I explained it in a different guild, so I may as well offer you an explanation here. It's not a well known theory devised by people who've dedicated their lives to this stuff. It's just the name for my little religion. It's what I believe to be true and it changes frequently. You can read this if you're curious. If not, you're by no means required to.

"I think, to start out, I might need to tell you a bit about Mortal Theory.

For starters, it's called that because it's an ever changing theory centered around death. There's a nifty little clause about how you should live your life tacked on there at the end that basically say do what you truly believe will help people when you can and be a good person because you know it's the right thing to do. It's not a very demanding moral code. The most potent part is the following: One should learn as much as they can in their life time.

For me, this means I'm going to continue to study spirits and the paranormal until I actually become a spirit, at which point I assume my research will become much easier.

But, Mortal Theory doesn't really deal much in the living. It's more fascinated with the dead, and the spiritual aspects of living creatures.

- Humans, animals and some plants each have an astral body.
- These astral bodies generally don't look much at all like the physical body. In fact, they might not even be fully formed. You could be walking around with a blob of loose energy attached to you. Most are well formed, though, and they frequently take the shapes of mythical creatures or demons or other strange beings.
- Astral bodies that are not attached to physical bodies are spirits. These spirits can form a number of ways. For example, they can form into a sentient being from a large amount of energy congregating on itself. Other spirits can give a part of their energy to make a new spirit. Living beings may do the same. Living beings or spirits may find a mass of energy and make it into a new spirit. Or, the astral body can separate from the physical body and become a spirit.
- Once you're a spirit, there are a number of things that can happen to you. You can just sort of lose the energy to hold yourself together and join the masses of swirling energy. Alternately, you could fuse with another spirit and hope your personality and traits were more dominant, though this usually only happens when spirits want to enter a new body. You can enter a new body and live anew, usually with some other spirits that form a whole. Or, if you're strong, you can just remain a spirit.
- If you remain a spirit, you can pretty much do whatever you want. While I'm fairly certain there are rules, I don't know them and no one cares to tell me.
- Spirits exist on another realm. This realm overlaps ours.
- Anyone can sense spirits, if they can just figure out how. It tends to be different for everyone, but usually the trick is in perceiving, more than seeing.
- A person who is very active spiritually might require a guardian. Some people who were active or important in past lives or in the astral realm may have one anyways. Some people may just have one because a spirit wandered across them and thought they looked interesting. Some people may have a spirit that guards them because they cared deeply for the person some time ago.
- Magic is, more than anything, the manipulation of energy. It's highly effective on the astral realm, and can be on the physical realm, though this is much harder. "