Vital essence

The animist Samo heals Nahoa, restoring his vital essence.

The wheel of magic divided into quadrants, with the points pointing towards the four essences of Mind, Spirit, Life, and Matter, and the quadrants representing arcane magic, divine magic, primal magic, and occult magic. Eight colored rings surround the wheel, one for each of the schools of magic.

This article refers to one of the four essences. For religious faith, see deity. Generic uses of terms such as faith, life, heart, and instinct should not link here.

Vital essence, also called Life, heart, faith, or instinct, is the academic definition of the fundamental energies that animate reality and fuel its beings' instinctual behaviors. It is one of the four essences of metaphysical study, the opposite of the deliberate mental essence and bringing shape to material and spiritual essences.

Vital essence represents the dualities of life and death, vitality and void energies, and creation and destruction. It is the essence that gives life to beings, grants them their basest emotions and instincts, and empowers impulse, irrational emotions, and religious faith.

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In magic

Magic that affects vital essence prominently affects the empowering and draining of essential life energies, such as qi and the animating forces of undeath, and manipulates beings' instincts and irrational emotions.

In the magic theory of magical traditions, mental essence is most associated with the divine and primal magical traditions for their properties in manipulating the energies of life, death, and instinctual or animalistic behaviors. Divine magic is the conjunction of spiritual and vital essences, and primal magic is the conjunction of material and vital essences.

In the schools of magic theory, it is most associated with the necromancy school, but its fundamental nature bleeds its influence into many other schools, particularly protective abjurations and the manipulation of some aspects of mental essence in schools such as enchantment that emphasize primal or base compulsions, or divinations of instinct or faith.

The eidolons of primal magic summoners are typically formed from vital essence.

In creatures

Vitae are beings composed from and defined by their vital essence, and are often confusingly referred to as "nature spirits" despite not being spirits, which are ephemeral beings composed from and defined by their spiritual essence, often in lieu of a material form.

A leshy spirit is the pure vital essence of a leshy without its spiritual essence.

In religion

Changes in faith

A being's faith in a divine entity can be rapidly transformed to that of another deity by an emissary of the new deity. This emissary directs spiritual and vital essences aligned with those of the new deity into the being, transforming the being's faith to that of the new deity.

In Rahadoum

Atheist druids are accepted in godless Rahadoum, particularly for their abilities to heal others and combat the encroachment of the nation's deserts on fertile lands. However, because their powers share the use of vital essences with divine magic, they remain viewed with suspicion by some extremists of the Laws of Mortality.

Among the Shoanti

Among the Shoanti of Varisia, the earth is a living, sentient entity to which their peoples are deeply connected through a form of animism. The vital essence of the land is therefore considered the source of Shoanti clerics' powers, rather than the spiritual essence more commonly associated in other cultures. Shoanti coming-of-age rituals include forming a link to a totem that manifests the vital essence of the earth within its depiction of a natural form or creature, and each Shoanti quah has a characteristic totem.