Spirits / Jinn / Djinn

"Our Lands? Forget what any egotistical Fire Knight may have told you, Verano; the Wild Lands don't belong to us, it belongs to them." - Johann Martel, Spymaster of the Kingdom of Aachen, to Verano de Sforza.

Spirits (called 'The Jinn' by the Eastern) are the most feared beings in the Wild Lands. They are extremely powerful and cannot be harmed by any human means. They are volatile because they turn into Dark Spirits (called 'The Djinn' by the Eastern) once they come into contact with negative emotions in human hearts.

Once a Spirit goes dark, all you can do is to run away as fast as you can. Thus, as Spirits go dark, humans are often forced to move away. It's said that only 12% of the Wild Lands is actively exploited by humans, since 88% is territory of the Spirits. Some of the largest territories in the known Wild Lands, like the Spirit Steppes and the Sahara Desert, belong to Spirits and inhabiting / crossing their lands is a death sentence.

Spirits not always inhabited the human world (Chapter 'Ruins of Light'). Once upon a time, humans built complex civilizations with advanced technology and societal structures. Yet as Spirits moved in, blocked essential resources and forced people out of crowded cities; all remaining humans flew to surroundings of Heaven's Shrine, where the Grey Guardian would protect them.

When humans were expelled from the Grey Guardian's protection after the Original Sin, they faced Spirits once more. Therefore, every culture had to develop a solution to the Spirit Problem.

Spirits in the Empire of the Holy Flame

Humans build Feuds (Fortresses ruled by Fire Knights) to escape the Spirits of the forest. Spirits are seen as the most malevolent and untrustworthy creatures of the Wild Lands in the Empire of the Holy Flame. The Fire Peoples have fully embraced the Penitent Faith, which forbids all sorts of spirit worshipping / dealing with spirits. A common death sentence is banishing the miscreant to the wilds, where death is certain.

Children are often told Spirit Tales (equivalent to Fairy Tales) in order to scare them away from adventuring in the woods. Some of the most common are:

- Little Red Riding Hood, a tale about a banished grandmother inviting her granddaughter to visit her in the wilds. The girl's parents tell her not to go, yet she disobeys the order. Once the girl arrives, she discovers that a Spirit has possessed her grandmother. The girl never returned home.

- Aschenputtel, a poor girl desires to go to the ball in the castle of the King of Aarchen but she has no clothes thanks to her mean stepmother. She decides to worship a Spirit in exchange of elegant clothes and a carriage. Yet the Spirit betrays the girl and by midnight, when the Prince has fallen in love with her, she is possessed by the Spirit and turns into a monster that kills the Prince and attacks the castle.

- Rapunzel, a rebellious princess lives secluded in her feud without ever being allowed to leave thanks to the Spirits around. Once her hair grows long enough, she uses it as a rope and manages to climb out. She never returned home.

The Inquisitors from the Church of Heaven's Shrine, however, have found a way to combat Spirits that does not involve hiding from them. They use Airbending to lock the Spirits into caskets and take them to the Sanatarium, a secret monastery where the Airbenders experiment with pacifying spirits.

The Jinn and Djinn in the Caliphate of Camarilla

Before The Guide (known today as 'The Caliph') unified the Earthbending Tribes based on his self-created faith and language, the worship of the Jinn (how the Eastern Earthbenders call Spirits) was common. The Guide's religion (The Cult of the Moon) outlawed the worship of all Spirits, yet their use in war was never forbidden.

The Guide himself taught the Earthbenders how to create receptacles called Lamps into where the weaker Jinn could be imprisoned and then liberated as weapons. While most Earthbenders can create Lamps, only very skilled Airbenders (incredibly rare in the Caliphate) and Sandbenders (like those of the Caliph's lineage) can imprison the Jinn in them.

The Guide went beyond just imprisoning Spirits. During his fight with Emperor of the Holy Flame Lettow, it is said that he could free the Jinn in his lamps, turn them into Djinn (Dark Spirits) and still control them.

Many Jinns have managed to leave their Lamps, however. They find ways to deceive fools with the promise of making their wishes come true in exchange for freedom.

Spirits in the Tribes of the North Sea

The Tribes of the North Sea were founded on Spirit Worship. It is said that when the Original Sin happened and humans were expelled from Heaven's Shrine, the ancestors of the Tribes of the North Sea were sent to live on a floating platform of ice without neither water, nor food. Then the Spirits of the Deep answered their prayer and saved them, thus beginning a cult that remains to this day.

While the Northmen are fond of Spirits, they also face conflicts with Spirits of the wild. Their solution is simply backing off. Instead of looking for resources in their own lands, the Northmen prefer to sack the foreign territories so that they sustain their society without any conflicts with the Spirits.

Their connection to the Spirits is so strong that when a Northman dies, he/she believes that they will go to Val Hella, the mythical Spirit World that is believed to exist in the far north. In Val Hella, the Northmen will wait until the End Times / the Ragnarok: when the Spirits of the Deep rise from the sea to flood the Wild Lands and begin the Age of the Northmen.