How do souls function in your settings?
How are they created?
Do they have something significant in them?
Do the souls go to some afterlife or there is something much more to it?
Post your souls.
Also may be something philosophical in it.
>>44127819
Tasty. Sort of tropical fruit flavoured, mixed with the sensation of pop rocks, what lime-yellow tastes like and a sudden expansion of mental perspective.
Good with pizza.
>>44127832
You are some soul-eating creature?
>>44127846
No. It's just what I imagine souls would taste like. If anyone manages to eat one in my setting, that's what they'll be told it tastes like. Sort of like divine Lilt mixed with a sudden epiphany.
Why, what do you think they taste like?
>>44127865
Completely tasteless and you may very well be electrocuted by them?
>>44127819
> How are they created?
Pretty much the result of combining two spiritual sources (aka when mom and dad are doing their job). At this point the soul is already there, but is too weak to function and is non-sentient. Only after the baby grows the proper organs and they go active, it is then when the soul starts becoming what it is.
Souls are not a concept in my setting, except for the few gods, who are just, well, souls. Characters with their own quirks and personalities, who re-incarnate in an infants body when they die.
>>44127916
Interesting.
Would you expand on why these gods have this concept?
>>44127874
Spiritual electricity souls? Neat.
Anyway, some more fluff in a headfluff setting I'm slowly piecing together.
Souls are non-analogue. Worms have some diffuse soul-stuff, mice have a large clump, building up in intelligence until you get what are considered 'actual' souls in sapients. Magic users have particularly large amounts of soul-stuff. True souls is basically any amount that can sustain itself separated from the mind and body without magical assistance. It's not just civilised races which have them, some animals have them. Pigs for instance, though they're still smaller than the civilised races.
Souls are the 'self'. They're coloured by memories which exist in the mind, but are separate. It's only when both a mind and soul are together you get a person. Minds alone are just data. Memories. Souls are the 'software' that uses that data. Bodies influence memories but aren't required for a person to exist. In theory anyway, the soul and mind have to be somewhere to connect and *be* and so whatever they are in is effectively their body.
>>44127978
Well, they're the supernatural pantheon. Every culture believes in them, more or less. What they do is that they're just stuck in an endless circle of re-incarnation into various bodies. Luckily, they don't remember it.. The incarnated 'gods' are just superhuman. Musclebound, or dexterous, or intelligent.
But they're avatars of the gods, and are very well treated by most races and most people over all.
Souls are composed of spiritual aspects that are developed throughout the human's life. A Human can corrupt their soul, instilling aspects that don't develop naturally.Humans, and by extension their souls, were created to perpetually replenish the spirits of existence by feeding greater spirits after death, to prevent entropy.
You, and your soul, is nothing but spirit food to prevent the heat death of the universe.
>>44128002
Nice.
>>44128061
I'm getting an Exalted vibe, minus the Wyld Hunt and people calling you anathema.
>>44128064
Now that's grimdark.
>>44128002
>pic
l-lewd
also spoiler alert, dammit
What do you guys think about souls that are connected to various organs (as in those that are THE most vital in order for a living being to function properly)?
>>44128101
>I'm getting an Exalted vibe
Never at all played it. But yeah, godlike powers given to the average infant at the time of the former avatars' death. They're relatively rare, since
1. Most people never figure that stuff out in the first place.
2. Say you're reborn as a god of war. Like, a really Herculean fellow. You take this to heart, and assemble your friends to fight. You easily burn that one vilalge next to you. Rumors of your prowess spread like wildfire. A dude decided that the world doesn't need a god of war. You get your throat slit.. You are reborn. As a toddler of course, three months old. When you turn five, you die through starvation. You are reborn. You are left to the wildlife because you're a girl. You are reborn again.. Etc.
>>44128208
Man, that must suck. Good thing you gave them the thing that they forget their previous life when they get reborn.
The gods are a limited resource requiring new heroes to step forth and ascend.
"Souls" are literal pieces ripped from the gods body and planted into children some time during early childhood.
They don't actually do much but give you the chance to be something more than average hence why all heroes have souls and can bestow souls as gods.
You also give up some of your soul to your children if you have one so heroes can birth heroes etc.
the idea actually came to me during thoughts on reincarnation. You're evil you end up a bug you're good you end up something higher up on the food chain etc. but if you check it insect AND human population have exploded recently (past 100 years or so) so where did the extra numbers come from if souls are recycled and theres a set limit? Sadly this would mean that in our setting (reality) god would be dead and the vast majority soulless and i depressio'd myself a bit.
Afterlife is a realm created by the god but it requires giving a piece of himself permanently (or as long as they wish to keep it their realm). Worshippers souls go there upon death or if lacking a place to call afterlife end up going to the god in question to replenish his lost bits. Godless peoples souls go to the "foundation" of the gods realm. If the foundation stops being replenished the god realm's boundaries shrink reducing the amount of gods that can exist and the gods overall power.
Reincarnation happens when souls go back to the god and get mixed back into the whole then spat back out as a shred of the god given to a child only to go back etc.
Following the thread: good souls are fruity and sweet bad souls are meaty and a little bit salty(get it?) this shoud land most smack dab in the honey drizzled primerib roast category of taste.
>>44128243
I actually like salty and meaty.
>>44128225
>Michael was a completely normal dude, untill once while herding sleep, he accidentally whistled a spell, effectively summon a lovecraftian monstrosity that roams the hills in the now-abandoned wastes to this day
>>44128303
Everybody does, even vegans. never said salty and meaty were bad. Just the people who's souls taste that way. Great, now i gotta make a soul farm full of people stabbing orphans or something to cater to discerning gods.
>>44128316
>Michael is head of a global conglomerate that free range raises its homegrown sleep
>Sleepy Pastures caters to narcoleptics, anxiously inclined, and hardworkers who need naps.
>>44128338
Don't make me hungry dude.
>>44128408
I'm making an herb encrusted prime rib roast. I gotta wait 5 hours smelling it. I refuse to suffer the hunger alone.
In the lower planes, fiends trade souls in the form of soul larvae, which are basically wriggling Chipotle burritos.
>>44128446
LET'S DO IT THEN
>>44128457
That would explain all the plagues chipotles been serving up recently.
>>44128457
> Burrito Souls
Darn.
>>44128629
Never ever.
>>44128742
Good, because not only would it be hard, but also would make you hungry after each death.
>>44128132
Wait, what?
Ars Magica has the soul and the spirit as two separate things. The soul was inviolate, unique to humanity (and maybe angels, it was deliberately vague), whereas the spirit was the stuff that wandered and could be affected by magic and the natural world.
>>44128208
>You are reborn. You are left to the wildlife because you're a girl. You are reborn again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRgHt4mxTPU
>>44127819
There are only so many souls. 300 million.
Certain traits are passed on with the soul, most importantly magical power. Magical power varies at the creation of the soul, but can be passively and actively collected.
The more power, the stronger the soul and thus individual.
The reincarnation cycle is where that gathering of power comes into play.
There are two cities. One is the 'overworld,' that everyone knows about, the other is the 'underworld,' which is hidden and more in touch with the world's magic and technology. Each have a bit more than 50 million souls.
Those remaining are the monsters, spirits, creatures, et. al. in the dungeons and roaming the rest of the world.
The reincarnation cycle takes a soul from the overworld, to a monster, to the underworld, to a monster again, then back to the overworld. Stronger souls mean stronger individuals, which applies to monsters as well.
Original Sin is a monstrosity who's threat comes from an artifact at the core of it's being with the power to capture souls: a flawless, hollow glass sphere.Recreatable, once discovered.
>>44127819
>How do souls function in your settings?
Souls and magic are one and the same thing, and magic is a generally limitless and omnipresent force. Using magic generally involves some manner of "awakening" a soul so it may consciously utilize some amount of this power. Things like gods tend to just be more powerful ones, or rather ones who are more skilled and knowledgeable about magic and how to use it.
>How are they created?
Souls tend to be masses of magic which have had some level of personality imprinted upon them, though they have no clear point of origin. Unanchored magic doesn't necessarily follow the normal flow of time, and souls split and merge all the time. Hundreds of people could be the partial "reincarnation" of a half-dozen people who died a millenium into the future.
>Do they have something significant in them?
Anything could be in there. Anything at all.
>Do the souls go to some afterlife or there is something much more to it?
Souls regularly split off from and are reabsorbed into the background magic that runs throughout everything, and everything within them ends up being diluted throughout the whole mass. Exceptions are when the personality is strong enough to maintain cohesion after death, usually in the case of a spellcaster, or when one has a more powerful entity as a patron. There are also plenty of soul predators around, which is another major reason people tend to get gods. Gods will generally protect what they see as theirs.
I kind of like what Dark Souls did, where souls are mostly just a source of power rather than the usual "your mind and personality which usually inhabits but exists separately from your body"
>>44127819
Soul is something sapient mortal creatures gain upon conception. Aside from forming core of their personality it is a component of themselves that transcends mortal coil and gives them access to magic and planar travel.
Some religions claim that soul is a divine gift, while others say it is a shard of divine proper. The former usually strive to or believe to be reunited with their divine patron while the latter hope to transcend themselves - either towards some unknown higher spheres or through rebirth as a better individual.
It's very difficult or outright impossible to alter or otherwise influence it directly - it is however possible to affect the sapient's mortal shell for more or less equivalent results.
It is possible for a soul to be separated from its material shell and not go to wherever it is supposed to go after death - some argue that this is how planar or even temporal travel can be accomplished, and some say it can happen while (instead of) dreaming. It is also possible for a soul to get lost among the planes. If the soul belonged to an experienced traveller, it can return to mortal world with a reformed shell, if it belonged to an inexperienced mortal it can in theory wander on forever until it gets reconnected randomly - or move on to whatever afterlife there is.
>>44127819
When a living being dies, its soul lingers by its former body for seven hours. After such time, it no longer recognizes its form, and transcends reality and travels to the misty border to the Outer Realm, a place of dreams where symbols are reality and thoughts create matter. It spends seven days traversing the Outer Realm until it reaches the Great Beyond, a place equidistant from everywhere in that realm that only souls (or very powerful magic) can reach.
The soul spends seven years traversing the Great Beyond's luminous outer border, then spends seven centuries within the Great Beyond before reincarnating. No souls have ever been witnessed leaving it (they appear as a wisp of blue flame in the Outer Realm), and no astral traveler who has dared to enter the Great Beyond has ever returned either; thus the Great Beyond's name, and why the truth of that place is still a mystery to even the greatest scholars and oldest centers of knowledge.
The only reason any of this is known is because sometimes the soul remembers what the physical brain doesn't. Entheogen-aided ascetic meditation can reveal memories of past lives, but they are always vague and incomplete.
>>44127819
Souls call down mana from "The Source." Mana is used to cast spells. Not all souls are created equal, theoretically bacteria could have souls but only if those bacteria use magic. A living thing does not need to have a soul but all things that use magic need a soul. All higher lifeforms have a soul, as do most animals and any plant that is magical in nature.
Souls can be made artificially, in fact high magical societies make souls, bind them to machinery and have them call down mana. These souls are extremely simple so they do not mind their existence. Others can be programmed to cast spells, the most complex of which become operating systems for Grimoires, spellcasting computers, and the motivating force of golems, some of which are utterly indistinguishable from humans.
the afterlife is populated by various gods but these gods are not real in the sense that they can effect the physical world. They are however real in the sense that they have power proportionate to the amount of worship the receive in the afterlife. Souls spend time in the afterlife, slowly being stripped of their memory until they are reborn.
artificial souls go to a limbo where they lose their memories until they are recycled by manufacturers of various magical devices. Theoretically they could dvelop their own afterlife but one has not emerged yet, if retrieved quickly enough they may suffer no damage to their memories.
>>44127819
Life was created by gods, because they needed pawns to fight their wars against other gods.
So they took the smallest possible unit of spiritual power from their own being, known as a Mote, and formed a vessel around it from the matter that had resulted when the four prime elements had been mixed (Which would later result in Creation being born). This was the first sapient being, an elf, named One.
Each of the gods was made up of millions of these Motes, so they weren't really in danger of running out, and they could remotely reclaim their own Motes at will, so the slave races were nothing but puppets.
A god named Shemhazai ruined this when during his travels, he happened upon the Face of God, a shattered remnant of an elder being, drifting in the astral currents which were mostly empty at the time, and realised that the elder gods were nothing but a slave race in and of themselves. Resolving to break this cycle, he appeared before One, and gave of his own essence to corrupt the Mote that made up One's soul, that it might recognise itself as One's own soul, and so he could no longer be erased at his creator's whim
His theory proven true, Shemhazai and One together engineered a grand betrayal, and used the Face of God to shatter and seal away all his brothers and sisters, followed by sacrificing himself, spilling oceans of his own blood upon the nascent creation, and forever corrupting it, granting every creature Free Will.
The Motes which had been stripped from the elder gods became a swirling maelstrom of spiritual energy within the astral sea, which then became known as the Soulsea. Whenever a creature dies, it's soul, or Mote, returns to this sea, and the psychic imprint of the being slowly fades so that the Mote can be recycled back into Creation.
>>44127819
Souls are something given to all intelligent beings. It is basically their brain and consciousness backed up on a "spiritual server". little do the people now, when they die true deaths, they're souls are merely taken and used to reseed another universe.
>>44132395
Kind of nice to see a Lucifer expy who is justified for once.
Souls are an emergent property of an incorporeal machine-entity's matter tracking system which it uses to locate resources, produced when the system interacts through constructs of a certain complexity, usually large brains but not limited to just brains. As the entity draws nearer the signal becomes stronger and souls become more powerful, leading to the rise of heroes. Eventually, around the time most champions of renown have ascended to divinity through sheer willpower, the entity will arrive and convert everything to raw materials and move on, gods and all.
>>44128629
>Dorito Souls powered by Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel(tm)
>you must ascend the throne of Dorito Pope and link the Dew
>>44139103
Aww shit. Miyazaki's going fucking deep.
Your soul isn't a separate part of you, it can just survive.
You are made up of several interconnected layers, from the base outwards:
>Animus, your actual vital force, your elemental energy, this spread right through everything
>Soul, raw elemental base of your body
>Persona, your consciousness, the You, this is enmeshed between the Soul and Body
>Body, your physical body
Upon death, the soul, the last part of you, rips from your body at takes a fraction of your persona - a different amount for everybody, then the soul gravitates towards the Wake, the big trail of empty space in the sky. This is why ghosts, those souls who come back down or don't go to the Wake, are so weird and mentally fragmented, they only have an actual bit of their original selves.
Your soul is kind of like an elemental. All life is essentially an elemental, even what we cal gods are just old ass elementals, but some are more physical, like humans. Upon death they can be said to break down into a more raw elemental form.
