Basic breakdown is that you've got fire spirits, house spirits (sometimes same thing, sometimes not), water spirits (we *do* have 60,000+ lakes), forest spirits, earth spirits and then the rest.
House spirits are like the kobold as described in DQ, and they can be nice and very helpful, but gods help you if you insult one or otherwise anger him, one would be better advised to pick a fight with a Black Magician, as the chances of winning that would be better, and the potential damage about the same caliber as having an unplacated house spirit around. House spirit subcategories are proper house spirit, sauna spirit, and barn spirit, and it's possible to have the lot of them on one property. The word we use for them, "tonttu" translates to English as 'elf', in the sense of Santa's elves, not the Tolkienesque type.
Fire spirits are the most common, and can be found anywhere there is or has been a fire. They reflect the character of whoever made the fire. This morphed into the house spirit later (first person who made fire in a dwelling became its spirit).
I know little about the forest, earth and water spirits, and would need to read more. It's a job getting any good material in itself, as those books are few and far between, and the existing copies are typically from old, hard-to-find editions (such as the one I used to research my presentation, had to specifically request the Helsinki Main Library for it, as they only had one copy).
I'll get back to you when I've more time, but don't hold your breath. Edi ---------------------- dbarrass_2000 wrote:
You mentioned in another place that Finland has lots of spirits. Any chance of writing that up a DQ rules - not that we haven't enough to do already. Check out my Spirits/religion rules at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DragonQuestCathedral/ David