More Black Anima

Black Anima is energy steeped in demise... As the lighter anima are manifestations of life force, black anima is the antithesis of that. In the larger scheme of cyclical birth and death, black anima is the remains of life that lingered and either refused, or were bound from cycling back into the God-Wall, the font of all things from which all life energy emerges and returns. Life-force so denied, or otherwise corrupted, becomes a strange and erratic force, filled with loathing toward the living, a desire to consume the life forces of things still alight with anima, to absorb it as a tantalizing taste of life departed, and/or destroy that living spark to quell the agony of the soul that the living induce upon those denied rest. Those sentient things animated through the auspice of black anima rarely opine on their moods and motivations, and the few who have are typically ones who sought the power and longevity black anima grants; so their testimony is clouded by their own corruptions and motivations. Just so, they present little consensus and cannot be relied upon to speak for the hateful motivations of lesser abominations bound with black anima.

Some things that thrive in rot and decay can become saturated in black anima, and it can be harvested from such things... the most common source of black anima to be so harvested are fungi that grow in dark and rotten bogs or upon corpses, but it can also accumulates in things that feed for prolonged periods on carrion, rot, and decay. Aquatic bottom feeders, rodents, and many vermin accumulate black anima over time, although harvesting black anima from things is normally impractical. These absorbers of black anima often are transformed over time into dark things, and this is the true source for many strange abominations that lurk in the remote and dark bogs, crypts, and caverns. Malevolent oozes, slimes, and fungi; aquatic monstrosities, strange vermin and carrion beasts; all often blamed on mad wizards, but most all have been borne out of humble creatures corrupted by black anima.

I see correlations between black anima as a magical concept, and petroleum... both are created through a corrupted or incomplete decomposition process that forces the stored energies of the source material to be transformed instead, as a toxic corruption of what it began as.