The Spirit Demesne (The Unliving Lands)

We have long theorized about the existence of a separate world that mirrors our own. Outdated scholars called it the arcane plane, for this sister-land is the source of the ambient arcana that permutates our mundane lives. Truly, it is here, in the deep leylines, where we understand--the heart of the Otherland is not simple arcana. It is the spirits who dwell within it.

- Byrtingr Innsyn, dar'Aeldvar mystic, circa 650 (85 Kith)

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Layers of Reality

The spirit demesne has many names in many cultures: the Otherworld, the Undying or Unliving Lands, the Mirror Realm, the Arcane Plane, the Unseen Mantle, and the Domain of Souls.
Of all common components of Ysireth's arcane or metaphysical cosmology, the spirit demesne is the most consistent across different frameworks. It is an invisible dimension that overlaps the physical, mundane, mortal world of Ysireth; locations in the spirit demesne reflect their physical counterparts. Catastrophic disruption in a singular location in Ysireth will have devastating effects in its linked setting in the spirit demesne, and the opposite is also true.
Beyond the shared space of Ysireth and the spirit demesne wraps the thick layer of the heavens, usually called the astral or sidereal demesne. The astral demesne is where the sun, moon, and stars reside, and it is considered to be the home of some celestial divinities, most notably the Aeldvaren creator deity the Lady of Heaven. These three demesnes--the mortal, the spirit, and the astral--comprise the most accepted understanding of Ysireth's layered reality.

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Source of Arcana

The ambient arcana that permeates all of Ysireth is not static, finite, or homogeneous. The ambient arcana of the world is, in fact, a product of the spirit demesne, just as heat is produced by fire or sunlight. The nature of the spirit demesne is such that the environmental arcana that mortals can witness and utilize is slowly moving and circulating, like trade winds across the land or currents within the sea. The most arcana-dense currents are called leylines, and within leylines are rare patches of too-aligned realities between the spirit and mortal demesnes, where entities can most easily cross between the worlds.
Until the gods' creation of Hymvari and later Urkvari, it was common belief that no kinvari could exist without the arcana that suffuses the living world. Aeldvari, Duovari, Mervari, and many minor kinvaren races require mana--edible arcana--just as they require food, breath, and water. Until Hymvari, no sapient creatures were mana-agnostic as a whole.
Most living things, from plants to animals to kinvari, have a source and system of personal arcana. All manabound peoples naturally regenerate their personal arcana through the consumption of mana; unarcane creatures and peoples do not innately regenerate but may still consume mana and replenish their limited stores. Yet no living thing creates its own arcana wholecloth; the anima souls of living things acts as a spider's web to catch the invisible sustenance that is ambient arcana. Consuming mana acts like the addition of a larger net to more quickly replenish the cistern of one's store of personal arcana.
Read more about environmental arcana here.

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What Dwells Therein

The spirit demesne is home to non-physical entities of myriad shapes and sources. From every culture with witches comes a fundamental understanding of living souls and the untethered souls of the recently-dead. The alternate names of the Unliving Lands and Undying Lands stem from the experience of interacting with intact souls that are no longer present in the mortal, physical reality. Not all souls are reachable, even swiftly after the body's death, but the experiences are common enough that many peoples consider the spirit demesne to be the home of the dead.
From nearly every culture with an arcane, religious, spiritual, or mystical tradition comes stories of spirits that do not bear similarities to any living peoples. Some spirits do resemble arcane creatures, such as dragons or arcanthers, but most of them have an indescribable or inconsistent "appearance" or interpreted manifestation. Intelligent spirits seem rare, and most spirits that are well-documented, like flickerfish, seem to be nothing more than endemic forms of "life"--the equivalent of common animals of the spirit demesne.
Many of those few intelligent spirits take on elemental affinities, some temporarily and some permanently. A minority of all spirits have any awareness of the mortal side of their reality and the physical beings moving through it, and even fewer of them show any interest in the kinvari trying to peer through the glass. Myths, legends, and folk tales about these uncommon spirits circulate through nearly every speaking culture.

Arcane Cosmology

by Ty Barbary

The crimson center is the physical earth and oceans of Ysireth.

The purple sphere is the extent of the spirit demesne, which parallels the air and sky of the physical world.

The pink sphere is the heavens, the astral demesne, where the sun and stars dwell.

Beyond that are separate, individual spheres for elemental planes, half of which are closer and more grounded to the material reality of Ysireth.

On the outside of all known cosmology lies the black ocean of the Abyss, infinite and cold and eternal.

(And somewhere unknown is the source of radioactive Eldritch magic and demons.)

Endemic Entities

ghosts (disembodied souls of previously-living creatures and kinvari)

spirits (non-physical entities that do not age)

elementals (spirits that are permanently attuned to and aligned with a singular element)

Inhabiting Species

• Flickerfish

Travel Between Demesnes

by Egor Kamelev via Pexels

In the Unliving Lands

It is possible, though extraordinarily challenging, to pass from the material reality of Ysireth to the mystical, nebulous expanse of the spirit demesne. So few mortals have successfully gone and returned, yet they have brought back information and impressions of the spirit demesne that have been instrumental in better understanding that layer of reality.

Notes Upon Their Return
[what was it like?] "there was no air there was no wind there was just-- the ground was soft like moss like sand like flesh and--"
"everything was shades of blue and purple, perpetual twilight, hard to see sharply like looking through frosted glass--"
[how was the air?] "it was thick like fog or steam but we could breathe, but it-- it felt like drinking a serum of water-breathing before submerging--"
"the air was so heavy, it was hard to move, not quite swimming but-- it felt like slow drowning--"
[what was the sky?] "endless mist fog clouds, couldn't see far in any direction--"
"like standing inside a cloud, yes, could only see as far as I could throw a stone--"
[tell us more about the ground] "nothing was firm or sharp like stone or crystal, everything simply bent or indented under pressure--"
"like walking through the grass at the bottom of a shallow lake, but no footprints-- the ground reformed after us--"
[what could you see? were there plants?] "impossible, impossible to--"
"plants or... growths or... like moss, mold, lichen--"
"everywhere, everywhere, stretching up out of sight, piles of--of growing things, moving like grass in the wind, strange shapes and colors and--"
[did you see spirits?] "a few, far above, at the very edge of our vision--"
"just animals, like flickies, slow-moving clumps of... of... algae like slugs, and--"
[did you bring anything back?] "no--"
"...yes..."

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Stock images from Pexels.com and Unsplash.com; color edits made by Ty Barbary.