Affinity animals are ancient souls that choose to manifest in an animal form (which changes, depending on the planet that they are manifesting) in order to bond with and protect a certain soul. 

They are usually souls that, though wise and old, can easily inflict offensive tactics on another soul, if they calculate that it is appropriate and for the greater good. 

They also excel at it more than any of the other orders of spirits, which is why every member of The Protectors train and act with an affinity animal, in what is known as bonding by duty.

The bonding, that is another bit of lore and might change names in the future, may happen:

• Under a dangerous/stressful situation, which may cause a nearby animal spirit to manifest and guard a vulnerable spirit of another order that is subject to their affection (note: they will always jump to protect a spirit in danger, but the bonding won’t happen if there isn’t affection involved ^^);
• Due to a long-term friendship, which is pretty intuitive. It happens because of the love there is between two souls, of any order;
• By duty, in which one is under a division that functions better if they have a companion of such order by their side (animal spirits are members of the division exactly like everybody else).

Often times, the bonding that happens by duty or under dangerous circumstances is also between someone and a spiritual animal that already know each other but, for one reason or another, had their paths parted in one of their previous lives. 

So, essentially, all of the bonding types happen where there is real affection, from both sides.

On an important note, animal spirits are not inferior or superior than the other order of spirits. They have their own evolutionary scale and, funnily, all of the ones you will see in Ascendance would be more evolved than us, if we were to put it in a common scale.

In the next update, should you choose to be a Protector (consider different playthroughs!), you’ll bond with one of the three spirits listed below (images are for reference):

Edgar [Manifests as a wolf]

Aoi [manifests as a white tiger]

Soraya [Manifests as a Coral snake]

I’ll give you the option to name them and choose their pronouns (you can also leave it default), but I’ll have you know that they have personalities of their own, lol.

That’s about it for now! Thanks for reading (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

Lou

[Source of the images: Edgar | Aoi | Soraya]