The plot-noodling going on is more in the line of what form mysticism takes in cultures that didn't go the route of formal "scholastic" thaumaturgy. As it's evolved, this *does* seem to be a specialty of Alpennia, for random historic reasons. So spiritualism would make sense as a spontaneous manifestation of...something in a context where people with mystical sensitivity weren't being trained to understand their abilities in a formal religious context.

Since the novel that is roughly congruent with the Sisters in Spirit concept will involve a significant non-Alpennian woman coming to Rotenek and struggling to make a place for herself there, it would be interesting to have her be someone who saw/communicated with ghosts (but perhaps had some very odd notions of what that meant).

I've realized that at some point the idea that new viewpoint characters will always be involved in a f/f/romance is going to go out the window. But perhaps by then I'll have trained my readership to be open-minded about such things.