The soul is a complicated thing. At the same time, it is a very simple thing. It is the very essence (as much as I despise the word) of every being that has a soul. In this section, I will go over the basics of soul manipulation and sentient energy manipulation, and some ways to use it to keep yourself safe.
In all of my quadralents of travel, research, and discovery, I have never found a world that calls the soul anything other than the ‘soul.’ In fact, I have seen the moment where a species decides what their inner being is called, and they always, without fail, call it the soul. That particular story comes from my travels through the lands of various peaceful goblin tribes (the small, green, semi-sentient goblins if you were wondering). During that time, I was speaking with a shaman or ‘ortutzel’ as they called the role. We were having a discussion about what a god was when I asked him what happens when they die. He told me “Rot. Body rots. Worms Eat. Soil fed.”
In response I waved my hand and asked the question again. “No, what happens to you. Not your skin. Not your flesh. Not your bone. But you.”
The little green man dithered a bit before he looked as if he had had a revelation. “Not body, but me?” he said, “Body not Orel?” Orel was his name. “If body not Orel, then what in Orel is Orel?” he asked.
“Yes, in a way,” I responded, “But if your body can be a part of you while also not being all of you, what is the rest of you?” In this case, I was curious about my theory, and decided to test whether or not Orel would call that inner part of him the soul.
As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. “What other part is? Part in is… soul? Ye! Soul! That it!” He talked my ear off for an hour yammering about how their gods must be taking their souls to somewhere else once they die. That was the start of their more complicated religion.
Now, if there is one thing to take away from this anecdote, it is that every being has some subconscious connection with their own soul. The question then becomes: what is the connection? The connection has to do with your body, and how you see your body.
Let’s use a human as an example. A human’s soul is very robust (and yes, a soul’s quality and traits does indeed form differently depending on what that soul’s original vessel is) and very adaptable. A human’s soul is also very connected to their body, so much so that some humans may feel a serious mental loss when a limb is lost; that is simply how connected to their soul the limb is. Of course, the mental faculties always return quickly, but the loss of a limb always creates a much more serious shock than in other sentient beings. Similarly, their soul’s connection with their self perception is strong, but not as strong as it is with the body.
You may now be wondering what each of these connections do. That is a good question, but one that is quite simple to answer. Fundamentally, the connection with the body a soul has is responsible for allowing the use of Ether and what they can do with it; some types of bodies (at least when not riftborn) cannot perform certain types of casting. On the other hand, the fundamental purpose of the connection between the soul and self perception is to keep the former balanced. The mind part of the soul can subtly influence the body of the soul which, if not properly handled by the self perception connection, can cause dissonance between the body and the soul.
It is for this reason that, outside of rare cases, a person who is not born as a shapeshifter requires conditioning before they can transfer to a shapeshifting body. It is also for this reason that cybernetics, prosthetics, bionics, and fuletics require time to be accustomed to. Doubly so if they are additions to a subject’s body not found in their typical biology.
Now that you know the basics of how a soul works, you will likely want to learn how to manipulate your soul, right? If you are not a riftborn and are stuck with some limited slice of the spectrum of casting, you may want to learn how to subtly change your soul in a way that would allow the full spectrum, right? If you were to change your soul in any way without any other background knowledge, then you would run the risk of suffering from a myriad of afflictions that are inherent to soul manipulation. On the lower end is minor amnesia, such as forgetting the immediate layout of the room you are in, and on the higher end is mind death, where you become a creature without a soul that is nonetheless moving and acting based on instinct.
With that in mind, how can you prevent yourself from suffering these fates? Personally, I like to use a Duvalad analogy to explain, despite their world’s general lack of soul knowledge. The analogy goes like this: you are a bird, born of a unique species. To fly to another tree from the one you are born in, you must know where that first tree is. If you lose your way, you are doomed to fly until death, looking for your way home. Thus, to fly beyond your first tree, you must learn everything there is to know about your original tree. Simplified, this means that you must know what your soul is like now in order to change it for tomorrow.
To do this, you need practice with your form of Ether, and need to understand yourself. The first is easy, get better and better and the path will show itself. The second, however, is much more challenging. Really, it’s a journey of self discovery; it will always be unique for each individual and you’ll know it when it happens.
Now that you have a basic description of sentient energy, the dangers involved in sentient energy manipulation, and the ways to prepare to use it, what can you do with it? The short answer is anything to do with souls. The long answer is anything to do with souls, and what is sometimes called ‘metamagic’, as long as you have enough Ether.
Soul manipulation is usually completely ethical as long as you only manipulate your soul. The ethical dilemmas involved with using soul manipulation on others is one that is being fought on countless worlds and one that always appears when someone figures the method out. When some Rift-Walker asks me if it is ethical to use soul manipulation on other beings, I always have a pair of examples that show both sides.
If there was someone who deserved the power she learned to wield, then it would have been Uthyik Rulfa. She was a Hultik, a variant human with both male and female reproductive organs and generally androginous appearances. He was a medical professional, which was a low bar in her world. In his world, there were at least a dozen extinction events ranging from nuclear war to fungal horde takeover that extended to before tears linked the rift and her world. As a result, his world was one of volatile climates and continuous warfare over resources such as water and farmable land. The word ‘medical professional’ in that world would translate to a student fresh into medical school in most other worlds, but she still was a competent doctor in spite of that. Throughout his career, he always had reservations about the emergency treatment ward of his organization’s main hospital, which led her to inventing a soul containment device that would allow anyone who died on the hospital bed to be revived once their bodies were repaired. On top of that he created a spell that could allow someone’s soul to be tracked by a close associate or family member, which saved countless lives. Even further, she created another spell that could block emotions from certain memories at will, which was a way to treat post traumatic stress disorder. Although the last achievement was one that brought a great deal of controversy, and rightly so, Ulthyik’s achievements are proof that soul manipulation can be used for good causes.
On the other side of the argument, there is Rueik Belfud. Rueik’s world was one of renaissance technology integrated poorly with Ether. Not many had uses for Ether attuned metals when they never tried to create a fire cannon. For this reason, politics were woefully behind the expected progression, which is republics forming across the world and battling with old monarchic kingdoms. Instead of liberal thought, republican and democratic ideas, and the concept of free speech, the world was running off of a clan system. Small clans swore allegiance to larger clans, who in turn swore allegiance to even larger clans. The result was a mix of feudalistic social contracts and history-based familial land ownership. Due to the lacking political system and the relatively advanced technology warfare was a constant occurrence, which caused Rueik to enlist in his local chief’s militia. After he and his company were abandoned on the field and left to die, he escaped and began to learn soul manipulation. Soon enough he learned how to enslave that chief’s soul and started a chain of events that led the entire continent that he was living on to be embroiled in a war. If that was not bad enough, he also stole thousands of souls from the battlefield, enslaving them into various construct based weapons and selling them to the highest bidder throughout the war. Rueik is a prime example of how to “throw ethics out the window and embrace your greed,” as said by the Rift-Walker who killed the man.
If you were to ask my opinion on the matter, I would tell you to hate the builder, not the hammer for a poorly made house. Like everything else that has to do with Ether, soul manipulation is a tool to be used and nothing more. Ulthyik proves that soul manipulation can be used for good and Rueik proves that it can be used for bad. As I stated: hate the builder not the hammer.
Apart from manipulating the soul of yourself and others, there is the field of metamancy. The basic premise of metamancy is to try to create concepts that the casters cannot fathom themselves through combining other concepts. This is what allows for the epoch civilizations to break the fundamental rules of the multiverse and create or destroy matter, or for incredibly improbable events to create a species that can displace themselves in a separate dimension that not even I can reach. There is also a chance that metamancy will occur in nature, which can cause seriously hazardous environments to emerge. During my travels, I encountered a city that was attacked by two massive creatures. The first creature was attuned to the concept of melting while the other was attuned to the concept of freezing. Through random chance, the city that was home to over a million creatures became the site of a mass metamancy reaction, where the massive amount of ‘melting’ Ether fused with the equally massive amount of ‘freezing’ Ether. The end result was comedic, really. The two concepts fused to create a sort of ‘semi-liquid’ Ether, whose only effects were making the water slightly more viscous and buildings even more slightly softer. The buildings retained structural integrity while the water was essentially the same. Though, as a result of the metamancy reaction, the monsters were forced to take their battle elsewhere. (The freezing attuned monster won).
*Personal Journal:
During my return travels, I found a book studying the effects of metamancy on the elven mind. In it, the author made liberal use of anecdotal evidence and a slightly light tone while also creating an academic undertone. I liked the style, and I tried to replicate it in this section. Now that I have a goal, though, I am starting to feel much more… happy. Instead of the endless wandering, reading, and learning I can just take everything slow, read what I want, and do whatever I want. Lately, I have been wondering whether or not taking up the mantle of the Explorer was a good idea. It is a long line of scholars, all of whom took up the mantle voluntarily without ever meeting their predecessor, and traveled the rift looking for more information. It seems so… prestigious, but it feels like anything but. At the very least what I am doing now is what I should be doing, and that is all I can ask for. If there is one lesson I am happy I learned, it is that there is always forward.
