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

[Anders]

Spirits of Place are spirits of a location, like the spirit of a river, mountain, or forest. Banish is a ritual that gets rid of a spirit "effectively permanently." So what happens when e.g. the Spirit of a River is gotten rid of? Obviously it depends on the campaign metaphysics, but what are some ideas?

[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.

[whswhs]

I have a couple of thoughts:

* The spirit of a thing is what makes it alive. So if you banish the spirit of a place, the place becomes dead. This might be like what happens in the Sharing Knife books when a malice arises: it turns the soil into regolith (no plants or animals, no microorganisms, maybe even no organic micronutrients) and it takes a long time for the wound to heal.

* It might be quite hard to drive the spirit out of a place. I mean, for comparison, in an animistic world, you would have a spirit; would Banish be able to force your spirit out of your body? Would you then be a corpse, or perhaps an empty shell available for possession by any spirit that had no respect for property rights? I don't suppose the spirit of a river is quite that tightly bonded to the river, but I might give -5 to the banishing ritual, or +5 to the spirit's resistance.

[Anaraxes]

Magic in many settings, especially nature magic, is presumed to be wholesome. So, the obvious effect is for the area to decline without its guardian. Plants suffer, fish leave the river, the mountaintop becomes barren and hostile.

But if you like to upset expectations, you can turn that on its head. The genius loci is the embodiment of the place, and uses its power to maintain its place, which is not just its home but its body. But it's a fixed, eternal being, which means enacting its vision produces stasis and rigidity, with nothing allowed to change from the spirit's vision and goal. Indeed, the spirit can't even conceive of any other way of being, as it has just one nature. Once the spirit is gone, new plants and animals can appear in the forest, the trees can grow thicker and taller, the river can change its course and become more bountiful, people living in the area become more inventive and progressive, developing new cultural expression or technologies and techniques.

[Anders]

Good, good.

Another possibility is that spirit magic becomes unregulated in the area. Even though Path magic doesn't explicitly use mana, something similar to Wild Mana or Twisted Mana in the region.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

But if you like to upset expectations, you can turn that on its head. The genius loci is the embodiment of the place, and uses its power to maintain its place, which is not just its home but its body. But it's a fixed, eternal being, which means enacting its vision produces stasis and rigidity, with nothing allowed to change from the spirit's vision and goal. Indeed, the spirit can't even conceive of any other way of being, as it has just one nature. Once the spirit is gone, new plants and animals can appear in the forest, the trees can grow thicker and taller, the river can change its course and become more bountiful, people living in the area become more inventive and progressive, developing new cultural expression or technologies and techniques.

If you think of it that way, though, a genius loci does seem to change. You start out, for example, with bare rock; you get lichen, and then grass and herbs, and then small perennials, and then bushes and shrubs, and then trees, and you end up with climax forest. Is that a succession of different genii loci, or is it one genius loci growing up?

And what if the forest catches fire? You go back to barren ground, and then a new ecological succession. Is that a new genius loci, or is it the same genius loci being reborn?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

You start out, for example, with bare rock; you get lichen, and then grass and herbs, and then small perennials, and then bushes and shrubs, and then trees, and you end up with climax forest. Is that a succession of different genii loci, or is it one genius loci growing up?

Or the same genius loci building toward its goal. (It's not even his final form!)

A growing genius loci does seem to have some good narrative possibilities, especially if it's one of those long-term campaigns played with a succession of characters or with immortal ones.

Though from the historical point of view, I doubt the people inventing the concept of a genius loci were thinking of evolution of an area over geological time.

And what if the forest catches fire? You go back to barren ground, and then a new ecological succession. Is that a new genius loci, or is it the same genius loci being reborn?

Or again, the same one trying to heal the damage back to its true and proper state.

If you like malleable loci, then in the vein of "the king is the land", you could have such traumatic events change the spirit, along with the influence the other way around. Perhaps the post-fire genius loci becomes insane and twisted, leading to an evil, haunted forest of everburning spectres.

[RyanW]

Maybe nothing visibly changes, but the scenery just becomes less beautiful in some indescribable way. Floods or droughts happen a little more often, and nature recovers more slowly afterwards. The meat of wild animals and fish is less satisfying, and potions made from the local plants aren't as potent as they once were.

[Rolando]

One observation, will banish actually remove a spirit of place?

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.

You may banish a river spirit from your house or from another place it doesn't correspond though, I can see an angry spirit of a river flooding a village for example.

[The Colonel]

I would support the idea that to banish a spirit of place is to destroy it - except possibly for some outside cases where you create something very powerful, angry and probably insane (the same might apply to a genius that survives the destruction of its location, a dryad that somehow survives the death of it's tree, etc.).
Also agree that you damage the location - although in a healthy spiritual ecostructure the damage is likely to result in intense conflict between local spirits until one dominates the area again. In less healthy ecostructures, as noted, there may not be a spirit significant enough to grow into the role for a long time.