[Path Magic] What happens if you Banish a Spirit of Place?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Rolando

Banish is to expel entities from another dimension I believe, trying to banish a spirit of place is like trying to banish someone spirit from their body, it wont work.

Not in Path magic. There it removes the spirit permanently (or at least for a very long time). Looked up the Spirit of Place in Summoners. Using those stats, Banishing the spirit would be at -14 and resisted with Will 16, so it won't be easy. But it can be done if a large group of very angry magicians decide to do it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

Not in Path magic. There it removes the spirit permanently (or at least for a very long time). Looked up the Spirit of Place inSummoners. Using those stats, Banishing the spirit would be at -14 and resisted with Will 16, so it won't be easy. But it can be done if a large group of very angry magicians decide to do it.

I don't think I've heard of Summoners.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think I've heard of Summoners.

Dungeon Fantasy... 9? Yeah, 9.

[Refplace]

Some interesting ideas here.
I would say Banish is usually not going to work as the spirit belongs there, so you would need a Destroy Spirit type spell. If it were allowed the place should have the equivalent of a Sanctity bonus to help it resist hostile spells - especially spirit related ones such as Path/Book magic is generally purported to be.

If the spirit were weakened, forced into hibernation, or destroyed it becomes vulnerable to other spirits that the loci was warding. Basically its "prime real estate" suddenly vacant and a new tenant is likely to set up shop. In this case spirits of place might be less tethered to a location as they do not originate from it but are effectively possessing a comfortable place.

A place without a spirit could offer Twisted Mana or Low Mana options (as suggested above) and might indeed become less healthy in some way.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

Dungeon Fantasy... 9? Yeah, 9.

Ah. I assumed you were talking about the generic concept of a spirit of place, and not about a specific writeup from a specific series of GURPS books. Not being familiar with DF, I can't comment usefully on its races and their traits.

[Anthony]

Presumably if you eliminate a spirit of place, the place it came from is no longer a place. That seems like a bad idea, though I can think of multiple options for what kind of bad idea it is.

[Phil Masters]

It depends on the campaign, as has been said. But if it happened in a game I was running… Maybe the spirit is forced back down into the metaphysical structure of the place, so it can’t consciously defend it until it manages to work its way out again and recohere, which could take months or years, and might leave it with gaps in its memory and a changed personality. Or maybe it’s forced to dissipate into the ether, and another, new spirit will accrete around the place in a few months or years, coagulating out of raw potential. Telling the difference between these two options is left as an exercise.

Or maybe I would point out that DF9 was written without reference to Path Magic, so I’m (very definitely) allowed to Make Stuff Up, and what I’d make up might well be “You can’t do that any more than you could use that spell to murder a human by Banishing their soul.”

Or maybe somebody would find themselves geased by the Goddess of the Land to go get her tragically banished daughter back from where she’s wandering the distant astral plane, depressed and angry and insane.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

It depends on the campaign, as has been said. But if it happened in a game I was running… Maybe the spirit is forced back down into the metaphysical structure of the place, so it can’t consciously defend it until it manages to work its way out again and recohere, which could take months or years, and might leave it with gaps in its memory and a changed personality. Or maybe it’s forced to dissipate into the ether, and another, new spirit will accrete around the place in a few months or years, coagulating out of raw potential. Telling the difference between these two options is left as an exercise.

If it works, I'd say it was something like that.

Or maybe I would point out that DF9 was written without reference to Path Magic, so I’m (very definitely) allowed to Make Stuff Up, and what I’d make up might well be “You can’t do that any more than you could use that spell to murder a human by Banishing their soul.”

Though I think that's plausible too. At the very least, the bond ought to be very strong, and any attempt to do it should be at a penalty, and quite a substantial one. It might be so strong that the penalty is -10 and the GM can just say "No, you can't."

Another way to look at this would be to say that by banishing you send a spirit back to its (super)natural place, the place where it belong and where it came from. But where does a land spirit belong? Right there on the land! So you would "banish" it to its mountain or tree or pond. And if it noticed it would be annoyed with you.

Banishing is intended to send demons back to hell (freeing the people they possess), or elementals back to the elemental plane, or that sort of thing. It's really more "Deportation."

[lugaid]

I'd have to agree that it depends heavily on the setting assumptions. For me, I would probably tend toward an animistic interpretation that the existence of a Spirit of Place implies that the enspirited Place is a "material living creature" for purposes of the Banish ritual, and so not subject to it. To get it to leave, you have to destroy its Place in the same way you'd have to destroy the body of a human. Pollute the river and pave it over, burn down the tree or forest or house, strip mine the mountain, whatever (though perhaps the Spirit can cut a deal with another power to go somewhere else; see Spirited Away/Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi for an example in fiction, and the Embody ritual for one possible game mechanic).

[Stone Dog]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It becomes just a river.

It's kind of like the thing in Hogfather where if Teatime had succeeded the sun wouldn't have risen, a ball of gas would have instead.

I saw the tread title and immediately thought of this



The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
NO.
"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."
THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.
...
"Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"
A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.