What Do Souls Really Give You?

[Elfive]

I don't think souls aid in resisting claiming through any physical mechanism. For one thing, there's no indication that animals are any easier to claim than humans. For another, ghosts and souls seem to exist on a different twilight frequency to spirits. So the soul hole being filled isn't an issue. They can coexist easily enough.

Hive claimed are a bit weird. The spirits in them end up stuck, to the point that they are destroyed if the body dies, but that apparently simply due to the vast excess of spiritual power stuffing that many into one host results in. There doesn't seem to be an upper limit to how many will fit.

[Vent0]

Hmm. When a Mage is stripped of their Soul, they eventually lose the ability to work Supernal magic. So souls are in some way necessary for that. Working Supernal magic isn't inherent in the soul in question, though: Sleeper souls will do for a replacement, they just take longer for the Mage to recover. What about the other way around? What if you stuff a Mage soul into a Sleeper? Obviously, they don't suddenly gain access to Supernal magic, right? But why do Mage souls work "better" than Sleeper souls for Mages? Are they just "broken in" to Supernal magic like a well-worn pair of shoes? Or does a Mage's Gnosis do something to the soul to make it more compatible?

Odd, low-Wisdom Question: What is the time-table for making a soul "yours"? Could a Reaper:

1. Remove their soul into a Soul Jar.
2. Place a Sleeper soul in themselves.
3. The Sleeper soul becomes a Mage soul.
4. Repeat, as desired.
5. Profit?

[amechra]

Mage souls are "clean" - they lack the Abyssal Shard (good thing, that). I guess the process takes as long as it does to "purify" their donor soul.

Analysis time! (using the Stopgap Mage rules):
• Sleeper Souls stabilize a Mage's Gnosis loss - Mages can't use them to regenerate their Gnosis.
• Mage Souls can and do forcibly regenerate a Mage's Gnosis - I personally would tie the recovered Gnosis to the rate you recover Integrity at.

So Mage souls have an obviously souped-up version of a Sleeper soul's repair process - it can straight-up restore lost Supernal understanding, perhaps by blasting open certain channels.

My theories:
• Shoving a Mage Soul into a Sleeper makes them a Sleepwalker.
• A Sleeper Soul becomes a Mage Soul as soon as you buy a dot of Gnosis.

[Vent0]

On-Gnosis-purchase/increase is a good stop to the previous abuse.

Even with the Stop-gap rules, a Mage only loses Gnosis once every 24 hours. So slotting in a Sleeper soul before the day is out means 0 Gnosis loss. But that doesn't establish when the soul is "yours".

Mage soul causing Sleepwalker status is what I was thinking, too. Though an enterprising Reaper could still make their own Sleepwalkers that way. (But, considering Thaumaturgy and any lesser template is considered to do the same, that isn't such a game changer).

[cmwatford]

The issue with soul as spirit theory is that it doesn't take into account that souls are connected to, or part of, the astral.

[amechra]

The issue with soul as spirit theory is that it doesn't take into account that souls are connected to, or part of, the astral.

Well... we don't know whether or not people who are Soulless can access the Astral (unless Beast has something on it somewhere?)

If being Soulless prevents you from hacking the Gibson accessing the Astral, then I'll mark it down as a property of the Soul. If not, well...

That might just be a feature of the human mind!

(Also, for all we know, there are rare Numina that allow Spirits access to the Astral, just like there are rare Numina that let them feed off of Ghosts or Angels.)

[cmwatford]

Well... we don't know whether or not people who are Soulless can access the Astral (unless Beast has something on it somewhere?)

People without souls explicitly have no Onieros.

[amechra]

People without souls explicitly have no Onieros.

Where does it say that? Is it a 1e thing, or is it a 2e thing (I wouldn't put it past them to change some stuff up now.)?

[Elfive]

From what Dave's said it sounds like in 2e your onieros is your soul.

Or at least, your soul provides the landscape, while your mind shapes and populates it. When we call the Temeons the soul of humanity, we're being quite literal now. Onieroses are basically individual branches on a big soul tree.

Someone without a soul may have all the components necessary to build an onieros, but nowhere to put them, so to speak.

[cmwatford]

To add on to Elfive, astral travel is described in Astral Realms as traveling further into your own soul. In other words you go deep enough into any one persons soul and it becomes obvious that all souls are just extensions of a single oversoul that mages refer to as "The Astral".

Edit: I'm lumping in the Temenos as being an extension of the Anima Mundi here. Felt the need to clarify that.

[Satchel]

Point of order: there are spirits and ghosts in the Astral. Nobody's really sure how they get there, and "Begotten did it" can't really account for all of them or even most of them.

[wyrdhamster]

If all Astral is one shared soul of humanity and then the planet - then yes, theory about souls as connection have even more sense. If soul is your connection to humanity as a whole, logically you will not have access to common unconsciousness of it - i.e; no access to Astral.

But it also mean that Gaea is the soul of Earth as whole, and not the spirit in normal understanding.

[nofather]

If I recall correctly, the farther you get away from Earth in the Astral the more you come across planets and galaxies that have been taken over by the Abyss.

[Elfive]

It's all a big tree. The onieroses are branches of the temenos, which is itself a branch of the anima mundi, which probably has other branches humans can't access, and may be a branch of the Supernal, which has branches leading to the old World of Darkness and Creation, maybe.

...Or maybe the Supernal and the Umbra are both branches of the Empyrean. I dunno.

[GibberingEloquence]

I thought of another way to look at souls. They are the part of your Pattern that gives you Agency. It might be composed only of Death, all the Subtle Arcana or something else, but let's focus on Agency.

To be more precise, a lack of a soul makes it harder for you to control your own destiny. This is shown in mortals by the progression of Soullessness and the benefits of high Integrity, as mentioned in the OP. Meta-souls make you more inclined toward certain destinies, and less toward others. For example:

Mortals who are dragged through the Thorns on their way to Arcadia suffer great damage to their souls. When they decide to take matters into their own hands and escape, they earn a Seeming and repair their soul with the first dot of Wyrd. Increasing this trait marks you for great narratives/destinies both fair and foul, with the Wyrd outside you providing a road, and the Wyrd inside giving you the capacity to walk another road. When the Gentry participate in a Feud over Titles, they aren't just keeping each other alive. They are striving toward Wyrd Transcendence, even if they don't know what that entails. This might allow them to become a "clean slate" somehow. Or maybe they're lying as always.

Ghosts have the Integrity they did when they died, and it doesn't change. This might be seen as a way to represent their unfinished business and how it prevents them from moving on. How they handle that (and others might have a hand in this) defines the next step in their destiny. This might mean the Inferno, somewhere in the Astral, maybe even the Supernal/Empyrean. Those that stay after finishing their business or rejecting it can also become Geister. After that, they can Bind themselves to a mortal, resulting in a gestalt entity with combined destinies. Perhaps some Geister delve further into the Underworld and become Kerberoi. A select few might have reached Deathlord status.

Mages are notable because of their singular drive to know. They have the tools necessary to follow any destiny they choose, with the greatest obstacle being all too human flaws and the ambitions of other Mages. This is true even when they become Archmages. Their struggle is primarily internal, as they have more than enough power to affect the external. This, I believe, is what makes them closer to humans than the other supernaturals. Though they have Wisdom instead of Integrity, they dream and desire much like mortals do. The Abyss is the anti-thesis of all that purpose and meaning/symbolism behind their Obsessions and Will-Working. It is the ancient terror of everything being for no reason, of all we find important being completely pointless. Becoming a Scelestus is, in one way or another, to Give Up. This is reflected in their tainted souls.

I would write paragraphs for the other game-lines, but this seems like enough to me. Do you agree or disagree? What other information about the setting can lend credence to or conflict with this line of reasoning?