What Do Souls Really Give You?

[Vent0]

That "history" seems like it has some holes in it (but I'll need more time to really identify the source of that feeling). Makes for many great plot hooks, though.

[amechra]

I have a theory that souls are the thing that connects you to the rest of the world and the abillity to form connections and interact with the worlds inforcing your will upon it.

- People without start by becoming obnoxious so that social interaction becomes rly hard and end up as husks without the abillity do act.
- Prometheans lack souls and the world activelly rejects them

Funnily enough... you actually don't take any social penalties due to soul lossuntil you hit Thrall - at that point, you suffer the penalties due to the Broken condition, which seems to tie in with the loss of Willpower and the inability to grow that you also have when you're a Thrall. Vices are stuff that's bad for you, not necessarily something that rubs other people the wrong way (I can see someone with Overly Generous as a Vice, for example.)

Prometheans also have craptons of loose Divine Fire inside themselves. Their final rebirth thingy converts that into a soul - prior to that, the brunt of their template-based problems come from the fact that they are scorching the world around them with pure, uncut divine madness. I don't think we can lay this entirely on the fact that they don't have a soul (Demons don't have souls either, and they don't have anything like Disquiet or Wastelands).

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Awakened Souls actually aren't more powerful than normal people's souls; in 2e, shoving a Sleeper soul into your soul-hole fixes the Gnosis loss - an Awakened Soul does it faster, though. There has been talk from the devs (at least, I think it was devs) that stuff like Legacies affect the structure that holds the soul - it seems to imply that anyone's soul can be taught to contact the Supernal. It's more like an antenna than the radio, I think.

It would make sense that Awakened Souls work faster because the Mage's soul-hole doesn't have to scrub the Abyssal Shard out of it.

For Changelings... it would make some sense that souls have some ability to patch themselves up over time. I would imagine that doing so requires being in a place with a nice, open Twilight for you to recycle into soul-stuff. Of course, when you're in the Hedge or Arcadia... you don't have that. So your soul makes do - not its fault that the only raw materials are stories and Hedgestuff.

Ghosts... I think that's because they're essentially the Spirits of You and How You Died. They definitely aren't the whole soul (a soul is Rank 2, if you go by Werewolf 2e), but (to use Mage terms), I think they're the Death and Mind parts, with a little bit of Fate worked in for "unfinished business" purposes.

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It looks like Vice might be in-built - it's not really an ethical thing (see: dude with Overly Generous as a Vice). Which brings up the question:

Is the "native state" of a humanity sans soul Ennervation or Thralldom? In other words, if you could prevent babies from developing souls, would they ever develop a Willpower track or Vice in the first place? Now that I think about it, animals lack souls, can't use Abjuration, Binding, or Warding (I assume), don't have Virtues or Vices, and also can't spend Experience (again, I assume).

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Crazy idea:
At one point, humans were just smart animals; they lacked a Vice and a Virtue, couldn't do anything against Spirits or whatever (heck, there might've been Spirits of Humans back then). Then a freak mutation (or God, or a god, or whatever) gave some members of the species a small presence in Twilight - this is a massive bonus, since now there aren't any Spirits of them (avoiding that degree of fuckery), as well as giving them the ability to fight back against Spirit predators. What's more, it bred true - soon, whole populations of humans developed these proto-souls.

Similarly, another freak mutation developed into Vices and Virtues - this is another massive bonus, since it allows for much more efficient Willpower recovery. Originally, this was a bit of a lossy mutation; the Vice was more efficient for Willpower recovery, but would eventually break down your ability to deal with the outside world. It also bred true.

Real souls only developed when these populations interbred - a full soul made Vices and Virtues much better than they were alone. As such, natural selection (and trait dominance) means that only people with a very specific injury or congenital condition lack a soul. Unfortunately, much like how our diet of cooked foods have led to an increasing inability to digest raw food... humans can't function properly without souls anymore.

It runs out that the soul-hole (the highly scientific term for where the soul slots into the body) is also a great place for Ephemeral Beings to tie themselves to. Also, we now need a soul to recover Willpower through rest or surrender. Good thing souls come standard nowadays!

[Caitiff Primogen]

The bits about what a Vice is and what it does to you also raise some questions. Is a Soulless individual simply unable to make decisions based on an ethical framework and therefore more prone to indulging their Vice? Or is the Vice an in-built feature of the flesh?

To put it more simply, and to bring in jargon from outside the game, does losing one's soul make them Neutral? or do they automatically swing towards Evil?

Given the fact that one's Vice takes primacy in even of becoming Soulless, I would argue that Vice must be something that exists separately from the soul. Something attached to the body that the presence of soul acts to suppress.

[malonkey1]

I have a theory that souls are the thing that connects you to the rest of the world and the abillity to form connections and interact with the worlds inforcing your will upon it.

- People without start by becoming obnoxious so that social interaction becomes rly hard and end up as husks without the abillity do act.
- Prometheans lack souls and the world activelly rejects them

That actually makes a fair bit of sense. It would also explain why taking somebody's identity entirely as a Demon is a Soul Pact: You're using the metaphysical connections to reality that the Soul provides to "plug in" to the world.

That theory also has some implications for other splats:

Awakened Souls are more potent because the connect with the world on a deeper, platonically symbolic level.
Changeling Souls are shredded and torn by the Thorns, leaving them with connections to Arcadia and the Hedge (as well as the possibility of becoming Gentry)
Ghosts can be made from Souls of Soul Stones, and they are demonstrably connected to things they associated with in life.

[Menace]

I have a theory that souls are the thing that connects you to the rest of the world and the abillity to form connections and interact with the worlds inforcing your will upon it.

- People without start by becoming obnoxious so that social interaction becomes rly hard and end up as husks without the abillity do act.
- Prometheans lack souls and the world activelly rejects them

[Vent0]

Demon definitely doesn't have the same look at souls that I got - which is probably because I'm thinking about this too hard.

Note, for example, that Soul Pacts actually delete people entirely from existence. As far as I can tell (since soul parts are used for building patchwork covers), they are using the soul as the Infrastructure to support that Cover.

Which brings up... questions.

Demon doesn't interface with souls as they are commonly used. But there does seem to be some connection, so I brought it up.

Much like Soulstones, that's less of a thing souls do, and more of a thing you do with souls.

If that makes any sense.

Sure. Electricity doesn't heal damage, but Prometheans can use it to do so - because that's more about the Promethean than the electricity.

[amechra]

Much like Soulstones, that's less of a thing souls do, and more of a thing you do with souls.

If that makes any sense.

[Acrozatarim]

Don't forget that some idigam are capable of more than just pulling souls out of people and shuffling them between recipients; there are some that can render them into soul slaves, entities that they can dispatch off as agents on tasks.

[amechra]

Demon definitely doesn't have the same look at souls that I got - which is probably because I'm thinking about this too hard.

Note, for example, that Soul Pacts actually delete people entirely from existence. As far as I can tell (since soul parts are used for building patchwork covers), they are using the soul as the Infrastructure to support that Cover.

Which brings up... questions.

[Satchel]

That seems especially odd considering Demons can have animal and inanimate (usually building) Covers.

You literally cannot get those as actual Covers without stealing them from an angel's assignment.

[nofather]

Plus they can do it to spirits and ghosts and maybe other ephemerals. But those aren't contracts, they're Exploits. At least the vehicle, building, ephemeral covers are. Amechra's pointing out that the human soul offers some 'metaphysical weight' might explain why contracts are necessary when they can just slip into other things.

Just to throw this out there. In first edition, which I realize amechra isn't speaking about but Mummy did come up and it's firmly a first edition game, there's a Mekhet who claims to have discovered the human soul, and that it is, 'in fact, a small organ vaguely resembling a six-inch-long spermatozoon encased within the breastbone.' It points out that he may have been making it up, but it doesn't matter because the Discipline this write-up is mentioned in 'makes it happen.' The soul is taken, sometimes preserved in formaldehyde. 'When the time comes, they transplant these "souls" into other mortals, or consume them, in order to gain moral strength.' That last part refers to one of the results of transplanting the soul into someone, that they receive the Morality rating of the 'donor' as well as their derangements, specifically they don't feel different, but what is acceptable to them is more in line with their new soul's Morality than their old soul. Also, dead bodies without these souls can receive the Embrace, but they're always a draugr with no Humanity.

[malonkey1]

Much though I love that fact that demonic fuckaboutery re: souls is essentially various levels of identity fraud, you are disregarding the fact that demons literally cannot make a soul pact with something that does not have a soul.

I don't recall that rule, but I don't have my Demon book on hand to check it.

That seems especially odd considering Demons can have animal and inanimate (usually building) Covers.

[Satchel]

A Demonic "soul" is the connections that a person has to the people, places and things around them, coalesced into an identity.

Much though I love that fact that demonic fuckaboutery re: souls is essentially various levels of identity fraud, you are disregarding the fact that demons literally cannot make a soul pact with something that does not have a soul.

[GibberingEloquence]

I couldn't have summed it up better myself. Nice work, Amechra! Have a Like.

More information on the souls of both mortals and supernaturals:

• A strong soul (Integrity 8+) gives +1 to Abjurations, Wardings and Bindings for every dot of Integrity above 7. Likewise, a weak soul makes those practices more difficult (-1 for every dot of Integrity below 6).
• A high Integrity also denotes a soul with sturdy foundations against trauma: 6 or 7 dots gives +1 to Breaking Point rolls, while 8 to 10 dots gives +2. As can be expected, lower Integrity denotes a soul that is cracking or even crumbling away, allowing you to destroy the foundations to bring down the house (that is, the person). Three or two dots imposes a -1 penalty to Breaking Point rolls, while only 1 dot imposes -2.
• People with low Integrity are favored targets of certain supernatural phenomena: most Heroes have an Integrity of 4 or less. I'd say that Inferno demons would do the opposite: they get more satisfaction when they break a person of strong will and moral standards. Sometimes, your Integrity doesn't even have to be low or high, as DaveB has demonstrated.
• Souls can be used to power or otherwise benefit certain supernaturals, such as God-Machine Angels and Idigam. I won't be surprised if 2ED lets mortals sell dots of Integrity to hobgoblin merchants. Speaking of Changeling, the Thorns are said to rip away chunks of a person's soul as they escape from Arcadia. I vividly remember an insect-like hobgoblin from a 1ED supplement who was supposedly made from pieces of changeling souls. The Icons used by the Huntsmen to track down changelings are also made from pieces of souls that the Hedge ripped away, IIRC.
• The Integrity of ghosts does not change. I do not know if ghosts in 2ED will explicitly have to abandon or otherwise lose their Integrity to become Geister, but that seems likely. What else they will have to remove to become Kerberoi is anybody's guess.
• Mages have additional uses for souls beyond casting Supernal spells, such as crafting soul-stones and creating/joining Legacies.
• The Astral Realms are linked to souls, not brain activity. This is shown by the existence of the Anima Mundi AKA Dreamtime.

I really hope the second editions of Mage and Geist will go into further detail about the workings of souls. I know the ST is the final arbiter on these matters, but the information we have so far feels kinda sparse to me.

[malonkey1]

Souls also seem to be what allows Demon's to interface with facets of a being's existence. They can't Soul Pact a trash can, gerbil, or Spirit, for instance.

The souls that Demons buy are not the same kind of Souls that Mages deal with. That's just a little linguistic quirk of the gamelines.

A Demonic "soul" is the connections that a person has to the people, places and things around them, coalesced into an identity.