Souls

**Souls**
"**The soul is the Divine essence of all living creatures. It is an aetheric field that flows through the body, interacting with every cell and affecting the operation of all parts, particularly the brain. Psionic beings operate on souls, either using them as guidance or hijacking them to accomplish means beyond the capacity of ordinary people. Souls allow the person to be retained, and those without souls suffer greatly for it...*

Recent discoveries have shed light on the principles which underlie the soul's effect on the body and the ailments which the Soulless suffer. Souls are directly linked with genetic materials which guide the growth, replenishment, and healing of the body. Thus, the soulless decay faster and die more swiftly; similarly, those whose souls are altered by overexposure to the aether gain mutations and defects in their bodies.

The soul also has become known to affect the other primary aetheric action of the body, that is: the brain. Souls play a key role in memory formation, personality, and resisting trauma. The Soulless seem often to be stripped of personality and willpower; though because of their ailment, psionics cannot operate on them meaningfully..."*
 — Encyclopedia Imperia, Addendum from the Expedition to Naga Space
**Souls** are a manifestation of etheric energy.

## Soullessness

People without souls are sometimes referred to as "psychic blanks" and are completely immune to psionic powers that target the mind.

Two soulless parents always have soulless children. There is something in the regularity of a soul that prompts the new soul to form in-utero. One soulless parent will have a higher probability of a soulless child, but it is not a guarantee. Soulless mothers have a very high rate of miscarriage, possibly related to the role of the soul in metabolic regulation.

## Lifecycle

Souls appear not just to "dissolve" on death but to be transported to Godsrealm. Gods cannot usually control the souls of their worshipers (their powers are too subtle under most circumstances), but somehow souls "know" where to go after death.

## Properties

### Etheric Properties

Souls are a very special class of etheric regularity. They seem capable of limited intent on their own (similar to demons), but shine in organizing other processes, whether life or computation.

### Bodily Function

While souls are not a requirement for intelligence, they appear to be important in regulating experiences, as soulless individuals slowly experience an accumulation of madness/insanity. There additionally appears to be a physiological regulation to souls, as the soulless also experience cancer and related conditions at a much higher rate. The mechanism for this appears to be that the soul stores the state of the mind and key metabolic processes, mapping onto the body and interacting with organic functions to enact gradual change.

Souls also seem useful in contextualizing perception. This is why the soulless are not affected by the Mind Virus. This also has the troubling implication that Veer's world was truly a different reality, since it reportedly affected the soulless beings Hrymn and Garrel.

Soulless children, regardless of parentage, have a high rate of birth defects, but are in themselves exceedingly rare (1 birth per ten thousand in humans), on the level of psionics. Some interesting species variations exist in soullessness. No soulless dwarves have ever been observed, while among the Great Races, soullessness is about equally likely in orcs and men but less common in elves by an order of magnitude, again matching the lower rate of psionic ability in elves. This correlation suggests that psionics and soulessness might somehow be symmetric.

There are unconfirmed cases of individuals that produce their own etheric null space. Such beings could be pure myth, but tales from the latter days of the Mage Imperium include some notable examples.

### Psionic Interaction

Psionics manifest their powers through etherics. They sense some etheric phenomena, especially other souls, leading to the theory that dwarves might be a race of universal hyper-specialized psionics. Their powers are known to be dampened or strangely affected in etheric null space. Likewise, they seem to perform telepathy and other psionics affecting the minds of others via interaction among souls, which explains why the soulless are immune to this type of psionics.

### Divine Function

Gods are known to actively consume soul energy. In ancient days, gods who lost their worshipers were known to slowly reduce in form, power and sanity until becoming craven, shriveled Elder things that hide away in the corners of reality. For example, this is what happened to the creator of the Skinchangers. It is unclear whether gods need souls to feed themselves or to regulate themselves, or both. As gods do not just consume the ether, the unique properties of a soul appear important.

Souls certainly seem to be support Selene H. Veer's Universal Refuge Theory. That is, they are either a symptom or an integral part of the rules of the universe that allow decay and causation. Thus, they permit Zulkir and once permitted the other Elder Gods to survive.

Interestingly, the soulless are not immune to demonic possession but are immune to angelic control. Specifically, an etheric force mechanically similar to a soul can enter them and latch onto their bodily processes, like cellular replication. However, it cannot act on them through the medium of a soul. There is strong evidence that souls are uniquely attuned to their bodies, which explains why many demons seem to fail to possess the soulless, despite the potential for doing so. This indicates that possession is either inhabitance of a body or parasitism of a soul. Demons affect the ensouled through the latter mechanism, the soulless through the former.

## Ensouled Computing

While souls cannot inhabit most everyday objects, it is possible for them to take residence inside an etheric computer. This allows the soul to intelligently perform complex computations extremely quickly and far beyond the scope of any programmers.