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The published spirits are primal powers like Lightning's Swift Strike and River Surges in Sunlight. When all the primal forces have gotten too big to act at the scale of human concerns, who else can the weary natives turn to? These custom spirits are all peculiar outsiders, but maybe they'll be up to the task.
These are roughly in the order of how happy I am to play them.
There are more Spirits than Dahan on the Island, but most of them are small, local, quick-moving things with no interest in larger matters. Pond Glints Green at Dawn, Clearing Where Nothing Grows, Dog Lives Near the Meadow, and many others are known to Spirit-Speakers in their lands but rarely have anything to do with each other. These are extraordinary times, though, and even the lesser spirits can sense it. Together, they can contribute to the fight against the Invaders and help preserve the Island. Some will grow beyond their old places and names, becoming too big or too bloody to return to the meadow or the pond. Others will sacrifice themselves in the struggle. They fight so that there will still be a pond and a meadow, in the end, even though they can never go back.
PLAY STYLE: Curate a collection of Minor Powers that you use every turn.
STATUS: This spirit is fun to play and balanced within the range of published spirits. We keep it in our regular rotation.
A spirit of endings: of lives, of families, of trees, of rocks, and perhaps ultimately of the Island itself. It nests in a thriving settlement and, slowly, frustrations begin. Food spoils in storage. Hunting paths fade. A roof collapses. Tools rust and break. The happy mood of the villagers grows dark, and they look to every small change as an omen of disaster. Some leave. Some die in their sleep. Eventually, all that is left is a ghost town.
PLAY STYLE: Delay invaders and slowly grind them down with fear.
STATUS: This spirit is fun to play and balanced within the range of published spirits. We keep it in our regular rotation.
This is a kind of mash up, imagining the Avatar (from The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra) as a villager born on the island.
The Avatar's duty is to maintain peace and serve as a bridge between the human world and the spirit world. With the arrival of the invaders, they must coordinate with the spirits to protect the island. They will need to develop their powers further if they (and the island) are to survive the battle ahead.
PLAY STYLE: Can sling major powers by channeling their past lives, but otherwise the game plan depends on which elements you decide to specialize in.
STATUS: This spirit was originally designed by Danpour on the Spirit of Creation discord, before there were incarna. I've made lots of changes. The current version has been played several times. It's thematic and fun.
When the Dahan first came to the island, some stumbled sideways onto paths that led to Shimmering Traces of Madness and were consumed. The other spirits warned the Dahan away from the doors which open onto its realm so, for centuries, it has been quiescent. Now, the newcomers do not know what to avoid and where not to go.
Madness waits in its dark dimension, a realm utterly unlike the island. The gap between dimensions is wide, but its influence on the island is slowly growing. As invaders catch small glimpses of its alien world, it draws closer still. The other spirits aren't sure what will become of Madness once the invaders are driven off the island, but desparate times demand strange allies.
PLAY STYLE: Drive invaders mad, adding Strife applying the effect of leftover Fear cards.
STATUS: The spirit is high variance, because the spread of madness is simulated by the effect of Fear cards. That makes it hard to balance. With that caveat, it works.
Generations ago, the Dahan discovered a spirit of vegetal rest deep in the jungle. Weed moved out of the trees and now barely remembers the fierce ways of the jungle. As some Dahan adopted its ways, it grew more connected to theirs.
Now Dank Weed is trying to relate to the Invaders the way it relates to the Dahan. This isn't obviously the most effective thing to do.
Some of the other spirits worry that Dank Weed will be no help against the current threat. But that's just their opinion, man.
PLAY STYLE: Chill out invaders and let nature take its course.
STATUS: This was some much needed variety when we made it in 2018. Now that there are more than three times as many published spirits, although Weed is still fun, we've taken it out of our regular rotation of spirits.
A spirit from a distant pole, Creeping Chill visits its cousin Volcano Looming High from time to time. It creates ice storms to amuse itself, and the other spirits are variously entertained or disturbed by them. Because it is a visitor, it knows little of the strange little humans that its cousins call Dahan. Spiritspeakers do not know its ways, and Chill is fine with that.
It is visiting when its cousins are upset by the arrival of invaders, and Chill agrees to lend a hand. It freezes hapless explorers like statues, collecting them as trophies which mark its growing power.
PLAY STYLE: Isolate lands and power up by consuming Explorers.
STATUS: This is a spirit originally designed by Frazaa at the Spirit of Creation discord, and I've done a bit of polishing. It's pretty good as-is, and I don't feel like it could improve more without substantive changes that I'm not inclined to make.
When a spirit's sacred sites are disrupted and its presence mostly destroyed, it can no longer be what it was. Bereft of its domain and its aspect, it forgets the distinctiveness that made it subtle and complex.
Simplicity thinks that it is from a possible future when the Dahan have sovereign rights over the island. It dreams of aluminum cabinet fronts with soft-close hinges and programmed skylights which open just before dawn, but somehow it is here in a time of fire and war.
It observes the other spirits and notices that they move things, destroy things, and defend. So that's what it is going to do.
PLAY STYLE: A low-complexity sandbox spirit that lets you play around with attacking, defending, and moving things around so as to attack or defend them.
STATUS: I feel like the publication of new spirits has made Simplicity obsolete. There are now more subtle and interesting low-complexity spirits (in the Horizons expansion), and the fun mechanism of repeating powers in the same land is done better by Gaze of the Relentless Sun (from the Nature Incarnate expansion).