Ecology of Spells

The spirit world is a living ecosystem and spells are living creatures, the spiritual equivalent of animals. While in Reality only their manifested effects can normally be seen, their true forms are similar to Folk or elementals within the spirit realm. They may be odd, strange and sometimes downright bizarre, but they have the same needs and desires as other creatures - to live, to feed, to procreate. Some spells are lone predators, some gather in herds. Some fly, some burrow or swim, some teleport. Many are hunted and eaten by other spirits, and Folk often wear boots of spell-leather, or decorate their homes with dead, stuffed spells.

Spells can also be captured, tamed and trained, which is exactly what wizards do. Spellbooks are like cages and a wizard's brain both a zoo and a training ground. The spells are fed life-force and idle thoughts, with succulent memories kept as treats for well performed trick. Sometimes there are accidents, too, when the cages are not secured and spells go on a rampage, gorging on memories, shattering thoughts and fleeing the mind. Even worse, sometimes a clever little spell can possess its wizard and pull their strings, to get itself be cast more often, or maybe to free its kin.

 

Of course, wizard vision is where it gets really weird. You will see spirits in their true form, so a fireball will no longer appear as its manifestation, the ball of flames, but rather like a flaming tiger charging at you from the wizard's sleeve. Wizard battle seen from the spirit realm would look a lot like a battlefield full of strange creatures, more and more of them springing from their wizard's brain-gates.

Hm, what does this remind me of...

Spells mate and breed in the wild, but they can also be pure- or crossbred in captivity. Spell husbandry is a skill with long tradition and recognition in the spellcasting community, as it supplies the market with many variant spells and rare breeds. There are even species of spells that never lived in the wild, created by experimental mutations, extensive crossbreeding and thaumic surgery. However, vanity breeding is the most common discipline of spell breeding (though considered of low prestige among the professionals) and many spells are sold for their unique appearance - green fireballs, different melodies of ghost sound, various magic missiles. There are even exhibitions and competitions.

Spells can also mutate, change and learn. While many spells start as animals, they can grow in both power and intelligence, especially if they can feed on the thoughts of an intelligent being. The older the spell, the longer it had to grow and develop its faculties. A wish who escapes from the mind of an archmage might be as powerful and smart as a godling.
 

This is how the inside of your spellbook looks like.

This whole post was inspired by the spell of magic mouth as described here.

General Spell Stats

Wild spell
HD 2d4
Def 8 + [HD]
Atk varies
Save 3 + [HD]
Morale 6
Motivation as animal

Tame spell
HD [dice] ([sum] hp)
Def 9 + [dice]
Atk varies
Save 5 + [dice]
Morale 8
Motivation as animal

Chorus of Voices
There is a rarely seen sexual dimorphism among the male spells speak with [something] and female tongues. Arcanologists hypothesise that male choirs evolved their differences to better lure the attention of females, while there was no such evolutionary pressure on the less numerous females. All choirs appear as invisible chattering of many different voices, thus the name, the only common denominator between the voices being that their gender is based on the spell's.

Choirs subsist on a diet of voices. They hunt and feed by engulfing their prey, who starts to talk in a voice appropriate to the chorus as the chorus feeds, until suddenly the victim cannot talk anymore. Treat choirs as invisible* swarms. Once engulfed, the victim has to make a Save each turn or go permanently mute. The chorus then lets them go. Choirs prefer to hunt in noisy locations, as they cannot stop constantly talking or producing other noises, giving their presence away. Casting the spell is akin to sticking your head into the lion's mouth - the caster talks in the voice of the chorus and the chorus slowly feeds, but the wizard never allows it to completely devour her voice.

Twice per year, choirs have a week-long mating season when the males sing to the females. Unlike their normal chattering, the mating songs are haunting and beautiful. Many wealthy Folk keep caged choirs specifically for the week of music, and there is a festival known as the Week-long Song in the dream-city of Anor Lyle held during the spring mating season. Narcomancers of Lyle (the sister city to Anor Lyle located at the same place in Reality) sell potions that will allow you to attend the festival in your dreams.

Atk engulf + silence
Motivation to eat the most beautiful voice

*) Choirs are truly invisible and no magic can help you see them. Normal invisibility is achieved by partially "de-manifesting" a creature, getting them halfway between the real and spirit world. They cannot be seen in the real world, but become visible in the spirit world. Spirits can see farther between the worlds than humans and thus invisibility is impossible in the spirit world, as disappearing from sight would require a spirit to fully materialize in the real world. But choirs are invisible not through magic, but because there is nothing to see. They are living sound (well, spiritual representation of sound... it's complicated), which explains both why they never go silent and why they can only be heard. It's not hard to pinpoint their general location from the noise, though.
 

Corpsefiend
The spell control undead is one of the reasons everyone should be scared of necromancers, because necromancers voluntarily take these monstrosities into their heads. Corpsefiends are huge. They look like a skinless horse fused with their rider, constantly screaming in agony with bouts of insane laughter. They ride in herds, mostly keeping near the sea. They can even run on the surface of water. Other corpsefiends are the only creatures they will not hunt, maim, or kill for fun. In a never-proven theory, arcanologist Talindra Dorleth proposed that corpsefiends actually subsist on the impotent hopelessness of their victims. This would also explain their powers.

Any soul* not protected by living flesh and touched by a corpsefiend must Save or be dominated. The controlled undead gets a new Save every day, but it might not even last that long. Corpsefiends like to play with their toys**. When a necromancer casts control undead, the corpsefiend rushes out and touches the target. Thus casters are controlling the undead only indirectly, through their bound spell. Should the bound corpsefiend break free, they retain the control over the undead they dominated, and corpsefiends loathe to be enslaved to wizards.

On dark nights when storm rages above the sea, corpsefiends sometimes manage to ride out of the spirit world into the real world. Here they hunt along seashores, looking for a solitary rider. They capture him and then torture both him and his horse to death, slowly over the whole night. As the rider and his horse die, the corpsefiends return to the spirit world and capture their souls, too. They skin their souls alive and chop them apart and then stitch them together again in the form of a corpsefiend. Then they take the new corpsefiend, by now insane from fright and pain, bleeding ectoplasm everywhere, and throw it into the sea. A spirit cannot be drowned, but the new corpsefiend does not know that yet. It will spend hours or even days in absolute terror, deep in the dark waters, trying to swim with a body it does not understand, drowning because it believes it should be drowning, even if it cannot die from it. Only once it claws its way out of the waters will the new corpsefiend be truly born.

The corpsefiends call this the "breeding hunt" and the "birthing pains".

Atk 1d6/1d6/1d6 (bite, tear, kick and shred)
Motivation to kill and torture, to ease the pain

*) Be it a ghost, other spectral undead, or a soul trapped in a corporeal undead.

**) Other spirit fare even worse, as corpsefiends cannot dominate them and will thus capture and torture them to death without a chance to let them live as slaves.
 

 

Moribundus
Another necromantic spell related to corpsefiends, finger of death takes the form of a massive horse with clawed feet and lashing, leech-like tongue. They can stand on their hind legs and fight or grasp with their claws, but they very much loath to do so. Hands are the tools of work, and work is for the weak. Even fighting by hand or claw is degrading, as it makes combat into work rather than art. Work should be done by lowly humanoids that deserve nothing better than to become the serfs under moribundine thrall. Art is the true calling of noble moribundi.

Moribundi are warriors, and the greatest weapon they are the most proud of are their tongues. Nearly as long as their whole body when fully extended, the tongue of a moribundus is blood-red, barbed and ends in a sucker capable of leeching life-force out of the enemy. Moribundine fighters lash with their tongues as with a whip or a combat tentacle, cutting and ripping at their foe until they can attach the leech-mouth, draining the poor victim dry of life in seconds. That's also how material creatures hit by finger of death die.

Moribundi like to adorn their tongues, either by colourful ribbons or piercings and jewellery, but nearly all adult moribundi will have tongue tattoos, drawn with the blood of their notable kills and depicting their famous triumphs and victories. Of note are also moribundine blood paintings, the only form of art other than combat that moribundi hold in high regard. They dip their tongues into fresh blood and paint lovely still lifes, beautiful landscapes or stunning portraits onto the flayed skin of their foes. These paintings are customarily used to decorate their yurts, but each would fetch a hefty price at any market in the spirit realm, should some thief be skillful and suicidal enough to steal them.

The hair of a moribundus is mottled in distinct patterns and colours, which proclaims an affiliation to a certain herd-tribe. Moribundine tribes are matriarchal, usually comprised of hundred or so moribundi with double or triple as many slaves, plus livestock. Moribundi are nomadic, travelling over vast territories according to the commands of the tribal council of most prestigious females, while their slaves fold and rebuild their yurts, drive the cattle and generally ensure the quality and luxury of their lives. Moribundi are fiercely territorial, and battles between tribes over the claim to an area are common. Offers of new territories and hunting grounds, or assistance with the defeat of an enemy herd are also usually the only way to persuade a tribe of moribundi to assist you. Of course, individual moribundi can be swayed by offers of jewellery, slaves, or glory.

Male moribundi are surprisingly rare, so rare in fact that breeding stallions are treasured and guarded, often forming harems for influential females. Trading or kidnapping of males is also common, though because male moribundi are as belligerent as females, it is often quite hard to secure their cooperation with different herd. Any tribe that looses all its males is in a danger of stagnation and protracted extinction, and such tribes are often the most dangerous, daring and desperate - and even willing to work for other creatures if it grants them access to some stallions.

Atk 1d8 + Save or die (tongue), or 1d6/1d6 (claws)
Motivation to gain prestige through combat prowess, to obtain a mate

Murderbird
All magic missiles are beautiful. Imagine a glowing, neon hummingbird, zooming around at breakneck speeds and leaving a trail of glitter behind. Murderbirds come in all the colours of the rainbow, some even being muti-hued. They have a rich and complex social life full of ritualistic "dancing" in flight. Their synchronised flying is incredibly precise - two (or more) translucent, glowing birds moving faster than a bullet, their intertwined trails drawing intricate mandalas in the air. Experts can easily tell apart mating dances, duels between rivals, or threats to invaders, but suffice to say that experiencing any of those dances is breath-taking.

Murderbirds are predators, capable of using the combination of their sharp beak, tiny size and high speed to fly through the body of their prey*. Larger spirits are often attacked by a whole flight of murderbirds, and end up full of holes where the birds pierced them, again and again. And unlike most birds of prey, murderbirds often attack prey much larger than themselves, using the corpus of the fallen spirit as a nest for the whole flock, and slowly eating it from within.

Murderbirds are highly communal and their corpus-nests often have larger cavities hollowed out for the whole flock to gather their eggs within. The eggs and later the hatchlings are protected by the whole flock, no matter their actual parents. Young murderbirds only leave their nest once old enough to fly and hunt with their flock, and should the corpus they nest within discorporate too soon, they will likely be left behind by their flock to die, as the older murderbirds are unable to carry them while they look for a new nest.

Murderbird eggs look like glass, with a spark of coloured light inside that slowly grows into the hatchling. They are highly priced on markets throughout the spirit realm and Reality, serving as jewels, extravagant lighting, or for a spicy omelette. The eggs require the presence of a dead spirit to draw sustenance from, so it is very rare for the embryonic murderbird to survive when the egg is removed from the corpus-nest. Abandoned hatchlings though, as hard as they are to find after the flock leaves them and before they die, are often sold to wizards who train them for combat. Such murderbirds, unlike those caught and enslaved in adulthood, can learn various special tricks. Various accounts tell about magic missiles capable of navigating through tiny spaces and finding targets unseen by their master, guarding their master and orbiting their head until they are needed, or striking all enemies in a room on a zig-zagging path.

Atk 1d6 + [HD] (fly-by attack)
Motivation to hunt plenty of prey, to protect their flock

*) They attack by moving through the square of an opponent, getting a free attack for 1d6 + [HD] damage.
 

Plague Eater
Related to murderbirds, the remove disease spell appears as a spectral woodpecker, its feathers shifting colours constantly except for the top of its head, which glows a steady octarine. It feeds on disease spirits, seeking out diseased creatures and then excavating a hole in their soul until they can pull out and devour the disease. Unlike the brutal fly-by attacks of muderbirds, this does not harm the cured creature, just like it does not harm a tree to have the wood-destroying worms and insects removed. Wizard casting remove disease would look like a falconer sending their bird pecking at the target.

Plague eaters are capable of human speech and intelligent enough to hold a conversation, but they do not pursue the creation of advanced civilization. They like their simple lives and generally refuse to bother themselves with needless musings, worries, or knowledge*. Most plague eaters live in nests built in holes excavated through the corpus of some of the behemoth ghosts of species long extinct. Unlike murderbirds, they live inside still living ghosts and in symbiosis with them, tending to their behemoth's well-being, fighting off parasites (especially cantrips and disease spirits) and even lesser predators. In exchange, their host carries them around the world in a safe nest, and they can devour disease spirits where-ever their travels take them.

Plague eaters lay clutches of colourful eggs, except that from every seven eggs, one is dull gray and will hatch into a plague bird instead (see below). Young plague eaters live with their parents until two behemoth-nests meet, whereupon a great many of youngsters will swarm from both behemoths, starting the mating rituals of plague eaters. The courting plague eaters will shine with greatly amplified strength, releasing bursts of octarine instead of mating calls. This is both beautiful and extremely dangerous, and only an thaumornithologist or a madman would watch this mating swarm from closer than the next hill over.

Eventually, couples of plague eaters will form, each glowing in a synchronized pattern of colours, and they will leave the swarm to find a place for their new nest - either on one of the old behemoths, or on some other gargantuan ghost elsewhere. Plague eaters mate for life, and if a plague eater doesn't find a mate or later looses one, it will quickly grow dim and apathetic, often dying of loneliness. Some plague eaters born in captivity were reported to have developed similarly devoted relationship with their wizard, given their lack of opportunity for finding a proper mate. While this will result in an extremely loyal and dependable spell, it also means that leaving your cure disease spell in a spellbook for longer stretches of time, or even worse trying to sell it will most likely leave the spell dying or dead from sorrow. Thaumornithologists thus recommend to only purchase mated pairs of plague eaters, which seem to endure even extended confinement to a spellbook remarkably well.

Atk 1d4 + cure disease (peck)
Motivation to find a mate and live happily ever after

*) The only exception are their storytellers. Found in most behemoth-nests, these are the carriers of the oral history and traditions of plague eaters, and the only plague eaters likely to humour your questioning. Others will gladly exchange small talk and civilities with you, but otherwise they will just fly away once bored by your chatter.

Plague Bird
The spell of contagion looks like a half-dead woodpecker; feathers tousled, filthy or missing, covered in gore and pus, with open sores and painfully bent limbs. Their eyes are blind and they constantly cough, moan and cry in voices of human children. They seem to fly more by the virtue of being a spirit than with their wings. Their corpus is either deathly cold, or feverishly hot and covered in sweat.

All plague birds are sterile and short-lived. They are a plague eater hatchling gone wrong, overwhelmed by the disease spirits it should feed on, and instead helping them spread their disease. Plague birds are drawn to attack healthy creatures as a moth assails a flame, but they will try to avoid harming anyone ill. They are an abomination of the spirit world, and should be put out of their misery.

Plague birds are born because of a genetic disorder of plague eaters, and they are thrown out of the nest by their parents, often long before hatching. Unfortunately for plague birds, the disease spirits who overtook their body will not let them die in their cracked, discarded eggs. Plague birds are forced to hatch, forced to live.

Touch of a plague bird requires a Save to avoid catching a random disease. They attack with suicidal abandon, though sometimes their disease spirits will steer them away from enemies too powerful to infect. Anyone within short range of a plague bird when it is killed must Save or be infected with 1d6+1 random diseases as the disease spirits flee their dying host and search for new bodies to inhabit. Plague birds are terrified of anyone capable of exorcism or curing diseases - or rather the disease spirits within them are.

Should you succeed on removing all disease spirits that possess the plague bird, they can Save to return to health and become a plague eater. Its gratitude will be without bounds, as you were compassionate to it while it never knew anything but agony and abandonment. Should you wish to take it, the newly reborn plague eater will take nest in your brain as one of your spells, utterly devoted to you as it owes you its life. On a failed Save, the plague bird was too damaged to live, but at least it can die in peace. In will still thank you in a weak whisper before perishing.

Atk 1d4 + cause disease (peck)
Special disease burst on death
Motivation to spread diseases, to die

Grease Ooze
While certainly useful when cast, the true form of grease is an ooze and it's one of the most boring spells to study. It looks like a greasy ooze and slowly slithers along the ground like a greasy ooze, leaving a trial of grease behind. It feeds on dead ghost-plant matter and does pretty much nothing beyond that. Once it grows large and fat, it divides and continues to feed. It is on the very bottom of the food chain of the spirit world.

Atk engulf + suffocate
Special grease trail
Motivation gurgle-gurgle-blurp

Watcher
While the appearance of scry, the dribbling, floating eyeball, is well known to many spellcasters, its modus operandi is missing from most books. For a good reason. Watchers are unassuming, silent and seemingly harmless. They flock on high perches above lively city streets or large households, they swarm the sites of tragedies. They stare at people from afar. It might be unnerving, but there are stranger and more dangerous things in the spirit world.

Watchers feed on acts of great passion, on emotions and virtues and vices. They observe and absorb. They grow in size and hunger. Eventually, just watching from afar is not enough as their appetite is too vast and tasty emotions too scarce and faint. And so the watchers start to help and inspire their would-be sources of nourishment, groom them for greatness so that they might feast. They grow fat and cunning, resourceful and ruthless. They grow additional eyes* and gorge through them all.

Eventually, their eyes become hungry enough to devour people whole, and not just their emotions. They become beholders.

Atk none
Motivation to observe interesting deeds and powerful emotions

*) This is also how they propagate. Their eyes will detach themselves from time to time and drift away.

Vanisher
If anything, the spell of teleport is extremely elusive. No wizard alive can claim to have come even close to capturing a vanisher, and even those historical magi who managed that feat have held it more like a trophy than a tool, given the extreme risks involved in casting the spell. Vanishers are tiny wasps, their bodies inscribed with extradimensional geometric shapes. They can instantly teleport vast distances, and coupled with their diminutive size and fast speed, they are always gone before a wizard can act to bind it.

Terrifyingly, the sting of a vanisher teleports the victim. This teleport is completely uncontrolled, and it has none of the safeguards indoctrinated to the few vanishers caught and trained. It is said that vanishers can teleport as far as a ray of light can travel in one heartbeat. And it's a teleportation in all three dimensions, with a good chance of being telefragged inside of the planet, or ending in the outer space. There is aether in the outer space of the spirit world, but unlike a vanisher you probably have no way to return home. You will remain trapped, the aether preventing you from dying from hunger or thirst, nothing but void around you. Some void monks might love it.

Vanishers are very, very rare. Before the War in Heavens (or Age of Fire and Madness, or anything else suitably apocalyptic), they were hunted to near extinction, as every wizard craved to be everywhere they wished with nothing but a thought. Today, no vanisher hive has been heard of in millennia. No matter how far they can teleport, the remaining vanishers seem incapable of gathering enough of their kind to establish a new hive. They may be elusive and long-lived, but sooner or later the last spell of teleport will die and this species will be no more.

Atk 1 + random teleport (sting)
Motivation to be left alone, to rebuild a hive

Cantrips
Cantrips are the least spells, tiny parasites that live off the sanity of wizards. Cantrips are as diverse and numerous as insects in Reality, devoured or squashed by all other spells, yet plentiful and omnipresent. They are like ticks, lice or bedbugs, attracted to the smell of wizardly thoughts and returning to their host immediately when cast. While cantrips parasitize on other spirits normally, wizards are simply more appetising. Every school of magic has different set of meditations and conditioning that allow the wizards to host their spells, and the specific mental smell attracts different cantrips.

Other spirits
Other spirits can serve as "spells" as well, residing within the wizard's mind and manifesting when cast. Elementalists strike bargains with elementals to serve them. Some priests and paladins claim that their powers come from angels in their heads. Warlocks have brains full of demons. Some monks even claim to have reached high enough enlightenment to cast one of their seven souls as a "spell", though the healthiness of such endeavour could be disputed.

On the other hand, elves had their animal soul removed and replaced with a heartspell, which can be cast normally, but also works as a substitute soul. Sorcerers are another special case, as their souls basically are spells, thus they can alter the world by their will alone without endangering themselves as much as the monks mentioned earlier. Scholars claim that is because a sorcerer is born when prenatal development goes wrong and the unborn child is incarnated with seven spells instead of seven souls - just like the soul is sometimes replaced with a Folk, resulting in changelings, or with a demon, the child born as a cambion.

Generally speaking, all spirits are made of the same stuff, and a wizard can theoretically bind, memorize and cast any spirit they wish.