(last updated: 12/28/17)Still more and more peculiar things are possible in the world of chi. The leylines worming through the world are host to all sorts of native corruptions of chi not readily explained or understood by the living. While people with great amounts of chi may find themselves caught up in the tide of the leylines as opposed to being part of nature itself, the titanic flow of energy and the pathways that flow runs through doesn't always ensure that a person who goes there actually stays in one piece. While the process can be--and is most frequently--transformative for some, in the majority of cases a person's life force can be fractured into their most basic elements.
Though only the most experienced of exorcists would even begin to divine it, fragments such as these are typically the root cause for most phenomena experienced in the real world. Ghosts, hauntings and other spirits can crop up when a fragment of someone's personality falls out of the leylines. Though ghosts are about as frequently seen in the world as we know it as one might expect, they are still the most common and clear-cut expression of metanatural phenomena, and their fragment willpower tend to account for most of the others.
Less frequent are what happens when fragments of chi stay in the leylines and begin to twist and warp there. A person's memories, if popular enough, might very well become real entities in the flow, changing, shifting, and perhaps joining with other forms and fragments to take on a life of their own. Dragon spirits commonly are the most typical form of these phenomena, and tend to gain great strength in the leylines due to their popularity and familiarity with those who regularly join the leyline, but other, weaker forms of cultural detritus do develop.
The difference between a person and a fragment, however, is colossal. A dragon spirit composed of fragments might gain an incredible amount of strength in the leylines, but it has no true soul, only taking on bits and pieces of what the collective unconsciousness has attributed to it. Spirits can be channelled and may even express a primal will, but will never actually be capable of the self-determination that seperates a man from an animal.
Those that are are referred to as Gods.
When a strong person dies, their body's energy returns to the leylines. Like with most, their self-identity washes away with the transient flow. However, past a certain benchmark of strength, a person can maintain the willpower necessary to remain self-aware in the leylines. From there, what happens depends roughly on what they did in life. Certain of them become tyrants of the leylines, gathering themselves in the memories of their past homes, and ruling there as kings. But others take a more active role in the living world.
If a person has enough followers when they have died, their legacy far outlives them, becoming something of myth and legend. Gods are formed slowly, over myriad centuries, from fragments of memories accumulating around a person strong enough to maintain their sense of self. These spirits then become the strongest in the leylines. Those who were popularly called 'Gods' in real life may have become so in death. And beyond even the power of the strongest to wander the leylines, gods often have enough power to influence the living world subconsciously. Most may only be vague wills floating in a haze of their own strength, but that will is enough to empower an individual who believes.
A god giving a portion of their strength to a human is how legends were written.