"We’re supposed to be on the last watch together. You remember that, right?” your companion complains after watching your preparation for the past hour. “Can’t you do that feeling spirits thing later?”

“There’s something wrong with this place,” you explain to your impatient friend. The pair of you have been on watch together more often than not and on rare occasion, like tonight, something feels off about this place. “I’m just finding out if I can do anything or if we should worry.” Your companion groans, grumbles, and walks away to the edge of camp as you sit and close your eyes. A few moments of focus and breathing later, you’ve entered your trance and let yourself go of your physical body entering the Spirit Plane, just like your Shaman taught you.

The spirits seem different–distant more than normal. None wish to speak to you or even acknowledge that you’re among them. There’s a sense of foreboding that has intensified from where you physically sit to where you now stand among the spirits of those here. Someone or something is raging, but whatever it is seems too far from you to call or observe. The longer you linger, though, the more aware this spirit becomes of you and the closer it gets.

Meanwhile, all your companion sees is you sitting with your eyes closed on the opposite side of camp. He rolls his eyes before turning his back on you to make sure the physical world does not wish the same harm upon your group that this raging spirit does.

Heyo! I’m Kat and I’ve been a GM for around a decade now. I’m here to give you the rundown of what Animism is and how it works. Animism is a magic unique to Mythras where you, as the practitioner, magician, shaman, summons and binds spirits to do your bidding.

That description is a bit lack luster when it comes to what Animism really does though. Let’s dive into what spirits are and what animists can do with them before you get anymore strange vibes. 12

What is Animism?

You know how the druids–lawful good ones, of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) are usually thought of as tree huggers? Animism has aspects that can kinda be similar to this thought process but hear me out! That’s actually as far from the truth as it gets when you’re building your Animist.

The big thing you have to remember is that Animists both harness and control spirits out of everything in their environment. No… not all at once, but even those things we would normally ignore–inanimate objects–have a spirit to summon and use. How do you summon and bind spirits? There are two key skills that every Animist, from your very first experiences to the highest levels of Shaman, has. Trance and Binding.

Skills of the Animist

Let’s reference the intro story above. Your character decides that because things don’t feel all that great, (a beautiful sense you gain when first working with spirits), you decided to check things out while on your watch to make sure the situation wasn’t as dire as it felt. As a Spirit Worshipper, the 2nd level of Animism, you’re able to ritualistically set yourself in a trance and let your physical body remain while your spirit enters the spirit plane.

To explain what I mean by Spirit Worshiper, I should explain that there are four main ‘levels’ of Animist. Level, I’m using loosely since while you do ‘level’ in Mythras, it’s very different from what you know from games like D&D.

Here’s a quick overview of what each of these ‘levels’ of Animist can do and the length of preparation that’s required for each.

Follower

As a follower of any religion, cult, or tradition, this is the lowest level you can be. It’s your starting point since everyone must start somewhere. Followers are able to go into a trance and bind spirits, but only if they are right in front of their faces.

• Observing Spirits – It takes 1 hour of preparation to go into your trance.

Spirit Worshiper

Spirit Worshipers are the second stage, you’ve been brought into the fold and are trustworthy or strong enough to be able to continue on the journey in the High Shaman’s footsteps. Spirit Worshipers are able to go into a trance and bind spirits within a set space around where their physical form rests.

• Observing Spirits – It takes 1 minute of preparation.
• Conversing with Spirits – It takes 1 hour of preparation to be able to speak to spirits.

Shaman

Shamans are the third stage of animism. You have the capabilities once you’ve been taught the sacred rites to project yourself or to draw spirits to you instead of having limitations like the Spirit Worshiper.

In this, you also have your preparations take much less time than before.

• Observing Spirits – It takes you 1 round of preparation.
• Conversing with spirits – It takes you 1 minute of preparation.
• Project Self/Draw Spirit – It takes you 1 hour of preparation to be able to either draw a spirit to you or project yourself within the spirit plane to another location.

High Shaman

When we talk about the High Shaman, we’re talking about the highest ‘level’ of animist. These are those who have become the spiritual leaders of their cults or clans. High Shamans are able to converse, draw, bind, and bring individuals with them into the spirit plane with ease.

• Observing Spirits – It takes you 1 action of preparation.
• Converse with Spirits – It takes you 1 round of preparation.
• Project/Draw – It takes you 1 minute of preparation.
• Drag Soul – It takes you 1 hour of preparation to drag other souls with you into the spirit plane. The number of souls is equal to 1 MP per soul beyond your own.

All of these times and skills are listed out on the top of page 131 in Mythras Core Rules.

Trance

When I refer to trances, I mean the state in which your spirit enters the spirit plane. Depending on your level depends on how long you need to prepare for this style of journey. As a Spirit Worshiper, you can easily observe with little preparation, but speaking takes longer.

After your hour of preparation, you settle yourself down and begin your trance. To do this successfully on paper, you need to succeed in a Trance (Constitution (CON) + Power (POW)) skill check and the use of 1 Magic Point (MP). Once you’ve completed that, you’ve journeyed to the spirit plane.

Now, being able to ritualistically go into a trance to shift yourself to the spirit plane and to talk to spirits is only one aspect of being an animist. Another is binding spirits.

Binding

Quite a few thoughts come up when you read the word binding. Mostly tying one thing to another. That’s the basics of what Animists do with spirits. They bind the spirit to an object for it to be used in some fashion or unable to harm others. How do you bind? Before we talk about the ‘how’, let’s talk about the ‘what’.

More often than not, Animists bind spirits of varying strengths to objects known as fetishes. This is the most common among traveling animists. However, there are locations and creatures that can also be used. I’ll explain those two down the line.

There are many reasons and abilities to have each individual spirit you bind with you. We’ll go over that in Part 2 of Animism 101. Spirits tend to fight being bound unless you’ve entered a bargain with one that is more than happy to help. Spiritual Combat is something else that we’ll be covering in Part 2 so for the sake of this, you’re successful in all your spiritual combats from now until the end of this blog.

When you’re in the more primitive cultures, you’re more likely to find that spirits are bound in fetishes closely associated to what they were in life. Think like a wolf spirit being bound to a tooth or claw. Or an eagle to a talon or feather.

Other forms of binding come in location binding and creature binding. Normally when a spirit is bound to a location it's to protect the location, though there are plenty that bind the spirit to protect a nearby location so that the spirit is no longer a threat to the nearby space.

The other – creature binding – is very much how it sounds. The person, creature, or entity is possessed to one degree or another by the spirit being bound. Sometimes this is a very good thing, other times it can become detrimental to both the spirit’s new body or if the spirit is dangerous, the host’s own spirit. We’ll cover possession in Part 2 too.

Now, creating a binding requires more than success in spiritual combat. It requires experience rolls and time. Most bindings take 1 week to accomplish and each binding takes a different amount of experience rolls, depending on the intensity of the spirit being bound.

So how does this all go in the end? To be able to engage a spirit for the purpose of binding, the spirit in question cannot have a POW that exceeds 3 times the critical range of your Binding (POW + Charisma (CHA)) skill. Simple math for you, if your binding skill is 45% you cannot control a spirit that has a POW over 15. This table is found on pg 131 of Mythras Core Rules. Pretty straight forward, right?

I’m starting to see the eye rolls. How do you gain and locate spirits? Let’s talk about that now.

Limits of the Animist

There are a few factors to account for the limits of your animist. The first of which is what your characteristics are. When building your animist, you want to make sure you focus on CON, POW, and CHA. These being higher will help you down the line. Another thing you need to be aware of is how your GM is running the campaign setting. So take into account your Spirit Societies, Cults, and Traditions.

Here’s a good rule of thumb when dealing with what these groups know and deal with.

1.1d3+3 have direct access to a specific type of spirit friendly to them.

2.1d3 types that are neutral and how to local them.

3.At least 1 enemy or competing group that will have spirits to use against you.

This is the start of understanding how to locate and gain spirits. Gaining them is a matter of will, negotiation, or if the spirit is friendly towards you, it might just wanna hang out. Each style of spirit has its own requirements, which we’ll dive further into in Part 2. But for now, let's talk about locating those friendly spirits that want to help you.

The easiest way when you’re starting out is by having your Shaman summon a spirit for you to bind. Where you’re a Spirit Worshiper from the example above, you can search the locations you go to, with time and effort, and eventually find one of those friendly spirits on your own.

Some spirits are much harder to find and require help. That’s above what you know, being a Spirit Worshiper. Other times, you may find that you’re being followed by the spirit you’re looking for. It all depends on how the game runs.

I mentioned the concept of limitations earlier and should specify that each ‘level’ of Animist is limited by their knowledge on the subject of spirits and how many they can bind to them. For instance:

• Followers can only bind ¼ of their CHA in spirits.
• Spirit Worshipers can only bind ½ of their CHA in spirits.
• Shamans can only bind ¾ of their CHA in spirits.
• High Shamans have the availability of ALL of their CHA in spirits.

If by chance anyone goes over their threshold, the strongest spirits break free of their bonds. That’s when you start praying that the ones friendly towards you are your strongest allies.

I mentioned above that spirits have what’s called intensity. This is based on the spirits POW and affects a few different things.

1.The benefit of binding that spirit.

2.How difficult it is to bind and control.

3.The spirit’s ability to influence the material world.

There is a table for how to calculate a spirit’s intensity on page 133 in Mythras Core Rules. Spirits do have two other characteristics beyond that and it’s their Instincts and their CHA. We’ll cover both of those in Part 2, but they are things to be aware of as you go further into Animism.

Another thing you should be aware of is how the spirit’s HP are calculated. The spirit has HPs equal to its MP which is based off their POW. The trick is, they don’t recover HP while being bound. I’ll elaborate more in Part 2 on how they heal.

After all that, you can see how unique this particular magic system is to play.

Conclusion

Whether you start out as a follower or have branched off as a high shaman there are plenty of different and difficult situations you can end up in with the spirits. We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what an animist can do. Go pick up your copy of Mythras Core Rules to follow along or just talk to your GM about what level of spirits are in your campaign setting and meet me back here for Part 2 of Animism 101 A Mythras Magic Explanation next month!

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