From Familia Niveum
They grow stronger by being perceived/observed.
They grow weaker by being forgotten.
They are gregarious in nature, often making deals with other spirits.
Parent traditions of whatever sort rarely quarrel with their children, but grow stronger as their children
do, though sometimes a child cannibalizes (absorbs) its parent. After a time, the others forgive this crime, but watch
it warily, lest it eat them too. Religious traditions have a particularly bad name for that. (precedents don't count,
their practices being confined to each other, and forming a sort of subculture all their own.)
Tradition spirits are connected to all who observe them (the
ties of tradition ;) ),
retaining weak copies of themselves in stored expressions of their natures. (
scrolls, books, databanks, etc.)
There are many types of traditions, of which these are some.
Habits are the young spirits, often weak, and perceived primarily by the person
who formed them. Over time they grow stronger, and often make deals with other
spirits to help dissuade their person from ignoring or forgetting them. They are the most likely
to pass away, but also the most likely to form new parents, proper Traditions.
Most often they are amiable, comfortable types, bestowing peace when invoked.
Proper Traditions have taken hold in many minds, often stored and spread in song,
story, and scripture. They sometimes diverge, broken off sections forming children, and
sometimes join together, tithing of their power to form a more general, parent Tradition
connected to both.
When similar Proper
Traditions meet, ties form betwixt them, and when there
are enough ties, a parent tradition forms in the web between them. With
variations/schisms in a single tradition, the ties pull in different directions,
and a tradition splits in three (or more), one for each of the distinct
variations, and a parent, tied to all of the children.
(legal) Precedents are a different matter. They are born from debate and
conflict in the courts, and are the most fractious of traditions. They form the
spirits of the losing arguments into armor, and utilize their prestige and age
to fuel their battles over the minds of judges.
(lawyers exist in a sort of symbiosis with them, they perceive the precedents,
copy them into innumerable papers, and bring them to other's attention, and the
precedents try to improve the case of the lawyer who called them)
Sometimes, though rarely, a dissenting opinion leaves enough room for such a
set of
armor to consume the bulk of its bearer in turn. Their constant wars are
made feasible by the endless paper-trails left by courts. A precedent might be
suppressed for a time, its body stolen or slain, but it
does not truly die unless all record of it is erased. A very rare thing, these days.
They are, however, the most easily corrupted of the tradition spirits, bound to their
invocation by barristers, they can be twisted, sometimes irreparably. They return
the spiritual wound to the one who caused this, but most often, all that does is
make their invoker more corrupt, and more likely to do it again.
One example spirit is the Sanctity of Ambassadors, who also calls himself
diplomatic immunity. He has slowly triumphed in his rivalry with kill the
messenger, through a deal he made with Reprisals and Hostages (spirits of
unknown type). He is a peaceful type, sometimes disgusted by those he protects.
Nevertheless,
Sanctity interposes his body (usually a flock of doves) between the ambassador
and the spirits that would harm him or her, and is almost always injured along
with them. Reprisals has sworn to avenge any injury done to Sanctity, and is
a powerful, vicious spirit on its own, so most spirits
are daunted, and refrain from troubling Sanctity. (Sanctity tithes of his
strength to Reprisals, so the both of them benefit from this arrangement)
Also, Traditions love wordplay, long-running puns being some of their favorite companions. Some
have even been adopted as honorary traditions. )
