Soul

A **soul**is a metaphysical component of a living being. The behavior of the soul and characters' interactions with them is a recurring motif within the Shaperaverse.

## Appearances

### The Dolls of New Albion

*The Dolls of New Albion* centers on the McAlistair family; their matriarch, Annabel, invented a means of retrieving a deceased person's soul and placing into a mechanical mannequin vessel known as a Doll. Her son, Edgar, comes across her discarded notes and turns the production of Dolls into a lucrative business. His son, Byron, is a member of the Voodoopunk counterculture/religion/political movement. His daughter Priscilla, as well as Jasper, her great-grandfather and the family's Doll (additionally, the first Doll ever made) are the reincarnations of the Monk (Brija) and the Gambler (Jesse) mentioned at the beginning of the first and last acts. Moreover, Jasper has a recurring motif involving his desire to return to the afterlife, Elysium.

### The New Albion Guide to Analogue Consciousness

*The New Albion Guide to Analogue Consciousness* heavily features a theme of reincarnation in the second half of the album. The protagonist, Rachael, travels to Elysium to rescue a group of 100 pilgrims stranded there. The pilgrims are given 2 options for escape: either die going through the portal Rachael came through, and be reincarnated in the process (69 pilgrims did this) or be turned into an AI and uploaded to a server back in New Albion (30 pilgrims did this). Lee Morgan, the last pilgrim, is killed before he can be made into an AI (Paul also confirmed outside of the album that deaths in Elysium such as Lee's result in the destruction of a soul, and therefore the loss of a soul's ability to reincarnate). Other reincarnation connections are made: The Elysian angels responsible for Lee's death, unbeknownst to Rachael, tell Rachael (and the audience of the album at large, if the listener reverses the audio of the track *The Creatures Speak*) that Adrian never reincarnated into Rachael, but rather Connor. When Rachael is able to understand them, the angels explain that she is the reincarnation of Priscilla (from *Dolls*) and Constance O'Brien (from the previous album, *The New Albion Radio Hour*), and that the soul continually is accepted into Elysium, but every time, chooses to keep reincarnating to try and save people. This sets a precedent of souls reincarnating for a purpose. Since the Conflict Soul, the primary target of the Savior Soul's saviour goals, no longer exists since Lee is dead, Rachael chooses not to reincarnate. Paul has stated outside of the album that she will therefore remain in Elysium until she ascends to a higher plane. Additionally, Lee's father, Connor, sent Rachael to Elysium under the impression that she was the reincarnation of Lee's boyfriend, Adrian. The reasoning behind this was that Rachael was able to hear a broadcast Lee was sending from Elysium, which was thought to be only audible to the reincarnation of his lover. This is *technically* true: Lee and Rachael *were* lovers in a past life, when Rachael was Constance and Lee was her boyfriend Thomas. Incidentally, a number of reincarnation lines were revealed through this album and discussions Paul has had on them. They are as follows:

* Adrian becomes Connor (this is another reincarnation with a purpose: Adrian's soul reincarnates into Connor in an attempt to save Lee from Elysium by preventing him from going in the first place). This reincarnation line is referred to as the Elysium Soul.
* Priscilla becomes Constance, Constance becomes Rachael. (This reincarnation line is known as the Savior Soul.)
* Saul (better known as Soldier 7285) becomes Thomas, Thomas becomes Lee. (This is the Conflict Soul line, and with Lee's death in Elysium comes the destruction of the soul, so this line no longer exists.)
* Annabel became John O'Brien, John became the Mascot 3000. (This line is called the Companion Soul, and in the majority of circumstances it's tied in some way to helping the Saviour Soul achieve its goals.)

### The Room Beneath New Albion

In *The Room Beneath New Albion**,* there are no direct ties to souls. However, the two leads, Alice and Alexander, are confirmed to be part of the Savior and Companion Soul lines, respectively. Alice precedes Brija in the Savior Soul line and Alexander precedes Annabel in the Companion Soul line. Additionally, a reason is given for Alexander reincarnating into Annabel: The soul reincarnated into Annabel as a result of Alexander's admiration for Alice's dedication to her years-long task of building the Room. This information makes the Companion Soul the second reincarnation line (after the Elysium Soul) whose components reincarnate into people who predate their existence, and the third (after the Elysium Soul and Saviour Soul) to reincarnate for a purpose (though in the case of the Saviour Soul, the reincarnation was intentional).

### Uncle Raven's Storytime Theatre: Never Never Land

In *Uncle Raven's Storytime Theatre: Never Never Land**,* Raven tells the story of a pair of lovers who reincarnate and fall in love every life, but always die at a young age, with their deaths always involving a ragged old man. When the lovers catch onto this, they try to find out why, and the ragged old man catches up to them, revealing that they made a wish to always be together and never grow up, because in every one of their past lives, they died together and their relationship would be soiled by the time they're adults. Raven frames this story as a production put on by the August Sky Playhouse, and Paul has confirmed outside of the album that this reincarnation sequence, as a plot device employed by the Playhouse, is a manufactured reincarnation for the sake of the production as opposed to an authentic reincarnation like the ones that have been seen before.

### The Broken Cyborg

In *The Broken Cyborg**,* the protagonists make their way to the land of the Albino Tribe. The queen of the Albinos, Lilith, gives the protagonists a lesson in Albino history: in short, there was a goddess who died, and when she died, her remains became the souls of the Albino tribe, which attests that once all of its members are born and have died, their souls will ascend to a higher plane of existence and coalesce to reform the goddess. (This serves as confirmation for what happens to souls that are accepted into Elysium. Paul had confirmed prior to the album's release that souls don't stay in Elysium forever, and ascend to a higher plane of existence after long enough; this album simply reveals that souls that ascend combine to form gods, who are made out of millions of souls.) The protagonists later visit the faeries, who recount their species' origin: a god, the lover of the Albinos' goddess, came across a pregnant human woman, whose unborn daughter was on the verge of death, and he imbued the fetus with magic, thus saving the child and creating the fairy species in the process.

### The Lost Fairy

In *The Lost Fairy,* the Dwarves also provide their backstory and information on the gods: essentially, the gods are the conglomerations of millions of souls, but an event known as the Chaostrophe killed most of them off. One god killed himself and his remains became the Dwarves. The Dwarves exist to speed the process of evolution and create posthumans to replace the dead gods. Perhaps the more important tie to the soul found in this album is the revelation that Jane is the reincarnation of Helen, a protagonist from the previous trilogy of albums.

### The Fallen

In The Fallen, Raven is working on a worldbuilding project; that is, he's literally creating a world, painting it into existence. His paint is literally the souls of people, whose colors he can see (such as angels and saints, whose souls are Byzantine blue in color), and uses the Carnival to siphon them.

### Fairy Tale for Homeless Faeries

Fairy Tales for Homeless Faeries has a short story about a fairy named Kelli, whose lover dies but reincarnates as the Grimehouse in which she resides.

### Janissary, A Balkan Rock Opera

In *Janissary*, the protagonist, Brija, has the ability to see and speak with the ghosts of saints. Her mother Danijela is one such saint. Brija's father, Bogdan, also has a few brief interactions with spirits. Towards the beginning of the album, he goes to the graveyard where his ancestors are buried to ask them for advice and directions to the camp of the hajduci. Towards the end of the album, when he's on the path to the Vizier's palace, he sees ghosts who remind him of his shortcomings, and the ghost of Danijela in particular tells him he ain't shit. He also tries to drink himself to death in the beginning, so that's a third spirit interaction.

## Trivia

* Humans are not the only things with souls in the Shaperaverse. It has been stated that Sam the Mouse could have reincarnated, Raven wants the Angel specifically for her soul, and the situation of the Grimehouse shows that at least fairies can reincarnate into inanimate objects, which proves that both nonhuman species' and even inanimate objects have souls.