Persistence manifestation

Disturbances in local spacetime secondary to physically traumatic events taking place in a volume of space. The causative events can happen either in the past or the future, but the vast majority of persistence manifestations have to do with events in the past.

The causative event can be simply physical -- like an explosion or other physical force being applied to matter -- or both physical and emotional, as in traumatic injury to or death of a living being. The physical or physical/emotional damage sets up long-lasting resonances through the local string structure, so that nonphysical echoes of the original event continue to resonate through local space for some time. These echoes often manifest as apparent repetitions in present time of events long past.

"Hauntings" involving the apparition of beings long dead or past events often have this kind of persistence manifestation at their core.* Nita experiences one of these while visiting her Aunt Annie in Ireland, when she hears voices talking in the middle of the night outside the caravan where she's sleeping during her visit. Inquiry reveals that Nita has been hearing echoes of the voices of soldiers of Oliver Cromwell, who were posted on the farm's grounds hundreds of years previously. (This perception on Nita's part is possibly a pointer toward her growing talent as a visionary; wizards with visionary tendencies are usually sensitive to such persistence manifestations, and often attempt to access them as an investigatory tool.) The poltergeist phenomenon is routinely also a form of persistence manifestation. (AWAB)

• The "haunting" concept naturally also includes the apparition of beings who, having died in traumatic circumstances, continue to linger near the physical location, declining to move on to Timeheart or similar senior liminal states until unresolved issues are handled. Wizardly usage distinguishes these by a different word in the Speech (the lephairet- root) from the one used when describing straightforward non-volitional persistence effects (emetalit-).