-_-
"Welcome, initiates, to the mysteries arcane! Otherwise known as as introductory invocation theory, or telling you how not to kill yourselves before you know how to do anything dangerous..."
"There are many common misconceptions about invocation, and I am going to give you some more. The things that I am telling you are mostly, technically, untrue, but the technicalities are a matter of higher theory that some of you will address later and some of you would likely never be able to understand. What I will tell you is near enough to let you know if you are in trouble and to figure out of you are getting a result."
"Invocation is, in simple terms, the channelling of the spirit to combine it with the environment to temporarily alter the environment's inclinations. The important thing to know is that to do this, spirit must be expended, so you should know what spirit is. In brief and inaccurate terms, spirit is that which remains amongst the living when someone dies. There is more to it than that, notably that it influences living mental state, but it is easy to think of it as things like reputation, memories of the invoker, quests started, and various other things that are tangible in an abstract way."
"The spirit is classified into three different types. They are expended in a specific order, but are very inconsistent, especially as expenditure increases, and there are some conditions that alter the way in which expenditure proceeds and these are generally reason enough to abandon any interest in invocation. Some practices can alter the expenditure of spirit, but these are extremely advanced techniques and if you have reason to be using them then you are most likely already well beyond safe expenditures. However, in simple terms, they are expended in the order of Momentum, Form, and Substance."
"You are well advised to never exceed momentum expenditure. Momentum consists of an inconsistent energy that manifests as mental traits. In simple, and inaccurate terms, this will drain you of your ability to inspire. It steadily consumes enthusiasm, conviction, wit, charm, it tires muscles, slows healing, and generally saps the ability to achieve anything. The important thing to note about momentum is that it is transitory. The effects of losing it are temporary. Another important detail is that it is loose, and will tend to be expended first. Most invokers will reliably expend a great deal of their Momentum before losing anything else even without learning Spirit Partition. So long as you can feel yourself being drained, it is unlikely that you are permanently harming your spirit..."
"Form, is the specific structure of a spirit, and is refined over the course of a life. It mostly influences your interactions with others. Perhaps the most famous example was Ethemleric the Mad who, upon lifting their tower into the air(A task that you should all note is enthusiastically foolish, the inclination to descend is one of the Cardinal Drives and invoking over so large an area at such a distance is near impossible on its own.), promptly lost all of their supporters. It is not that they lost their memories, but those memories ceased to hold any subjective value. Memories are not entirely dependent upon the spirit, theoretically a subject can perceive the world in such a way as to be unaffected by the spirit, but in practise, in almost all cases of Form loss the subject has become largely irrelevant in whatever matter the lost Form applied to. Note, finally that form and substance are similar and bound to one another, so it is more likely that substance will be lost in the midst of form loss and it is generally regarded that there is no cause worthy of indulging in uncontrolled loss of Form."
"Substance is the material of which your spirit is composed. Losing it permanently reduces the spiritual depth of the subject. Reports suggest that it feels like a combination of nausea, starvation, a sense of imminent death, and morbid dread of your parents finding out what you are doing, all without any context, physical sensation, or direct effects upon the consciousness. Losing Substance permanently reduces the abilities of an invoker, and inhibits the ability to function in a more general context. In short, do not ever lose Substance..."
"In closing, while there is nothing directly fatal about spirit loss, it has been consistently observed that anyone who massively over-expends their spirit will end shortly afterwards, with almost nobody caring about their passing. Many of the greatest acts of invocation are only known through disinterested observations of related events and didn't come to prominence until long after they occurred."
"In future sessions we will be engaging in spirit familiarity and mental discipline, along with reviewing the great historical mistakes of invocation and reviewing the elements that are most difficult to effect through invocation. Those of you who just want to defend against invocation should pay special attention to The Cardinal Drives and why an invoker should find alternatives to imposing upon them. Many an invoker has been undone by a hasty attempt to reach the top shelf..."