[TL Artists] Creature Compendium Collaboration - Page 5

Genius loci is Latin for "the spirit of a place." Present only in those rare places which, unchanging, seem to perfectly embody a single moment, these spirits usually manifest as no more than a subtle emotional influence on the visitor. They grow stronger over the decades and centuries as their domain accrues temporal permanence, and narrative and emotional weight in the minds of men.

The genius loci is the concrete embodiment of a place's character, and grows proportionally weaker as that character is changed or destroyed by human or environmental intervention. Therefore, they usually manifest as stabilizing, calming influences, or preserving forces; a forest avatar with trees for arms and moss for skin, perhaps, or a stony man with a craggy face of granite.

However, when a place is defined for long enough by violent disruption, a very rare sort of genius loci can come into being. When the history of a place is the history of the same cataclysm, repeating itself across time, the genius loci becomes the force which "preserves" of that very disruption. Thus great racing coyotes of pure flame have been glimpsed far off across dry prairies before the perennial wildfire, and in the drowning towns of monsoon-wracked islands villagers have seen serpentine forms of cloud and water, smelling the air with tongues of lightning.

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Far from civilized lands, at the center of a nameless atoll there is a single mountain, rising steep out of the water. It is in the spawning grounds of the hurricanes, where the hot, humid air of the tropics meets the cold, dry trade winds; but the thickest clouds come not from the hurricanes, but flowing out of the mountain called Volcano. For the native fisherman of the atoll - the other islands, for it would be folly to live on the slopes of Volcano - for those fishermen, life is a constant struggle. Caught between fire and storm, generation after generation has struggled to rebuild wrecked boats and ruined houses. Blown apart by the storm, smouldered at the whim of Volcano, their hard struggle with the elements keeps them at the very edge of death - but it is in this struggle that they find life and the meaning of their existence.

These fishermen have always been aware of a presence on the shores of Volcano. Shrouded in hurricane rains or masked in windswept clouds of ash, reports of the shape conflict but the two glowing eyes are always the same. The fishers have come to accept that this presence, and the dual forces of hurricane and Volcano with which they have come to associate it, are neither demons to be feared, nor gods to be worshipped. The hurricane swamps their boats, but rain brings fresh water and windblown currents sweep schools of fish into their nets. Volcano's fire burns their huts, but its rich ash ensures the islands' fertility, and the wood it grows enables the fishermen to build their huts anew. And they are just as deaf to the villagers' prayers as to their screams.

The fisherrmen know that these dual cataclysms, and the spirit born of them, are neither gods nor demons. They are simply the spirit of the islands; simply a force of nature.