of time and energy. But all the leaves, while separate, are still part of the tree, whose own spirit will have more power and intellect, though most would still not be sapient. Similarly, the tree is a individual living thing, but still part of the forest as a whole, and the spirit of the forest will thus have more power than every tree combined, since it's also composed of the animals, fungi, etc. Similarly, the spirit of a single stone would be below the spirit of a mountain that it rests upon, which is dwarfed by the spirit of the mountain 'chain', and which in turn is only a part of the spirit of the 'continent', and so on. Make sense?