vaelora/Rules/Spirits & Dominion/Almanach/_Structure.md

🌿 Structure of the Dominion Almanach

Each Dominion Category gets its own section with:

1. Category Overview (1–2 pages)

A lyrical + mechanical framing for the entire group. Includes:

• Core metaphysical themes shared across the dominions

• Typical spirit behaviors

• Common resonance and corruption patterns

• Notes on cultural significance, ritual flavor, or how folk treat such spirits

• GM tools: How these dominions shape scenes, settlements, or realms

2. Individual Dominion Entries (2–3 pages each)

Each dominion includes:

• Theme: What this dominion is, what it evokes, what it desires

• Resonance: What feeds or weakens it in the world

• Corruption: What happens when it twists under void-taint

• Ability Menu:

  • Passive and Active options

  • Sorted by Power Rating tiers (PR 1–2, 3–4, 5–6)

  • Mechanical clarity with poetic phrasing

• Interaction Notes: Rituals/offering examples, how traditions handle it

• Example Spirits: 1–2 sample spirits (PR 2–4) with quirks, goals, and abilities

📚 Suggested Dominion Categories

These are flavorful, distinct, and let us organize the almanach in mythic layers:

🔥 Natural Forces

Spirits born from elements, weather, seasons, and growth.

• Category Intro: Spirits of the turning world—untamed, instinctual, tied to cycles. Often honored with offerings, feared in storms or drought.

• Sample Dominions:

  • Fire – transformation, hunger, purification

  • Stone – stillness, memory, permanence

  • Water – change, emotion, reflection

  • Growth – fertility, abundance, overgrowth

  • Decay – rot, ruin, sacred entropy

  • Weather – wind, lightning, floods

---

🧠 Conceptual Forces

Spirits of abstract thought, memory, and emotion.

• Category Intro: Born not of earth or sky, but of minds. Spirits of grief, lies, hope, ambition. Often misunderstood. Often dangerous.

• Sample Dominions:

  • Oaths – binding, law, promise

  • Memory – history, trauma, forgetting

  • Fear – instinct, control, survival

  • Ambition – will, ascension, obsession

  • Grief – mourning, longing, hollow presence

  • Joy – celebration, release, renewal

---

🏠 Cultural & Societal

Spirits that grow from custom, tradition, and belief.

• Category Intro: Created by generations, rituals, and shared meaning. Most familiar to mortals—household spirits, hearthbound protectors, spirits of names and roles.

• Sample Dominions:

  • Hospitality – welcome, boundaries, respect

  • Reverence – sacred, ancestral, divine echo

  • Authority – control, obedience, legitimacy

  • Craft – creation, patience, tradition

  • Sacrifice – offering, exchange, sacred loss

---

🕳️ Void-Touched (Corrupted Dominions)

Spirits whose essence has turned.

• Category Intro: These dominions exist in echo—where natural or conceptual spirits have become warped through Overreach, despair, or contact with something beyond the Veil. Not all were born void-tainted; some fell.

• Sample Dominions:

  • Silence – suppression, erasure, hunger for meaning

  • Deception – self-erasure, entropy of truth

  • Ruin – obsession with collapse and broken systems

  • Hunger – consumption without end

  • Madness – fragmentation, delusion, divine rot

---

✨ Optional Bonus Sections

• Dominion Crossbreeds: How multiple dominions combine in one spirit—what a Fire + Grief or Memory + Stone spirit looks like

• The Veil’s Influence: How the spiritual ecology of Vaelora shapes dominions (e.g., isolation, bottlenecked reincarnation)

• Dominion-Based Ritual Tables: Quick 2d6 or 3d6 prompts for rituals/offenses per dominion