Soulbound

Soulbound is a book uncovered through use of Study-related Inquiries.

## History

After his conversation with the Brass Dragon Avoles, Ódóvir, dealing with the claim that he was lacking in a *Soul* - or rather, once possessed one before it was rendered in such a way that the body, or *Soma* could live on unaware of its loss.

To his likely disappointment however, the topic proved too niche, or otherwise unknown to literary texts given the degree of rarity to which the information pertained. Nonetheless, he managed to find a tome covering the relationship of the soul to all matter of ideas and occurrences.

## Reading

### Completed by Ódóvir Jotunsson - Inquiry (Study)

More so than silver or gold, mithral or adamantine, or knowledge arcane, historical or philosophical, surely the greatest treasure, the greatest currency of sorts in the wider cosmos of lands mundane and wandering is that of a commodity that all living creatures with some semblance of sentience possess. Whereas a beggar might not have coin, or a simpleton lack in understanding, both possess this treasure, for it is what makes them innately them - their soul. Sometimes interchangeably used with the term "spirit" - although in truth this more usually pertains to lingering entities, such as the spirits of the forest worshipped freely through the Forests of the Forgotten Folk, or those stubborn entities refusing or unable to pass onto the next - souls ultimately are the essence of an individual, though find themselves divorced from the individual, over time coming to retain little of what they were in life. Such is the cause of the phenomenon by which methods to contact the departed fundamentally fail - although it is believed that souls come to reside elsewhere in the Wandering Worlds in most cases, and incantations such the *Sending* spell can bypass the Planes, such efforts yield naught - the soul, particularly once separated for a time, ceases to be the intended target, becoming something else entirely.

Therein lies the destiny and fate of near every soul in time, with the expiration of the body they are drawn through the muddled gloom to the light of the Beacon of Souls, at which the Holder of the Scales passes judgement, setting them on their path forwards still. Near all aspire to find their soul prompts the beacon to burn bright and true, wherein they will become motes of light, and in time perhaps hold rank amongst the Archons of Celestial. Those souls that falter the flame are instead cast freely to the Wandering Worlds of the Lower Planes, wherein they find themselves, more so than any place else, treated as treasures to be bartered and hoarded, the iron discs of soul coins a physical currency used by fiends, each containing the soul of an individual pledged, stolen or otherwise claimed by its creator. It is within these hands that souls perhaps hold the greatest worth, albeit not by the reality of their nature, but for what they can be used for.

Souls are, in summary, a mote of potential, the sum contents of an individual distilled into its broadest strokes and yet most concentrated sense. Domination or control over a creature's soul is a fundamental feature of many spells from the School of Necromancy, whether utilising them to power eldritch actions as in *Soul Cage* or *Magic Jar*, or when considering a spellcaster's own longevity through spells such as *Clone*, which is believed to coerce the fleeting soul into returning to a pre-prepared body by mimicking a semblance of the Beacon of Soul's glow. Further to this, magic pertaining to use of *True Names* might work by targetting the soul, the use of identity providing the intimacy to strike a foe truly to their core. Far more crudely, fiends, particularly devils, have been known to use souls as a potent fuel supply as one might timber, whether that soul was bound for the fiend's grasp by means of some predetermined pact or patronage, or simply by being claimed by a particularly baleful blade or curse. When it was discovered that the soul of Viscount Ghalmir Penningmore had been claimed by a Night Hag after his passing, it was found that only through use of the *Wish* spell, carefully worded by a team of scholars over the course of a month and a half, could it be finally recovered. Fundamentally, upon passing through the Beacon of Souls, any sufficiently powerful entity may seek to lay claim to a soul, and a few besides doing so before even this milestone can be reached. The concept of spellcasters dubbed warlocks offering up the servitude of the soul in exchange for boons is a frequently considered one by scholars, but fundamentally misleading. Not all warlocks found themselves soulbound, and not just warlocks might find their soul drifting into the grasp of a sufficiently powerful and interested entity upon their passing...