Souls

The soul, or hoku, is the essence of a sentient creature such as a piglin, enderman, iring, or human. It is believed to be what powers the body and what moves on after the body's life ends. Traditionally, a sentient soul is divided into two parts: the hokudija and the hokutaw. These two halves are believed to maintain the balance required to function as a sentient being.

## The Duality of Hoku

The two parts of the soul are what keep the internal balance of a person's psyche stable throughout their lives. In order to remain healthy spiritually, mentally, and physically, one must maintain the balance of their hoku.

### Hokudija

The hokudija is the sentient part of the soul. It is the emotions, thoughts, and memory of a sentient creature, and it takes the form of a spectral dragon when isolated from its material body. Hokudijau are the homes of the sentemau of those who die, meaning their spectral forms are the eternal home of the consciousness of their originator. To put it simply, hokudijau are similar to ghosts.

Its color depends on the morality of its host—light blue is a good soul, brown is a bad soul. Most hokudijau are some sort of mix of the two colors. A hokudija's size is usually four to eight feet from tail to shoulder.

### Hokutaw

The hokutaw is the 'physical' part of the soul. It is usually depicted as a spectral skeleton of the hoku's host. The hokutaw is not sentient like the hokudija. The hokutaw is present in all living things, sentient or not. It is the natural instincts and inclinations of a creature. It is its strength and its mortality. The hokutaw, unlike the hokudija, waxes and wanes with the age of its host. It is weaker when its host is very young or very old, becoming stronger in the middle of its life. Most illnesses target the hokutaw, weakening the host's life force.

The hokutaw is left behind when a creature dies, hovering above the body for around five seconds before dissipating, dissolving back into the universe to be used in another way while the hokudija ascends. The hokutaw is invisible to all but those trained in conids-hokutawu—soul eating.

## Legends of Hoku

### Oconidu-Hokutawu - Soul Eaters

In ancient cultures such as the covecku and mucaigeinu, it was believed that capturing and consuming the hokutaw of the recently deceased would increase the one's lifespan. While covecku believed this to apply to any creature, the mucaigeinu believed it only applied to sentient races. It is unknown how the covecku went about capturing hokutawu, but uncovered records of the Gegetin empire have revealed the piglins' way of doing so.

The mucaigeinu practiced *conid-ciid*, which was a way of capturing a creature's hokutaw using the dense soil found in the Nether known as baciid-hoku, or soul soil. This practice involved sacrificing piglins on beds of baciid-hoku, which would then absorb the hokutaw. Baciid-hoku that had absorbed a hokutaw became ciid-hoku, soul sand, and was then consumed by the piglins looking to lengthen their lifespans. It could take up to fifty hokutawu-mucaigeinu to properly prepare one bed of ciid-hoku, meaning it was an incredibly expensive and deadly task. Only a very rich few managed to afford the process, but there are some records of large cults hosting regular ceremonies in secret.

As most creatures besides piglins are unable to digest ciid-hoku, modern scholars believe another way to participate in conids-hokutawu is to build a campfire of soul sand, cook one piece of pork on it, eat it, and then destroy the fire directly after. Soul soil should not be used in creating the fire—only soul sand. This is believed to infuse the pork with the mucaigeinu souls within the sand. Breaking the fire reveals the empty soul soil that is left behind and breaks the cycle. Cooking more than one piece of pork on the campfire is considered greedy and is bad luck, and leaving a ceremonial campfire lit after the pork has been consumed is believed to actually shorten one's lifespan instead of lengthen it. The regular consumption of souls can lead to addiction in certain races.

Chorceus is considered the patron god of soul-eating because of his ability to consume the souls of weakened gods, as he did with Kehana. It is unknown if he was the first ever mucaigein to consume a hokutaw.

### Juun-Hokutawu - Soul Revival

The practice of obtaining and relocating a soul is a difficult one, as both halves of the soul must be obtained as well as a body. Juun-Hokutawu is one of the very few recorded and confirmed forms of necromancy, though it is still incredibly dangerous and unreliable. The process is believed to have been first invented by a mucaigein Npua, an advisor of Chorceus when he was king of the Gegetin empire.

Unlike soul eating, juun-hokutawu is a practice that requires extensive training and preparation. The sentient creature that is to orchestrate the revival must starve themself for three days, consuming nothing but non-nutritious fluids. At the dawn of the fourth day, the individual is to be placed in The Womb, a structure built specifically for the ritual.