Alongside the creator, the rain, and the ancestral dead, Nuba communities reckon with a less clearly defined order of spirits belonging to the wild: to the bush, the hills, groves, springs, and waters that lie beyond the cultivated ground and the homestead. These powers are not the object of an organized cult like the ancestors or the rain; they surface chiefly in the explanation of affliction, when a sickness or mishap is traced to an offended or malevolent spirit of a place and answered with an offering, often at the diviner's direction. Their names, ranks, and attributes are not systematized and vary from one community and one diviner to the next, and the sources treat them as a diffuse category rather than a fixed roster of individuals.