Spirits

Spirits are the remaining fragments of the Great Spirit. They live in the spirit land and are ruled by the High Spirits. Small spirits have two purposes in life: 1) serve their master, and 2) become more sapient by either absorbing smaller spirits or learning new knowledge and experiences.
They are purely spiritual beings unless they agree to a half- or full-binding. Only then can they directly experience the physical world and all its sensations. It's an excellent way to get more sapient and therefore powerful.

Basic Information

Anatomy

In the spirit land there's no physical bodies, but spirits tend to take the form of the thing in the physical world that they have power over. For example, the spirit of a raindrop may look like a small drop of water, falling and splattering, then reforming, falling and splattering, in an endless cycle.
In the physical world, if in an active full-binding, old and powerful spirits have been known to take small, animate bodies made up of the materials they control. I.e., a rock spirit can have a small body of stones and dirt, maybe some moss or blades of grass, that's roughly humanoid and is directly controlled by the spirit's consciousness. Even among the mountain tribe this is pretty creepy for humans.
Spirit forms--both physical and non--pulse their heartbeat.

Genetics and Reproduction

I suppose spirits "reproduce" asexually. If a spirit gets big and powerful enough, their power often consolidates into smaller pieces. Pieces begin to beat slightly different heartbeats, becoming slightly more individual, but all under the main spirit's control. If a piece gains enough sapience, they could break off completely from the first spirit and become their own, start gathering smaller heartbeats to add to their own.
All spirits are under the control of their respective High Spirit, and all are "offspring" of them.

Growth Rate & Stages

All spirits start out just as little blobs of energy, just part of a spirit's power. As time passes and the spirit gets more powerful, powerful enough to start delegating small tasks to small heartbeats, those heartbeats beat stronger and more individually, until they gain enough knowledge and experience to split. Not every heartbeat does this, and each journey is different.
Spirit binding rapidly accelerates the process.

Ecology and Habitats

The spirit land is made up of spirit power/energy, made up of the same stuff as spirits themselves, so it's highly optimal for their survival. It's very stable and safe. The physical world, in contrast, is very hostile. Spirits can't enter the physical world without sharing a host's body in a spirit binding. It's incredibly volatile and dangerous for spirits, an incredible learning habitat. It pushes spirits to change, to grow, to adapt, in order to survive.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Spirits just run off the spiritual energy of their land. Individually, they can get bigger and more powerful if they eat each other. Eating requires a spirit's heartbeat to be similar enough to their prey, but more powerful as well. A fire spirit would have a difficult time absorbing a raindrop's heartbeat, and likely wouldn't anyway, because what purpose does fire have for water? A large spirit might eat a dissimilar spirit just for their energy, just as food, but converting a dissimilar heartbeat to yours is hard and often not worth the effort.

Additional Information

Social Structure

The bigger/more powerful/more sapient a spirit is, the higher up the pecking order they are. High Spirits are the monarchs, their high servants their heirs, and the rest are peasants. Some may be a merchant or little lord, but in the end they're all drastically lower in power and rank to the High Spirits and their servants.
Sapient spirits tend to make alliances/truces with another, so they won't eat each other or their mindless spirits. Smaller sapient spirits will pledge themselves to bigger spirits in order not to get eaten. They serve the bigger spirit in every way, just as if they were eaten, except they retain their sapience and control over smaller spirits, which makes all the difference to spirits. Their only possessions/valuables are their minds and their servants, and you can always get new mindless spirits. But once you get eaten, your mind's gone. Even if your heartbeat eventually splits from the predator, will you ever be the same? Will you remember anything? Can you recover your mind? No spirit knows, and that terrifies them.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Spirits have purely spiritual senses (woah...). Most, unless they've been in a binding, don't know what smelling, seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, is. In the spirit land, spirits communicate telepathically if they have the mind for it, or more commonly sense other spirits' intents through the pulse of their heartbeat.
They're basically just balls of energy, energy that can be converted into physical strength and movement.

Symbiotic and Parasitic organisms

Humans love to bind spirits to gain access to their infinite spiritual energy. This benefits spirits as well, because the experiences of the physical world drastically increase a spirit's sapience and power.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

Mindless spirits identify through heartbeat pulses, but the new cool thing for sapient spirits to do is claim bits of the spirit chant humans use to communicate with spirits and call themselves by that name. It's usually a combination of two or so sounds, making names like too-chu or na-hun.
High Spirits and servants have titles, maybe an informal nickname friends call them by. For example, the Star Spirit is also called the Star Mare, and the Painter calls her Comet.

Major Organizations

The High Spirit Council is the official government.

Major Language Groups and Dialects

Spirits communicate telepathically or through heartbeat pulses, but the new cool thing is to for sapient spirits to talk using the spirit chant, the human imitation of a spirit language.

Common Etiquette Rules

It's polite to greet another with friendly/gentle heartbeat pulses. It's rude to try and eat another or eat one's mindless servants, but there's that. It's rude to leave your High Spirit's nation and enter a different High Spirit's without permission from both parties. Many sapient spirits have contracts that allow passage, though.

Common Taboos

It's illegal--heavily discouraged by the High Spirit Council--to enter a full-binding, but lots of spirits ignore that law.

History

The Great Spirit split into the High Spirits, pouring all their energy into the spirit land. Gradually the High Spirits' power split into smaller and smaller pieces, which gradually developed their own heartbeats and minds into the social structure they have today.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Spirits only real interaction with other species is through spirit binding with humans.

Genetic Descendants

• Deykeh
• High Spirits

Lifespan

Immortal, unless eaten. (Death, for a spirit, is losing their sapience/mind. Their energy will go to the predator or return to the land.)