The comment system under the comic have been updated! It’s got several improvements but we are still testing it out! So- use it- so far I think I like it. One thing, it allows for longer reply chains. Which is nice 😀
Streaming tonight over at Picarto.tv/SageSaga at 8pm!
How about ‘all of the above and he completely believed the spirit’?
Or is everyone around here, still so weak after the removal of magics seals that they actually thought that spirit WAS the real amatrasu? (Or at least an avatar of her) after all she seems to at least have been stronger than the water spirit that liked slinging curses around. I am guessing she was likely top tier among lesser/middle level spirits?
Hard to say. There is some merit to suggesting they should have known better since it’s feasible Naoko’s family and Inari could have tried giving this government agency some pointers or literature on this a while back.
A lot of it strikes me as a timeline issue and how much of a set back Emi unleashing the Power seal affected the projected return of mystics and monsters. It’s been a while since we heard from the family and Inari is still a wild card here.
Since we don’t know if they were planning on decades before dealing with serious threats being released and as opposed to eaten by more mundane spirits Ama was a lesser evil here.
More over if the narration is to be trusted, which maybe dubious given Yuki is calling him out for ignorance. Allegedly the Suijin was a Demi-God. If that holds true it’s not a surprising mistake.
That said I can agree the casual arrogance here is stiffling.
Interestingly I wonder if he’s a type of chimera predisposed to channeling spirits. Leaving him with little recourse for this bond. I’m not familiar on the practice, but I think there was some form of ritual magic for hosting spirits in ones body.
Granted this is a massively leap in assumption though. Since this is half remembered on my end and possibly not even compatable with Yosh’s magic system.
But if you wanted to theory craft in the weeds for a bit, you could consider that some folks are specifically predisposed or only capable of this type of posession magic.
The chimeritization of the native population has gone rather sideways after the original Fire Magi’s mistake. So it’s not infeasible. Axel being a conduit for demons specifically might lend credance to this. But to be fair, he is a super special case on par with the Null though.
As strong as a spirit can get, it doesn’t always elevate them in status. Not being able to know themselves prevents them from ever growing beyond their class. A bunch of stolen power they can cause destruction with, but can never learn how to really use it. The only thing they could come up with was sharing it with someone else and manipulating them for more power.
That’s actually a really interesting angle. Since spirits may not have physical forms in the truest sense, a cognitive dissonance deviating from their true self could lead to some interesting consequences.
So this implies that faith is a similar source of power to mana and harvesting it can lead to short term gains but not necessarily profeciency in use?
This does bring up an interesting question on why they couldn’t intergrate it though. Presumably faith is faith, is there a lore reason why they couldn’t properly utilize it?
I imagine if it’s siphoned improperly from shrines that’s one thing. But Yuki’s in comic assertation asserts it was freely given. What exactly is preventing them from leveraging it? Provided you don’t mind asking.
Not given to the spirit. They prayed at the shrine to Amaterasu, not to the spirit of the stone.
So that it was housed in the shrine was simply incidental? The way Yuki phrases it; “She was enshrined and worshipped as Amaterasu.”
Implies they built a new one around her. Though I could be misreading it. I was presuming it was legitimately recieving worship. Even if the intention was for it to go to Amaterasu instead.
Incidentally depending on how young the spirit was and if it intentionally incited this misconception, it does bring up the question of knowing error or not. Not that I think it’ll turn out this way, but could the original worshippers have intentionally tried to create a controllable god through this? Or is it just a case of mistaken identity and the spirit being brain washed into this role through not knowing better.
Though your previous comment implies other wise.
I’ll explain the shrine in greater depth and then provide another example. The shrine was made to Amaterasu, and they needed a symbol of Amaterasu. Someone found a stone that looked like a rising sun when the light reflected off of it. So they used that as their symbol of Amaterasu. When they prayed, they prayed to Amaterasu, not the actual spirit that resides in the stone.
They weren’t worshipping the stone, they were worshipping the thing they saw the stone represented. So this spirit had people coming up to it all the time, calling the name Amaterasu, and eventually, it started thinking it was this being called Amaterasu, and it started stealing the faith they poured out towards it.
Now- that sounds like a bit of a tragic story, and it kinda is, people kept calling it by a different name from its perspective, and it took on that name, and started taking on the persona of Amaterasu.
So some may feel it’s not their fault, however in terms of spirits they have a connection to what they are and who they are. They knew they were not the sun, they were a stone. That was intrinsically part of what they were and they knew it. They chose to try to take on the mantle of something else, and this is a taboo and breaking it has consequences.
Another example of this would be a spirit of the wood, resides in a log, the log gets carved into a statue of a famous hero or fallen King or Emperor, as people look at it with awe or wonder, that is a form or worship and that is meant towards the person, but that person doesn’t exist as a spirit, so the statue takes it, and starts to think of itself as this great hero/leader. One day the city is attacked and seeing its people in trouble, the statue comes to life to protect its people. People begin to worship it as a god, this time though the worship is too much- it becomes corrupted- it starts to think it shouldn’t be trapped here, it should be in a grand hall with servants, but it lacks the strength to be active all the time and starts using what strength it has to demand more, to sacrifice more. It becomes something more like a demon.
So it’s intention and medium? The stone happened to house a spirit and was used inadvertantly as a medium to give faith to Amaterasu?
Meaning it was embeezling the faith from Amaterasu because it was intentioned to her but went through the shrine by proxy?
There is some interesting questions there about how shrines function to gather and direct faith.
I suppose the story for the spirit is sympathetic if you look at it from that angle. But the information you provide implies that it intentionally sucumbed to the self deciet. So it’s hard to say. Certainly the circumstances are unfortunate. But it appears unlike humans Spirits have a generally firmer grasp on sense of self inherently ingrained in them.
It does bring up questions on identity though. You’ve mentioned breaking through in a previous comment on spirits.
It must be especially vexing to grow beyond the bounds of your mold. Change doesn’t appear to come easy to them.
Acceptance to who and what they are is vital to their growth. Any spirit trapped in a false sense of self loops unable to move on to any further stages. The spirit is itself, not a collective, they can work with other spirits, spirits can consume other spirits, but they can’t function as something other than themselves. This is supposed to be an inherent part to consciousness. A person who is conscious doesn’t question if they are or aren’t (The ability to even do so contradicts it inherently), they know they are but cannot know if others are. A spirit is similar, but it is “unique”. Unique in such a way that denying who they are or taking on a false form corrupts them, drives them mad, because all they are is themselves. A person can become something different, a spirit is part of something- and that something is always the same thing. A rock might get carved into a statue, but it is still a rock. A person might always be a person, but each person is so much more than just a person. Its more like a person deciding they are no longer a person. Generally speaking that makes them crazy, or a monster. Spirits that do that eventually turn into monsters in a much more real way. They break from what they were, become monstrous and lose what they were and become something that can no longer grow as a spirit, but only destroy as a monster.
This is where in the Yosh! world the split between Spirits and Souls. Souls reside in a body of a creature that affects the creature and they grow together, the soul and the body and the mind. The spirit is connected to something and through spiritual means, it can be from magic, from emotion, or just the influence of souls, these consciousnesses take form in objects and creatures or other things. This spirit grows sporadically, some suddenly take form, some take forever, some have sudden growth and there’s lots of reasons for that happening, but the object or creature – or even phenomenon like fire or snow, doesn’t really change, only the spirit does. Once it grows to a point it ascends usually leaving behind it’s “body” and creates a form of its own. Forcing itself into a form besides itself stunts its growth preventing it from ascending.
Spirits that go up the ladder are used by the universe to help enforce mostly magical natures, but also to manipulate the physical forces of the universe to benefit the universe and to protect it from outside forces. “Gods” live in the celestial realms where divine power flows easily to everyone to be uses against the outsiders, sometimes a powerful kitsunes power is needed to collapse a black hole headed towards a heavily soul filled star system that must be protected. Some times you need a star eating serpent to prevent two stars from colliding. So you need intelligent and powerful being that can keep track of all the stars in the universe. Souls are the backbone of all of that- they are mostly responsible for the creation of spirits, and are the source of power to all the gods and spirits as they grow, and as they cycle in and out they allow the expansion of the universe.
I was casually speaking about transcending one’s self in a healthy way. Though if such a thing exists for a spirit I cannot say.
But likely it would be around when they ascend past their “body” stage.
I grasp that they are more esoteric and conceptual in nature. I’m just postulating from a human perspective it seems quite taxing to be as something a meager as a rock when someone is born as the avatar of Godzilla or something.
It sounds like even spirits have a will to meaning, the desire to strive above their station or inherent circumstances.
It just seems like it’s difficult for them to do so. I’m sure Ama is a niche and interesting showcase. But where do you even go from being a sunny rock or carved into a statue?
I suppose in youe earlier example it’s feasible that the log fashioned after a hero could acknowledge the differentiation between them and the Hero they represent. Then strive to be akin to them or as a concept of representing a hero.
But it seems like such an evolution is difficult for them for reasons I haven’t grasped yet. I assume it’s predominantly a psychological block from being hyper cognizant of the shape and concept of their being.
I kinda see it as if you over-pressure a compressed air or hydraulic system. There are tolerances built into it so a little bit won’t cause a failure but doing so over a long period or dramatically over-pressuring the system can lead to a staggering amount of damage/chaos.
The problem with faith is that it’s probably “flavored” a certain way which can cause issues for those not intended to partake. In this example the spirit believed fully it was Amaterasu and acted according to it’s whims without the actual mandate, experience, or restraint that the actual Amaterasu would have. Now it wasn’t as powerful (Yuki is strong but I sincerely doubt she could counter the actual Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, with ice powers) but for those not in the know it was a convincing bluff which prompted more faith which caused a feedback loop further reinforcing the incorrect assumption and warping the spirit. Eventually that feedback and warping will probably fail which either corrupts the spirit into something nasty, leads to a loss of control and accompanying magical release (something like the Magi releasing their powers on a more local scale, though “local” depends on how much the spirit accumulated), or it could even go so far as to invert inwards to some sort of collapse which could open a hole for outsiders to enter from. Now those are speculation on my part but seem to make sense in the scheme of things.
That also opens up the idea that cults are actually really dangerous metaphysically in this setting because they’re conduits to feed faith improperly to spirits or other entities which leads to outsider incursions (cthulu mythos anyone?) or other arcane disasters. I doubt anything suitably powerful/intelligent would partake of twisted worship, maybe at best creating an aspect of a greater entity which more closely aligns with their nature to boost their own worship but a nature spirit who wasn’t quite as intelligent happening across an effective buffet is more likely to gorge themselves and suffer consequences like this “Amaterasu” did and explains why proper temples/religions are so concerned about stopping cults.
That does bring up the question of how fast spirits can be formed. Sage implied in one of the earlier posts that suffeciently intelligent reasoning creatures are needed to spawn spirits.
For example: Sentient animals couldn’t spawn one because they lack sapience. (Presumably.)
This begs the question, that if a cult produced a thought experiment and fixated enough consistent directed attention. Could they spawn a spirit? Leveraging the unconcious minds of the masses by utilizing the internet could they exponentially raise one in power through faith?
I’m sure it wouldn’t gain insight and precise control over their abilities like this. But it’s an interesting thought experiment and how modern technology might affect the ecology of future spirits.
Would ancient spirits be able to leverage podcasting or other services to increase worshipers? Is Vtuber spirits the next big thing? Probably not. But there is some humor there.
You know this is drifting into the same thought experiment region as Roko’s Basilisk in some ways. Like if they create a vengeful spirit that seeks to make those who don’t worship it suffer is it better to worship for your own safety or not and delay it’s creation and the suffering it would bring?
That also makes creepypasta a LOT wilder because you could actually spawn Slenderman, MalO, or even older creations like Bloody Mary if the general cognition of them grew strong enough.
My first thought was “without a physical phenomenon there couldn’t be a spirit” but if things as esoteric as the first snowfall or the dawn can spawn powerful spirits then I guess enough belief or knowledge could create weaker spirits tied to their myths which then could create more physical anchors like a mirror used regularly for the bloody mary ritual or a ragged notebook with scrawl about a faceless monster following the writer.
Generally I think there’s probably some hurdle of a certain amount of active worship or belief to create a spirit which internet skepticism helps head off but using the internet to spread word/worship of existing spirits probably does work even if the concept of “the internet” is too nebulous to spawn it’s own spirit, though that’s more for my own sanity because a spirit of the internet as a whole would probably vary dangerous from batshit insane to hyper literal with odd moments of lucidity.
That’s actually where my mind drifted to honestly. If I had to posit a theory without having to pester Sage to answer it for us.
I would suggest a focus is likely necessary. Especially during the initial stages. Presumably Power mages could affect this process by virtue of their abilities. But barring that and stipulating faith only as a caveat. It’s probably something like faith can only go so far from the body before deterioating. Like mana or spells.
So having fixed locations of worship would be necessary. You could assert that routers or servers could facilitate the transfer if designed that way or rituals made specifically to address that.
But it’s highly likely like Ama here, fixed locations are necessary at least in the begining. So things like places and objects will specifically spawn such spirits provided they have enough faith and are within close proximity to their congregation/people of fixation.
But hot damn, tulpas are going to be wild in Yosh when magic really starts integrating into society. I wonder if thats where familiars are derived from.
Noticed the improvements in the new comment system immediately. Much appreciated Sage. The edit feature is a fantastic addition in my personal opinion.
Yuki is responsible for all improvements, I’d break something, or make it work in some arcane way that shouldn’t work and only worked for 10% of people! 😀
Haha, fair. I can’t say my tech literacy is much better. Please pass on my regards to them. Let them know me being quarrelsome on the site has never been easier for me. You two have a good weekend.
So was adding her to Yosh payment for the improvements.
Nope. Yuki has been a close friend and admin to the website for many years now. I wanted a new celestial character to add to the story and got her permission to use her.
It feels appropriate then as the person who keeps everything running that she’s portrayed as a super powerful divine being.
Huge fan btw, been watching since almost the beginning.
She’s not mad, she’s disappointed.
Edit: Cool that works too! :3
I’m imagining that meanwhile Inari is standing just off panel, quietly waiting for ‘mom’ to finish scolding the foolish exorcist.
Oooh, like the new software. Good choice!
As for the comic, I can’t wait for her todd to reluctantly announce his presence. I imagine he’ll probably get a hug, but there’s the chance she’s annoyed enough to share some of it.
Yuki speaks of his abilities, but did he even have any? Didn’t Kate say, that everything he did was the doing of somebody looking through his eyes, as in only fake Amaterasu was doing the work? Maybe he doesn’t have any abilities at all.
I believe the exorcist explicitly said as such when he banished the Suijin. It’s highly likely he was functioning solely as a conduit for the spirit’s powers.
This is incorrect. He said he didn’t personally have the power to send the suijin away. This does not mean he has no power at all. Kate was unnerved by the spirits power and how it was using him. She didn’t say he was powerless (though he himself doesn’t think he’s capable without the spirits power).
Oh, I suppose I missed that plot point. I suppose the spirit may have exploited that learned helplessness then.
E’s kicked the Null, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mineral spirit, run down Yuki’s patience and joined the bleedin’ obvious!!
THIS IS AN EX- ORCIST!!
Considering how much was lost following the sealing of the elementals. It’s likely that and form of distinguishing a false spirit from a true spirit no longer exists. As well as any form of proper exorcist training. Whatever does exist is likely patchy, as they probably never shared their secrets with the kitsune or other higher beings during their heyday.
That’s hard to say, the cult of Five and Naoko’s family seem to have retained the teachings and literature. Even in the earlier days of Yosh, -though feasibly dubiously canon-they complain about hating magic. So while weakened, it is implied that some enclaves still held out.
Whether the majority have useful knowledge or pratical applications of it is another matter. More over how in touch with modern society they are or influence they have is probably where the disconnect us at.
I’m confused. I thought the person Yuki is now talking to was still talking to Yuki’s daughter?
I’m pretty sure the “I’m back” implies that time has passed. Given that we now know Yuki didn’t take the spirit to a spiritual realm or something like that (the “I sealed her in the Indian Ocean” comment) their encounter would have taken some time which probably overlapped with the exorcist’s discussion. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next page doesn’t either have a “hello mother” moment or the exorcist passing a message.
She’s addressing the Exorcist currently.
While dealing with the fake Amaterasu didn’t take very long, it’s also implied that she went searching for the object she was attached to, the stone she tossed to the Exorcist. So this implies time has passed. The fact that she didn’t immediately notice her son there- Probably means in that time- He’s left already.
Oh… dear. Her kid’s going to have some explaining to do to have let things get this far.
I’m still expecting something along the lines of “Greetings Mother, what do you think of the very first step of cleanup after millennia of having too little magic on Earth to accomplish anything?”
It’s not Inari’s job to babysit humans. He’s only responsible for his Kitsune and relatives, and any people he or his people have personally made deals with. The deal they have with the government is just to share pertinent information and to have a dialogue so if they need help, their is a set method of communicating.
When the comment chain gets deep enough, the empty space takes up nearly half of the comment area. You may want to implement some kind of flattening button, reading nearly vertical comments may work on a phone, but on pc not so much.
It might be my phone specifically, but after three layers deep, formating gets rough in threads. That said, I’m legitimately glad it doesn’t take me forever to write responses anymore. Granted it was always a hardware issue on my end specifically. But the new update works phenomenal for me over all.
Dialogue options include:
We don’t truly know how deep the exorcist’s arrogance is, so its hard to be sure. He is arrogant, but the question is, HOW arrogant? That said, grovelling and panicking seem to be things that might take place.
It’s also nice that we get to see multiple sides to Yuki. I mean, not too long ago she was being courteous (if a bit teasing) to a follower in letting him get rather detailed images of her. Now we’re getting to see her being stern and serious.
testing
(I guess we can’t delete our own comment)
Can edit it though, which is one better in my opinion.
Since you can edit them, if there is no way for us to be able to delete them (we’ll look into it), if you edit it to something like “Please delete this comment” whenever im going through comments that need approval and such i can go through the list looking for any that ask to be deleted and i can delete them.
That’s a problem that needs to be addressed
What is?
Presumably the Exorcist’s training. As well as the subtle implication he’s the best the governmet has. You don’t bring out the B team in crisis situations. If this is the best they got, it’s problematic on a systemic scale.
The exorcist might be the one there could have been on site the soonest.
Feasibly, but if Ama is as dangerous to basically everyone as Yuki says. That no one else recognized this danger means that there is probably a top down organizational issue. Either with training or information.
There is an interesting case of it being a knowing danger that the organization took upon themselves in lieu of better alternatives in the interim.
Ie: Perhaps after Emi unsealed power, many more smaller malignant spirits were sweeping the nation and that Ama was a conveinent stop gap that Exo willingly embraced to save his nation.
While not spiritual in nature there are similar cases with historical presidence. So it’s feasibly possible. But it doesn’t seem to be shaping up to that angle.
the lack of detailed information in the users comment.
also this is very nice upgrade Sage <3 it
keep up the good artistry to
Testing this thing out.
This is a very nice comic.
A part of me is like Yes good, how does the dirt taste you second rate exorcist! But I know that there probably are extenuating circumstances. At least, I hope. If, by what Inari said is true, and he’s always been a bit of an ass, then he deserved this humbling, especially for even considering the Suijin’s plan to start with.
Hard to say, I’d posit it’ll be interesting to see how much of a distortion Ama caused in his personality. For example it’s feasible he could just historically be a show off. That’s an asinine trait depending on how you portray it. But hardly worth this level of fall out.
I don’t think it’s that mild, but honestly it depends on how twisted Ama left him. As for him considering the Suijin’s plan, I don’t actually fault him all that much. Since he said “perhaps” and that it’d require many modifications.
Implying that it likely would have been something that specifically targeted Phil and could have been as mundane as pulling him in with regular street cops for a more detailed explaination on his abilities. More an extended interview on why exactly the altercation with the Suijin happened in the first place. Something that specifically should have happened anyways.
Granted that is probably not what was going to happen if he went that route. But he’d have been very foolish not to have considered it. Phil is only the victim in this from a surface level perspective, in my personal opinion.
As for the binding with Ama, I hope it’s a case of extenuating circumstances requiring it. Especially since in a previous comment Sage specifically said that Inari only has an informative role with the organization and isn’t around to babysit humans. Which honestly fair. But on second hand seems really asinine. Humans have very little recourse with spirits if the BFR stuff is to go by.
Having just information but no practical asissitance doesn’t really do much. But we’ll be able to tell more after we figure out where the disconnect is between the government and spiritual organizations. The cult of Five is still by a technicality probably a loose terrorist organization at this juncture. Even if it’s mostly just a very chaotic mix of people whom just happen to mages than anything seriously organized.
But there should be hold outs like Naoko’s family. Which to be fair, can’t really cover the whole country. But after joining with Shishou’s family, should at least be able to leverage the Ninja’s to some sort of effect. If only by having them distribute mundane magic tools like spirit rope for sealing areas and clubs for smacking stuff or something.
Well cool, nice edits to the comment system Yuki!
I think ignorance plays a part, the guys personality does too. And once the spirit started to grant him power he wasn’t too interested in finding out the truth. Which might have gotten him in real trouble had he made a serious attempt at going after Phil because no way would that spirit have a chance against him.
wow just noticed Yuki is giving off strong disappointed mom energy in this entire page how did I not notice that?
I went back and read it and yeah, you’re right. Though I think there’s also a degree of disgust at the fact it even happened in the first place. IE her question boils down to “This should never have happened, but it did. So, tell me, why did it happen?”