Spirits

Spirits are extradimensional beings in a fantasy setting called "the Source Lands", used for table top roleplaying.

What is a spirit?
A spirit is an extradimensional creature that is native to the Spirit world (or the Umbra). They are conceptual beings, meaning that they are based on concepts - concepts from the real world. Their existence is wrought from intelligence - any time some concept starts having any kind of significance to intelligent minds, a spirit is created.

Each spirit forged from the same concept is going to be a little different from the former. In the end, there are always sub-concepts of a larger concept.

Weak (newly created) spirits eat other newly created like them selves to grow stronger. Eventually, they reach a power level where they can no longer grow stronger easily from devouring lesser spirits, requiring them to devour spirits of equal strength or stronger.

At this point, the spirit tends to seek companionship and protection, not to become the victim of someone like itself.

Spirit courts
A spirit court is a faction of spirits. They are lead by the Primordial spirit of the concept in question - while that spirit may not necessarily BE the Primordial, it's almost guaranteed to have eaten the primordial or the one who ate it or so forth.

Local chapters are lead by Immaculates, being spirits who have consumed so many various sub-concepts that they perfectly embody their greater concept.

A spirit court offers protection, but also requires duties of the lesser court members.

Primordials
Primordials have the power to affect the real world. They are almost literally gods. There are no other spirits who can just, on their own volition, simply affect the real world. Primordials are immensely powerful beings, but they are also greatly different in power levels.

Some weaker Primordials are barely capable of doing anything in the real world, where as something like the Primordial of the Sun is literally worshiped as a god in the mortal realm and could potentially wipe out the planet.

The problem with Primordials is that the ability to affect the other side goes both ways, and the Primordial is also subject to what is thought, wanted and believed of it. For instance, the Primordial of the Sun firmly believes that it is the god Helios.

Immaculates
Immacultes only truly have one power that makes them significant, and it is that they are not bound by geography. Their conceptual completion sort of has a the opposite effect of one would think - it makes them seem less significant, to the point where the Umbra to an extent treats them like a part of the Umbra itself, rather than a denizen.

This is however a very great power in of itself, as lesser spirits cannot leave their location without going through immense danger.

Item spirits
Component spirits often meld together when larger items are created from several minor components, but item spirits also have another unique trait, other than being able to meld together with initially unrelated spirits of different concepts: They don't normally live in the Umbra.

Spirits can survive in the material world indefinitely if they anchor themselves to something that can sustain them. This is often very difficult to find, but item spirits immediately cross over into the item they were created from, and inhabit the item, where they lay dormant.

Item spirits, for the same reason, never really grow in power.

When an item is destroyed, the item spirit remains in the shards, spitting into component spirits for the various pieces of the item.

Does this mean that there is a tiny spirit inside every single atom? Even spirits could not answer this question, as they cannot even perceive spirits that weak.

The spirits themselves say that once a spirit becomes less than a full concept, it becomes "essence", which can be seen as an analogue to single celled organisms and other primitive lifeforms.

Only if an item is totally destroyed, or the spirit is for some reason forces out of it, will they appear in the Umbra. Because item spirits are so rare in the Umbra, and it isn't possible (or at least not healthy) for other spirits to consume spirits outside of their own concept, they often wander alone, and do not form spirit courts.

They tend to find each other, if more exist in a geographic location, and because it is in their nature to function as parts of a bigger creation, they tend to consume each other willingly.

Item spirits that have appeared in the Umbra are "awakened" and have the same typical powers of a normal spirit. Once they have been strengthened a bit, it is beneficiary for mortals to pull them back into the material realm and bind them in objects.

It's a typical way to create magical objects.

The Umbra
The Umbra is infinitely large. Every location in the world is mirrored there, somewhere, but the locations are warped, putting stock on which parts of the location are significant, or even when they were significant - a location might mix modern times with the bronze age, because of the relative levels of significance.

Interestingly, items exist as well in the spirit world, though spirits have little use for them, and they are immaterial when transferred to the mortal world.

If a location, for instance a house within a city, becomes incredibly significant to many people, it could disappear from it's parent region, and appear somewhere in the great spirit wild as a separate location.

The order of which these locations appear is entirely chaotic, and the space in between is covered in ocean, empty space, mist, fog, deserts, wilderness and even areas with prehistorical spirits that no longer have any significance because they are forgotten and such, making it difficult to travel.

Once a location detaches from it's parent location, it does leave a portal of some sort, behind. So there is an, often hidden or secret, method of traveling, probably unknown to most who live there.

Corrupted spirits
When a spirit consumed a spirit outside of it's parent concept, it becomes warped. They become demons. Some demons do still roam the Umbra, but most of them fade away and get pulled to the abyss upon becoming demons, though the transformation is rarely instant.