Multiple souls

[Samiel]

If I were to stick with my "souls = essence filters" theory, I guess I'd justify that by saying that the body is the essence accumulator, the lower soul is what manages essence to animate the body and keep you alive, and the higher soul is the seat of reasoning and how one spends essence consciously or through direct effort (i.e., Prayer).


However, you can live (with no small discomfort) without a lower soul, but it takes away your vigour, so we might assume that the higher soul can perform the autonomic functions as well, when there's no lower soul to do so. Just not as well.


Without the body to accumulate essence, the Po seeks essence from other living bodies, killing them by instinct and drinking their essence through their blood or flesh. When in the underworld, it does the same to higher souls to harvest essence for itself. However, it cannot consciously use this essence, simply animating itself thereby. This fits the role of a "disposable" soul designed only to animate, whereas the higher soul is permanent by design and can consciously apply the essence outside itself.

 

[cyl]

Yeah !


Maybe the Primordials did not care one bit if the lower soul (incapable of active channeling essence -> praying -> being of some use to the Prims) would rise once more and haunt the living, so long as the most important part, the higher soul (capable of channeling essence -> able to pray -> useful part of the human soul) returned to the cycle of reincarnation and was reborned to another being who would then pray and pray again.


Maybe humans work the same way the autochtonians work (a soul linked to a body), with small differences, they are savage and wild creatures by nature, but when they are born they are graced with a soul that allows them to make great things, channeling and using essence... and pray ^^


Maybe birth itself  is some kind of an exaltation to a mortal, and that's why exaltation is called second breath... the first one being the moment when the higher soul joins with the lower one at birth.

 

[Persell]

Just on a side thought...where do new souls come from? Obviously populations tend to grow exponentially, so I'd say at the height of population, right before the Contagion, there were way more mortals than originally created. So where did the new souls come from? Does some process create them? or after the Primordial War was Creation stuck with a population cap like the Age of Empires games? (I hated that part)


How you define what the soul is/does makes the answer really different. If the Hun is basically an Essence Battery, does that make souls some sort of living artifact? If thats the case, why does Autochthon need to send Alchemical Exalts to get souls and not just raw materials (I may be totally wrong here...never got the Alchemical book)? If an artifact soul could be created, could it power a person just like a real soul?


Just random thoughts....

 

[Samiel]

Cyl: It was stated in one book or another that yes, in Exalted the human soul literally enters the body as a newborn takes its first breath. One might imagine scenarios where that fails, and you end up with psychotic Po-Only people.. which is an interesting thought in itself.


Cap: It's implied that souls are recycled, so there may indeed be a limit to the total number. Whether that limit was ever reached is anyone's guess, but oblivion and soulsteel manufacture are taking their tolls slowly I expect.


Autocthon could probably make new souls with minimal effort, but he's asleep; he never asked the Alchies to bring souls, or he'd have possibly asked for raw materials instead. He simply feeds on souls and MMs, and so they bring the two to him.


Souls are stored and recycled in the Ewer of Souls, we presume. The Ewer was supposed to be on top of the Imperial Mountain according to the ancient Autocthonian scriptures, I think, but according to later publications there's an Immaculate Club Med on the pinnacle of the mountain. i had figured before that that the mountain was pretty much insurmountable/infinitely high.

 

[Persell]

Ah, well. Like I said I've never read the Alchemical book, so I didn't know why Autochthon needed the souls. Where did you get the info about the Imperial Mountain by the way?

 

[cyl]

Just on a side thought...where do new souls come from?

There are no new souls... that's the whole point... first age Creation (before the Primordial Wars AND the Contagion) was much more populated and wide than the actual one... so there must be a huge amount of souls waiting to be reborn.
In Autochtonia, people are born, but they have indeed a soul population cap... a mortal is not complete until a soulgem is plugged into his head.


That gem contains the soul of a follower of the Great Maker who chosed to go with him in his exile... but... you may notice this... the soul had to be contained in a gem not to return to Creation/be lost.


And souls are actually a material, just like essences are Autochton himself states at the end of a campaign that -talking about the malfeans if an abyssal is present during his awakening- "they have acquired new materials".


Auto needs more population to continue to live, because he's actually dying.


Souls are not living artifacts... they are power, and that power can be used in different ways, praying and being alloyed with metals to create soulsteel for example.


When a human is born, his higher soul joins with his lower (linked to his body) and gives him intelligence, reason, and the ability to pray... it powers him in this way.

 

[Jukashi]

It's possible, considering that humans are partially based on Mountain Folk, that some process in Creation generates human souls from the Wyld. That would explain why Auto couldn't set up some sort of auto-buffet system for himself; he repels the Wyld, so he needs ready-made souls to come to him.

 

[Persell]

Just on a side thought...where do new souls come from?

There are no new souls... that's the whole point... first age Creation (before the Primordial Wars AND the Contagion) was much more populated and wide than the actual one... so there must be a huge amount of souls waiting to be reborn.

Yes, this is true, but what about at the height of the First Age, when the Exalted had pushed Creation's borders much further into the wyld that they were originally? I imagine the mortal population swelled to fill the new lands, so where did those souls come from? Were they in a vault somewhere just in case they were needed?

 

[Samiel]

Actually to clarify on the Autocthonian Soul-system, Souls not contained in a soulgem are re-absorbed by Autocthon's own "Lethe" as they might be in creation, and are returned to the Radiant Amphora where they are then given to a newborn by Autocthon once more.


In other words, Soulgems are not required at all as Autocthon had quite enough foresight to see to it that his Humans reincarnated without fault. However, almost nobody in Autocthonia knows this; it's the Luminor's greatest conspiracy, as it allows them to keep a monopoly on Soul-tagging and monitoring, and gives them great prestige. Only the highest-ranking Luminors know this.. you'll need an orichalchum badge and a few dots of backing to justify the knowledge.


However, souls taken from Creation likely do not naturally resonate with the Amphora, and would have to be directly transferred through a soulgem. In fact, the Autocthonian campaign covers this directly; the Alchies experiment with implanting soulgems in Creation-born humans for a while, killing everyone they try it on until finally perfecting the process. That perfection allows them to permanently "attune" the souls to Autocthon.

 

[cyl]

imagine the mortal population swelled to fill the new lands, so where did those souls come from? Were they in a vault somewhere just in case they were needed?

According to what have been said about the Primordial wars, and especially its end, when She Who Lives in Her Name burnt most of Creation... I have a hard time imagining Creation getting wider than the one before the burn process... then the usurpation came, and few centuries after the Contagion took most of mortals lives.


But it may be that some gods are responsible for creating mortal souls, collecting dead souls, polishing them from their memories and sending back to a mortal at his birth... after all, that's what Lytek does with the exalts except he does not create essences... but somebody has once, and creating a mortal soul (which is gonna be a 90%chances extra's soul on top of that) would not be too complicated IMHO.

 

[Persell]

I don't know about She Who Lives in Her Name burning the world, but I do know that its mentioned that the Exalts pushed out the borders of Creation using Reality Engines, Sorcery and various charms like Neighborhood Relocation Scheme (or whatever the name of that Sidereal charm is). So I can definately see Creation getting bigger than it was originally during the time of the Solar Deliberative.

 

[cyl]

I don't know about She Who Lives in Her Name burning the world

Games of Divinity (p 87) and the flames... swept across all things. The things they did not burn are now Creation. The Things they turned to ash are beyond the memory and ken of the world and the gods... you liked the drama sentences in the bible ?! read exalted books
I also remember that it was stated somewhere that Rathess was once at the center of Creation (based on where it is now... so close to the Wyld, it's not hard to imagine how wide Creation was before), but I cannot find the source. Maybe Ruins of Rathess...

 

[Persell]

I think it actually says Rathess was the center of learning, not the actual world. The Blessed Isle and the Pole of Earth have always been the center.