History

Thousands of years ago, a meteor crashed into a savage land ruled by primitive warlords. From that meteor leaked soul essence, which gave people intense religious experiences and formed souls in developing newborns in the womb. Those born with souls were gifted with extraordinary strength, intellect and power, quickly rising to the top of the primitive lands. Souled people could give birth to both souled or unsouled. depending on how much essence their children were exposed to in the womb. When souled die, however, their souls remain in this world with a will of their own and can invade living things, including animals and other souled humans. This lead to conflict and war between factions, as soul invasion was a difficult thing to prevent. The strongest souls could begin new lives in other bodies easily, displacing weaker souls or taking over the bodies of unsouled, while weaker souls and unsouled revolted against their tyranny. The son of the first warlord who discovered the meteor is Gaio, who has the most powerful soul and lead the faction of the strong souls. The strongest soul to ally with the oppressed is Kan. After decades of war, in which Gaio and his henchmen souls cruelly invaded the opposing faction, essentially killing the hosts with no recourse, and in turn Kan torturing Gaio’s body whenever he invaded someone, they reached a truce. Gaio invaded Kan’s son, and Kan could not bring himself to torture or kill him, so they decided to work together to create a “clean slate” as much as possible.

As part of their agreement, Kan, Gaio and their closest allies worked together against all other souls, forbidding anyone to invade a human or create new souls. Gaio and Kan excavated the meteor and buried it in a place no one would ever find. Any soul outside of their faction that tried to invade a human would be tortured and persecuted forever. During this period of time, they noticed that extreme torture or anguish could break souls back into their essence and essentially end them. Kan and Gaio created a kingdom and forbade any soul to leave it under threat of being eliminated permanently, because otherwise neighboring kingdoms would go to war with them. Over time, weaker souls stopped being able to invade humans, and their essence leaked whenever they did not have a body, so they invaded animals. Some even invaded objects, land or rocks, imbuing them with strange properties.

Over time, the citizens of the Spiral Kingdom forgot about its true history and viewed the souls as “demons” who invaded animals and sometimes even people. The geography of the kingdom- which is marked by huge, spiral arms made of unpassable mountain ranges- made it easy to defend with only a single wall and gate. The neighboring kingdoms leave the Spiral alone but view them and the demons with great animosity. Internally, the many obstacles and difficult passages between zones of the spiral arms made it easy to govern and quench individual riots.

Over time, Gaio took over as king (invading his heirs), and Kan roamed the land hunting souls, even in animals, to make them progressively weaker and eventually disappear. Kan created the group of knights called the Royal Knights, who officially serve to act as the king’s envoys to the Counts along the spiral. Unofficially, they are the group of souled that aligned with Kan and Gaio. While the Royal Knights hunted down the souls, Gaio retreated ever more into his chambers to study and learn more about the meteor and the nature of souls, neglecting his kingdom. The further away from the center of the spiral, the less power the King exerts, and the more soul invasions happen. In the outer edges of the kingdom, which are closest to the neighboring kingdoms, lies the Dark Strip, where it’s a free-for-all. The lords of the Strip guard the kingdom as souled humans and are tolerated by Gaio for doing that service. The infighting and soul invasion in the Strip. helps guarantee that the kingdom’s subjects inside of the spiral never try to leave.