iun (the Breath of All Things)
Giun (기운) is the primordial spiritual energy of the world, the substance from which everything was shaped and the force every path still draws on.
Before the world
Before time, the world was a sea of Giun, the Breath of All Things. From it arose the Five Celestial Spirits, who shaped Giun into the world and planted the five Cheonseokju (천석주), the Celestial Stone Pillars, beneath the earth to anchor and purify it and to hold the Gyunhyeong (균형), the Great Balance between the spirit and mortal realms. The land that resulted was Haneul-ttang (하늘땅), the Sky-Earth.
Living Giun and the Giun of the dead
The Giun of the living and the Giun of the dead are not the same. The dead carry a Giun that is colder, heavier, and resonant with the space between worlds. The Danja learn to channel it directly as a force they call Yeonggi (영기, “Spirit Energy”), which pulls warmth and vitality from what it touches and reaches into the twisted Giun driving a corrupted creature rather than its physical body.
When a spirit is released from the grief holding it, the Giun freed in that moment is enormous: pure and unfiltered, flowing outward in a wave. The first Danja, Mu-Yeong, learned to channel and direct that release. Before the Fracturing, the pillars kept the boundary between worlds intact and the dead passed through. When the pillars broke, that stopped, and Giun stirred up by Maggi was at first mistaken for stray energy when it was in fact trapped people.
The corrupted form, Maggi
When the pillars shattered in the Fracturing, unfiltered Giun seeped out as Maggi (막기), Obstructed Energy. Maggi reads as the opposite of Giun. It is not strictly geographic but works as a meta-emotional force, concentrating where there is grief or suffering: graveyards, dangerous roads where people die, and similar places. Because of this, killing corrupted creatures and ghosts is understood as a mercy rather than the destruction of something evil. The moral grey zone this creates leaves the true evil to whatever was made at the core of the Cheonmugwan ritual.
Refining Giun: Transcendence
The five paths all draw on Giun in their own way, but the pillars were fractured into innumerable pieces and players are only human. To take on the burden of the Celestial Spirits and become one with a chosen spirit, a player takes in a shard of a broken pillar. The shard gives a direct connection to the spirit and removes the limits of mortality, though it also removes the peace of it: death loses its grip, but the elements of what made the person human are given up for a task that never ends. By carrying a fragment, the player becomes part of the pillar holding the world together, an avatar of the spirits. Taking in further fragments (il-san, then ee-san, and beyond) deepens this, and attempting it before the body is ready is deadly. This is not far from what the Cheonmugwan did when they tried to use the pillars for power, and not everyone sees it in a positive light.
See also
- Maggi
- Haneul-ttang (The World)
- The Celestial Pillars and the Gyunhyeong
- The Five Celestial Spirits
- The Creation
- The Fracturing (Cheonha Bunhae)
- Transcendence (Beyond Level 99)
- Danja (Jeopsindanja)
Source: ETK Lore Bible (General Lore Considerations: Maggi; Transcendence; Deep Lore: The Necromancer / Danja); World of Haneul foundation doc.