From the Journal of Zeel

[Lun]

NOTES:
1. Nether exists primarily in a semi-liquid, semi-gaseous state. While a sorcerer can manipulate it to a certain degree, it always tries to revert to this basic state, much like water will revert to a liquid state. Nether itself is much easier to manipulate than the elements, and as such has much less restrictions and constraints. Nether seems to have no freezing point, and will only become colder with applications of cryomancy; a cast of nether that’s temperature has fallen incredibly low may have the ability to freeze, but the nether itself will not freeze.

2. Sorcerers learn that the spirit of a creature is closely tied to its blood, and learn to harvest any loose soul shreds from a fresh corpse. These shreds could either be remnants of the spirit after it flees the body, or simply remaining energy that the creature couldn’t use before death. This energy is stored in talismans specially crafted to house soul shreds. Soul shreds have no physical form, but can be consumed by a sorcerer in order to regain lost energy.

3. One of the first forms of nether manipulation a sorcerer learns is to manipulate nether to absorb spirit, and simultaneously destroy it. This phenomenon can be seen through “essence leech,” where an actively maintained tendril of nether lashes at a target and attaches itself to the targets spirit. As it comes in contact with that spirit, it surrounds a small portion of it, taints it, and transfers this energy back to the caster. By this action, the nether becomes a transforming agent of spirit, effectively changing the spirit of a foreign target to a similar spirit as the casters.

4. Sorcerers have the ability to imbue nether with some negligible amount of willpower or consciousness, somewhat based on their own; this allows nether attacks to remain and eat away at something even after it’s stopped being actively maintained. In battle, the sorcerer utilizes nether in an aggressive manner; as a result, the nether takes on the will to damage what it strikes and remains to eat away at the opponent.

5. This imbuement was further refined through the manipulation of the casters own soul, and by actively controlling nether, the caster could summon up a nether-being spawned from the casters soul. As a result, it is loyal to the caster.

6. It was further discovered that nether-beings can be summoned from a casters soul. By actively controlling nether, a caster could spawn a nether-being from a portion of his spirit. This is physically draining on the caster, but spawns a being that is utterly loyal to whoever summoned it.

7. This summoned nether-being is facsimile to a miniature person, perhaps due to its nature as originating from a casters spirit. However, it also takes on demonic features, such as a pair of bat-like wings, fangs, claws, and a barbed tail. This provides insight on nether’s origins, as these additional features seem to be drawn from demons. Thusly, it can be hypothesized that nether exists on the same plane as demons, which is where it draws its inspiration for appearances from. Similarly, it can be hypothesized that these features are born from the casters fears.

8. Nether has a mind of its own to begin with, which is why spell patterns that elementalists utilize are normally ineffective. However, by infusing willpower into the nether, we’re able to manipulate it to a degree previously unavailable. As seen in Rasui’s disc, by infusing nether with the will to remain rigid and by supplying it with reinforcement through cryomancy, the nether will enact this desire for rigidity by freezing itself into a solid form, although only for a short period of time. This experiment tells us that nether remains in its nebulous form out of its natural will. However, we also learned that the casters Will, by infusing the nether with a shred of his or her consciousness, overwhelms the natural Will of the nether.

9. Soul shreds maintain some very basic form of consciousness. This can be seen through the sorcerer’s ability to utilize soul shreds to form an absorptive shield by infusing soul shreds with nether, and commanding the shreds to protect the caster. The shred can then gain form, similar to a wraith or a familiar, long enough to mitigate some damage. The shreds may combine to absorb heavily damaging attacks, and dissipate after taking damage much like a wraith or familiar will.

By combining this knowledge, the following can be hypothesized and experimented:

1. Nether can take on different forms by infusing different desires into it, and then manipulating it. This implanted desire overrides nether’s natural Will, as seen in Rasui’s Disc. Different applications could then be then manipulating nether into some form and infusing it with the desire to eat, or the desire to breed. Since nether appears to be semi-sentient, and semi-intelligent (seen through its desire to stay in its natural form and its ability to observe creatures in its hypothesized natural habitat, and then mimic said creatures) this could result in some interesting results. However, applying cryomancy would probably be of no help as it would only result in chilled nether with the desire to breed. However, by infusing nether with the elements it may or may not be possible to craft more permanent will-beings; this would need the assistance of a powerful elementalist to test.

2. As the caster can imbue nether with some form of consciousness, he may also be able to pass on the knowledge of leeching spirit from a target. Can this infused nether then maintain itself on the energy of its host, like a parasite? This nether would not be derived from the soul of its caster, however, and might end up taking on the attributes of its host and thereby becoming the familiar of its host. However, if the nether taints the spirit before absorbing as in ‘essence leech’, the nether them becomes completely independent, aside from requiring to leech energy from a host. Does nether itself expend energy? Actions do expend energy, as seen in familiars in wraith that steadily fade away as they expend energy.

3. What happens if you infuse existing nether? The shadow-familiar is born of the casters spirit; however, can the familiar then be manipulated with an overwhelming desire to commit certain acts? What happens to its loyalty, then? Can you temporarily overwrite a nether-beings consciousness and call it to action? What about other nethrim; the spirits of the Shadgard Forest are nethrim. Can you bend them to your will?

QUESTIONS THAT YET UNASKED OR ANSWERED (by myself):
What does nether taint do to a person? I've heard rumours of it, but never experienced it nor seen it first hand.
What is nethrium?

[Avedri]

OOC: Totally amazing post. Thank you for sharing.

[Lun]

OOC DISCLAIMER: Don't take any of this as fact! It's just some observations Zeel made from his learnings at the Parlour.