Auric Echos

Echoes are the figments of a Soul left behind whenever the Sophont
is an imprint left behind by a person's impression of the environment and their stray thoughts. Most echoes are harmless, and fade in a matter of minutes, but as corroborating or stronger impressions build up then Echoes will have longer lifespans and more complex interactions.

With the knowledge of meta comes the need to control and maintain its usage. One of the more dangerous and constant threats of meta are the Auric Echos and imprints left by the general population. These Auric Echos are snapshots of emotion left on an area by someone witnessing it. For example, a dark alley in a city leaves people feeling nervous when they see it. This means that their ideas and emotions imprint on that alley. If a Auric mage were to divine that alley, they would see the nervousness of all the people who passed.

These Echos if not controlled can grow more and more powerful. Each imprint left holds a portion of meta, and when enough comes together it can lead to very dangerous meta anomalies growing in power. Let us say the before mentioned alley has been walked past by tens of thousands of people. The combined echos and imprints from these people could cause a dangerous shade to arise from the power. These shades can then move around, causing massive waves of nervousness in everyone it passes.

You could only imagine what could happen if a max-security prisons imprints and echos were left to their own devices.

---

Echoes are the impressionistic afterimages of the more intense moments of our lives. When you witness something upsetting, endure stress, laugh really hard at a joke, or otherwise feel strongly in some way, you leave an echo of that feeling behind you.

<Perceived> via meta, Echoes appear as anthropomorphic phantoms—a feeling of stepping into something slimy, the sharp terror of misplaced rejection, the

of what we do. Most will aimlessly pace, stand around, or follow people without a goal. Those rooted in stronger emotions re-enact their birth: a first kiss, a jump for joy, the moment of their death.

An echo is an impression, not a reflection, and it is not its creator. It's a stray thought. It's a strand of hair left behind.

Manifesting

Echoes manifest whenever you lose or gain sanity, with an impression as strong

Tracking someone by their echoes requires a strong grasp of magic, and chops as a

Strong emotions last the longest, but all echoes eventually fade unless they learn to leech energy from other Echoes or the world. If they become powerful enough they may affect the material realm for bursts of time, this is how Ghosts, Poltergeists, and worse things come to be.