My character has only died once. He's usually good about looking after his wounds, but after having his soul stolen, he fell into a deep depression and stopped taking care of himself. As a result, attempting to protect an urchin from a deviless who was interested in doing the same thing resulted in a surprise trip to the river. He hadn't even noticed how injured he'd gotten up to that point.

He never wants to go back there either. It was terribly boring and the boatman is awful at chess. My character was able to beat him every time even though his chess strategy involves sticking the pieces up his nose.

Don't mourn the loss too much. souls serve no purpose save what myths you ascribe to them. They're nothing more than a journal tucked in some coat-pocket of your memory, if i understand this essay correctly, and i certainly haven't noticed reduced empathy amoung the soulless. quite the oppisite, often. Those with souls can be so cruel to those without.

Grenem wrote:

Fair enough. I would claim it is a mere placebo effect, but perhaps it's an emotional reverberation that he since lost. Souls aren't some metaphysical essence, merely something that duplicates your expereinces with small smigeons of personality mixed in. Like i said, a journal of your life, tucked in some coat pocket of your body. or so the revolutionary pamphlets claim.

Wait, says who? Is this actual Fallen London lore or just your own speculation?

Also, what happened to the part where you talked about your characters? It sounded fascinating, even if it probably would make my own character's head explode :P
edited by Kukapetal on 12/5/2015

Kukapetal wrote:

Grenem wrote:

Fair enough. I would claim it is a mere placebo effect, but perhaps it's an emotional reverberation that he since lost. Souls aren't some metaphysical essence, merely something that duplicates your expereinces with small smigeons of personality mixed in. Like i said, a journal of your life, tucked in some coat pocket of your body. or so the revolutionary pamphlets claim.

Wait, says who? Is this actual Fallen London lore or just your own speculation?

Also, what happened to the part where you talked about your characters? It sounded fascinating, even if it probably would make my own character's head explode :P
edited by Kukapetal on 12/5/2015

Well, in canon- [spoiler] souls are star spores, and are eaten by judgements, so if they are your afterlife-self, then there's no afterlife to be had. meanwhile, in whatever metaphysical realm the boatman appears in, you still arive there from a lethal wound, even when soulless. presumably, souls are eaten after death, so that'd imply their existence isn't tied to yours, either. There are lines about consuming them for experiences, which implies... souls do gather experiences. the fact that they can tell tales increases this. [/spoiler]

But you don't stop being you, when you lose a soul, and I've never met a soulless who was as bad as a jack, save jacks. So, souls aren't the core you, or if they are, they still leave large quantities of remnants of the orignal behind. they don't contail all morality, or anything similar. The devils mention a very short list of side effects, if a soul were key to yourself, and the game they play with souls seems to be based on improving them all, like a deity's purification done the hard way. And yes, it is a game, unless you really think it's that easy to rob devils.

There's some degree of paranoia/extrapolation, but i've never seen evidence that souls are like the church would claim they are, but i've seen a lot that implies they aren't.

A soul might be you, but in the same way a noman is you. lesser, inferior reflection stored in aether and fear.

of course, i'm very paranoid about the stars. it's no coincidence that the neath is the best place to live on earth that we know of.

the role-playing was dropped because it made it feel a lot more like raw fanon. specifically, what happened, though, was one of them- grenem or takuza- decided on a whim to drink a soul that wasn't theirs. canonically, this is probably completely pointless, and nearly always done by accident- devils playing shuffle the souls seems plausible, given text from oct.'s exptional story.

however it works, in this case something else happened. specfically, the "recording" began loading on the one with a body. or maybe they're just mad, it's always hard to tell with them. either way, they are convinced they have the memories and personality of someone else, and swap at the drop of a knife.

takuza is cold but polite and pleasant, while grenem is much rarer. either he doesn't speak at all, or he speaks in RANDOM capitalizations for emphasis. either way, he blathers about other sealed realms, that parabola touches, though it's far more likely he's just being messed with by something in the mirror.
edited by Grenem on 12/5/2015

Just checking to see how many delicious friends has never died once so far - I mean death by Wounds only.

I am beginning to worry that avoiding the boatman entirely might not be of any consequence in the long run, but I think I am going to stick to it no matter what. Even if you offer me an Overgoat just to meet the Boatman for small talk. Or the Cider.