"We couldn't help but yearn to accept the notion that there must be some grounding of why laws of nature are acting in a predictable way and are not random."

- Great Mage Nayan

The Realm of Nature (also called Nature's Realm or the Original Plane in some sources) is theorised by scholars to comprise the forces, referred to as anima or spirits, that govern the physical laws of the Home Plane. Some speculate that every existing plane possesses its own unique counterpart to this realm, functioning as emanations of the Original Plane. Others believe the Original Plane itself is merely an emanation of an even grander concept, or that the spirits of the Nature's Realm solely dictate the fundamental constants across all possible planes.

Natural philosophers disagree on the nature of anima: one school of thought argues that every spirit is a mindless embodiment of a concept, operating entirely without conscious intent; the opposing view is a teleological model, suggesting that the orderly way anima behaves points to a purposeful design, and that the spirits might even be part of a vast, shared intellect that mortals cannot comprehend.

Testing these hypotheses remains difficult. While spirits can manifest in corporeal or incorporeal forms, even crossing into the Home Plane, their minds operate on logic entirely alien to mortal understanding. Scholars also often struggle to distinguish actual spirits from other creatures that populate the Realm of Nature, such as elementals or sprites, which are often powered or possessed by spirits. The scale of these entities complicates this research even further, as a fundamental concept like cohesion is not governed by a single, massive spirit. Instead, it exists as countless petty spirits -- emanations, which possibly inhabit every physical object of our worlds.

Scholars still do not know how to isolate a spirit to gain direct access to it. While countless techniques exist to bind spirits and harness their powers for practical use, actually interacting with them directly remains impossible, and no reliable methods for doing so exist today. Experiments aimed at forcing this isolation only cause rather dangerous fluctuations, as "removing" a spirit causes the corresponding law of nature to fail locally. For instance, attempting to contain a petty spirit of cohesion causes the containment device itself to dissolve with the spirit inside. Spirits also cannot be killed in a conventional sense; instead, they are dispersed, creating a temporary dead zone where that specific law partially fails or completely ceases to function, remaining inert until the void of this anima is naturally restored.

The Theory of Subgradients proposes that fundamental spirits, also referred to as fundamentals (such as light, inertia, time, cohesion, etc), are stratified into a hierarchy of descending emanations -- major, greater, moderate, lesser and petty spirits -- collectively called anima subgradient. Each universal law expresses itself through these countless spiritual manifestations.

A draoi (pronounced druu-AH; plural draoithe, pronounced droh-ATHEE, from the Kanian Aro: [The One Who Is Capable Of] Speaking Tongues), is the name given to those born with a rare, innate sensitivity to the anima, as well as to practitioners of anima shaping (animists) -- druids, shamans, jägers, witch doctors, etc. Without training, this constant awareness is exhausting, and mastering it is a long, difficult, and often dangerous path, that's typically kept in strict secret, and requiring an experienced mentor. Anima shaping is the practice of shaping by guiding spirits to create magic. Much like managuiding, anima shaping is a tiring process of negotiation between your whole self and the surrounding spirits: the art of feeling them, hearing and communicating with them, understanding what they crave, knowing how to give it to them, and gently manipulating them to suit your goals.

The Tongues is the way to communicate with spirits and most inhabitants of Nature's Realm. It is not spoken words, but the sensory cues of nature itself -- the scraping of roots forcing through earth, the scuttle of ants running in patterns, the clicking of sap rising under bark, the mycelium stitching soil together, the clouds rushing by, the crackling of lichen expanding across stone, the sudden snap of a seed pod splitting under heat, the smell of petrichor and musk, the odour of arousal before a fight or mating, and the downward trajectory of a falling leaf. The meaning of these stimuli is heavily dependent on the speaker's and the listener's location and emotional state. As such, the language is exceedingly difficult to learn (it is called the language of a thousand dialects for a reason) and requires constant, dedicated practice; it is highly advisable to study it in places where the boundary is thin, and ideally, directly within the Realm of Nature itself. While the specific sensory expressions of the Tongues change rapidly across different regions -- even across the artificial environments, where Tongues find voice in thrum of mana in cables or the acrid smell of alchemical glue -- fluent draoithe can adapt to these shifts simply by listening to the surrounding environment for a few minutes, as the core intent of the message is always what is most clearly communicated. Because it is bound entirely to the immediate, shifting natural context of the moment, there is no written form of the Tongues, nor could one ever exist. However, communicating through these natural cues allows for a transmission of internal states and raw emotions with a clarity unachievable by conventional languages, and even those who are not draoithe will instinctively feel the emotional weight of the words. It cannot, however, express exact counts or measured time.

Where the boundary between the Realms wears thin, the air becomes permeated with anima, and the natural order itself begins to drift, causing anomalies and inviting unearthly guests. The depth of these changes corresponds directly to the tenuity of the boundary. Draoithe are naturally drawn to such places -- sea turtles returning to their birth beach, guided by distant, familiar noises as they seek out their true home. They learn to navigate these sites, cultivating and preserving them by establishing sacred groves and sanctuaries.