There are presumably lots of kinds of animism and my take on it is throughly muddled with how I see Praxians, so I am not sure how much fo this reflects animism and how much reflects Praxians.
The Praxian landscape is alive with spirits and other beings. Their lands are a particularly thin part of the cosmos. You can slip into the hero plane in some places without intention or ritual. And ghosts can sometimes come the other way.
But just because the landscape is alive does not mean that the landscape is friendly. The wastes, in particular, have suffered and are twisted for it. I personally think that the cactus forest is the twisted remnant of a much greater forest; after all, we know that there were white elves in the garden. The cacti can't be terribly happy spirits much of the time. They may remember what was lost, if only distantly.
Not all the spirits are landscape spirits, though they might be tied to the landscape. There were an awfully large number of non-human races in Genert's Garden and Tada's khanate. Some appear to be extinct; even those who are not are too few to spend the time placating the ghosts of their many dead ancestors. So you may encouter many more (than "usual," if you will) spirits that are neither ghosts of your own ancestors nor embodied natural spirits.
I think that chaos creatures are mostly soulless and spiritless, so the wastes are not plagued by ghosts of choas creatures. If you disagree with my premise, then you could also say that one of Waha's many feats was to appoint Daka Fal to be khan of the dead. (Waha talks big. I can't imagine he had much to do with actually separating the living from the dead. But he's happy to let someone else do the work and take some of the credit. And he must have some something to sign on to the event that others call the great compromise, the dawn, and the beginning of time.)
Many of the spirits Praxians encounter daily are small spirits that are not particularly hostile, but have to be placated. This may require nearly no effort. Make a sign, say a word, bow your head as you pass, that kind of thing. Others may require something greater and may give something in return (other than simply not interfering). In times of need these small spirits can be cajoled, bribed, or forced to help those who know about them.
Because the plaines are so full of spirits, selecting a place for a ritual is really important. You can't just light your ceremonial fire anywhere. You might piss off the local. Because of that, even many small rituals begin with the departure and finish with the return. These are simple, in-world steps that remove the celebrants to prepared sacred ground. They journey there can be important. So, well before an important ritual, an elder may tell a story about a journey that everyone -- especially the youngsters -- should keep in mind as they go to and from.
In rituals, I see a lot of dancing, drumming, and chanting. The Praxian's main great spirits -- excepting maybe Horned Man -- are limited in scope. To me, that means that celebrants have to do a lot of work in their rituals. Maybe something simpler works elsewhere, but the natural powers others can draw on are diminished in the wastes. Or, worse yet, you may draw on something you wish you had not.
Praxian shamans can be terrifyingly powerful, simply because of how many spirits they can know. But the broader their knowledge, the more behaviors they will have to adopt to avoid angering or alienating those spirits. There will certainly be some spirits that they are simply powerful enough to control. But relying on brute strength with a hostile spirit makes it a bad plan to call on that spirit in a time of dire need. So I think that they look for mutually beneficial relationships. And because some spirits' needs are inexplicable, so are some of the things that shamans do. These constrains are one of the many reasons why shamans can be personally powerful, but rarely exercise political power.
As I said before, travelling the trails is an in-world heroquest that sometimes traverses parts of the hero plane. There are at least two different sets of path through parts of Prax and the wastes: the roads of Ronance and the trails of Waha. I believe that many Waha trails overlay Ronance roads. One of the reasons is that the Waha trails also form part of Arachne Solara's web that has held the universe together since time began. Although the wastes are a particularly thin part of the universe, the nomads' continual travel across those paths has strengthened the web where it was thinnest (at least, before Nysalor came along -- maybe somewhere else is thinner now).
I think that the roads and trails also relate to an earlier conflict, between the giants and the dragons. There are dragons in Dragon Pass and in Kralorela. It boggles the mind that there are none in between. So what happened to them? Well, there are definitely giants in between those two groups of dragons, which gives me a strong hint. I suspect that the Ronance roads overlay what used tobe dragon newt magical roads.
IMG, this goes further: The roads now help suppress the draconic elements of the landscape, including much of the water. A big exception is the Wicked Writher, who continually breaks free. Note that, when Waha wrestles the serpents, he follows in the path of the giants who fought them before. This is a recurring theme in my conception of Prax.
Chris
Powered by hypermail