PRESIDING AUTHOR: Quentine Coatile Zaelus
A Soul is something that many of those who do not have hands-on observational experience with the subject tend to greatly misunderstand, in part because it is common for these individuals- most relevantly Humans- assume they do know a lot. Souls are a near-universal characteristic of surviving Human religions, and as such many Humans use those religions as a reference. The typical Human description is that the Soul is itself a being within their being, capable of independent thought and identity. This, crucially, is not the case; the Soul is a single component of a being, and a seemingly nondeterministic one.
Structure and Material Properties
Souls possess an assortment of distinctive traits in their physical manifestations, but the first order of business must be to establish the fact that they manifest physically at all. If you've ever seen someone die, you might not have seen much sign of a soul! This, again, is a very Human problem- with magical abilities being so rare among their kind, their souls are, I hesitate to say weak, but most certainly poorly acclimated.
Contrast this with a Magical soul removed from its body. It will begin to accumulate metamatter and emit light almost immediately, appearing to flicker into a physical, if typically somewhat nebulous form. The relative density of this material as it coalesces in air may give it a flame-like effect if less than air, or a foggy effect if more. Some souls can even rapidly accumulate a sheath of solid material, whereupon they lose their tendency to subtly float over surfaces. This appears to be a mix of local material gathered through kinetic manipulation and subsequent transmogrification and fresh-generated mass and energy. Indeed, using souls as a source of energy or raw material is common practice among those of us without issue with the practice. Not like they're doing much...
Souls tend towards spherical shapes. Being ethereal, the soul itself is tangible to beings capable of interacting with immaterial objects, such as most Undead- where it is reported to have a somewhat slippery surface and squishy consistency, very much like an extremely well-polished stress ball. The appearance of a "bare" soul to such creatures can be described as like the shine of a cut gemstone or pearl, without said gemstone or pearl under it. Faint, distinctly hued light- invisible of course to anyone else. Souls are not apparently breakable by any means, but a soul removed of all material may phase out of our plane may enter its afterlife. This is most likely to occur to an individual willing to pass on immediately, as well as those without magical abilities by default, but is able to be "forced" on a persisting soul generating a material sheath. Conversely, a being able to touch souls doing so tends to "activate" them, and cause them to generate matter and energy, anchoring them to this plane. Doing so, incidentally, poses a path to the individual gaining magical abilities if they survive.
"Activated" as such does indeed appear to be the default state, albeit suppressed by being present in a body- "spell that makes your soul generate high-pressure air and make you explode" is a common experiment by many spellcrafters, but so far evades completion due to apparent failsafes built into the soul itself. Souls occupy one of many positions in the body, varying between individuals- it can be, intuitively, in the chest, or the head, the former being statistically associated with strongly emotional individuals and the latter with pragmatic ones, meanwhile lax personalities may have theirs in the abdomen, including in the "Shirikodama" position, which, due to losing a bet to a certain Dragon, I am now contractually obligated to mention being mine- however, describing it was NOT part of the deal, so, like, don't look it up.
Souls may be coaxed out of the body by magic, or pulled out directly by a being equipped to- which may or may not involve dismembering the body to get to it. It should be noted that this doesn't necessarily kill the person- well, the last one probably does more than the others, but still. A Magical individual will complain of relative fatigue, physical and arcane weakness, and apathy with their soul removed- non-Magical people seem less inclined to notice, but may display mild paranoia. However, no other issues seem immediately apparent.
Many creatures able to interact with the ethereal consume souls. The flavor is widely variable, with individuals who are particularly feisty, magically adept, or strong yielding souls that put out more energy, which the soul-consuming being can then utilize for themselves- perceiving this as larger size even without accounting for the material sheath and richer flavor. This does not destroy the soul, and as souls themselves are not capable of cognition there isn't even really much suffering going on per se, though those that have had their souls eaten and then got them back will often report awareness of the being who did so and might be a little distraught about it for whatever reason.
Look, look, those who have caught onto the Vampiric nature of today's author may assume my nonchalance to be bias over all the souls I consume, and indeed I consume a great many- but, well, so too do lovers of their lost partners, for example. Doing so imparts great strength to the surviving partner and ensures the couple will enter the afterlife as one. Some may even be able to allow the soul of the lost to utilize part of their mind and engage in conscious thought- which leads to the next point.
Function
Here's where I must give the shpiel that Humans so hate- Magic is not something easily understood by science, and this goes deeper than any of the common counterpoints. Magic easily allows its practitioners a practical understanding of the subject through cause-effect relationships, but it is hotly debated even in millenia-old topics what exactly is the cause and what exactly is the effect. The third answer to any of these questions is that Magic might just violate causality through metatemporal effects. Therefore, while we know what a soul does, it is impossible to know why it does it, how it does it, and if it doing it makes the mind do it. This is probably for the best, as it makes the soul somewhat infallible, foolproof, and hard to interfere with in... Whatever it is it's doing. We can say a bit for certain, though!
Souls are not the origin of thought, nor are they capable of thought. Souls do seem capable of creating memories that the brain will inherit once reunited, and some individuals- mostly magical individuals with an emphasis in spellcasting over weapon use- who have had their souls removed may perceive flashes of the world from the souls' perspective. However, the soul itself is not an active continuation of an individual. Think of it as something of a flash drive, separate of an actual computer doing active processing, that contains a "seed" of that individual.
A soul taken to the afterlife, or in an Undead body (including the ethereal body of a Ghost), will only yield a functioning person once given a body capable of thought. Notably, this can create changes in personality if the brain is just wired differently or damaged. On a long enough timeline, a person in the afterlife will experience being several people due to a series of oopsies. This may make it seem that the soul contains memories, but there's more- and... Less.
First off, amnesia. Obviously possible, and, get this, dying and having your soul jammed into a new body does not fix it. The soul is entirely capable of losing memories- our best analogy for this is that the soul is frequently updating to whatever the brain has, as if prioritizing being up-to-date to completeness. Notably, brain death tends to fuck with this, lo and behold- this is compensated for, but expect to forget the very last moments- the fade to black and whatnot.
Though, if it... Takes you a while... You're sure to remember the leadup...
Second, souls do seem to contain a personality template. Within it is a series of criteria that seem to form the basis of the being's postcorporeal form if passing on to an afterlife or Ghost state. These include basic but extensive information of their brain structure that can be translated easily between several analogues, core ideals, their favorite things, what their ideal body looks like- notably for Ghosts this is inevitably reflective of their often weathered mental state, hence why they look the way they do- so on and so forth. If someone died, and you made a new body for their soul that followed this to the letter, and just sent them out like that, there'd only be the potential of messy memories between them and just never realizing that they died. You'd have all their friends fooled otherwise. That's always a fun one...
But simply put it's believed that the gods of the respective pockets of afterlife just "scan" these to create local bodies in which to put souls that have passed on, while souls that don't pass on make efforts- usually with assistance- to either retake their body or generate a new one out of the metamaterial sheath. Indeed, you gotta be careful when draining someone that you take their soul with it, or they might just get back up. Always awkward. Like leaving leftovers at a fancy dinner party- make sure you clean that plate, even if the soul is a less nourishing morsel than all the blood in the person you took it from- dense, but not as much overall admittedly.
Wow I'm hungry...
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