On Echoes and Ephemera

[thelisan]

4 Hearthmoon, 2E 222
 

What most know as our soul is made up of two forces: Anima and Dynamis. Through our anima, we perceive the world and find our paths, and through our dynamis, we affect the world.

After death, these two energies may linger - it is the balance that determines what entity or soul-amalgam, if any, remains.

Echoes have lost almost all anima, and with it, the ability to truly comprehend what happens around them. Their lingering dynamis keeps them present, in a form, which is usually caused by a traumatic end. As such, if these echoes perceive a recurrence of their trauma - which can be a rather broad definition due to their dissipated anima - a dynamis flare-up event may happen.

Specters are the opposite, lingering anima deprived of dynamis. They can perceive, they can think, they cannot act. Where echoes are a latent threat, specters instead are a pitiable existence. Their anima is usually tied to the world by unfinished business, but the specific cause of the depletion of dynamis can vary. Most often it's caused by a slow, gradual death - chronic illness and such.

To put the concept into practice, a town once burned will have echoes that fear the flame. A town twice-burned will awaken them, bringing back the pain, panic, and horror of their final moments. A battlefield will house the echoes of agonizing death among the crowfeast; anima enough to perceive and to remember the trauma, and enough dynamis to lash out.

A second battle... to bloody the land twice is folly beyond measure.

The Battle of Norvanfeld was a terrible thing. Each side's forces had been moved to such great enmity for the other that they employed poisons most vile. Many suffered a bloody end even before the battle was properly joined. Many more found their final moments amidst the blades to be an agony beyond mortal comprehension.

The Second Battle of Norvanfeld was... horror. That such wickedness would be brought to bear once more sparked an echo manifestation unlike any ever recorded. Soon after the battle was joined, people began dying - not of blades, not of arrows, but of attacks on their very essence. Lances of vengeful dynamis imperceptibly striking people dead. Anima-Echoes inflicting Distortion, twisting perception to turn brother against brother. None could be safe, least of all their leaders. For when their men were struck down, many found their final thoughts turning to the men who led them into this waking nightmare, and forgiveness was not on offer.

And when that terror created even more echoes... no. There were no survivors.

We don't go to Norvanfeld anymore.