setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Axelmania
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setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

Unread post by Axelmania »

WB35p109's Permanency ritual in particular seems like something that greater demons and their lords might want to make massive use of for building armies / bases or buffing minions.

Given how this and many other soulmancy (aka blood magic aka demon magic) have a beyond-PPE requirement of "one soul" (or more) it makes me wonder how we can determine where to draw the line.

Like I'm guessing there's probably some text preventing you from just sacrificing mice/rats for this type of thing. But a crafty demon would want to find ways to mass-produce, and maybe enslave fast-reproducing species who don't take long to give birth, give birth to many young, mature quickly, etc. ie like Psi-Hounds, who reproduce even faster than Wolfen.

Although I can't see any "no mice" on page 84's overview,.... spells like pg 99's Consume Soul ("4D6x10 P.P.E. or 2D6x10 I.S.P. per mortal soul") I just figure aren't intended for pets... written or not.

There might be some gray areas where it's not clear where to draw the line. IQ, skills, something else?

DB10p65 (Soul Catcher) is probably the first area of the Minion War books to deal with the modern idea of souls in more detail...

I just feel like pg 66's ability for consuming stolen souls has some kind of "men not mice" intent but I'm trying to find it in the letter... and failing. I actually can't see anything here implying "no mice souls for awesome PPE boosts" even though I'm sure it's the intent of the writer and that I'm just gravitating to an exploit that was probably nixed SOMEwhere, I'm just not sure where...

Can anyone help point me to a useful page or two to express the "mice have no souls" idea I'm sure was intended to keep Soulcatchers going after high-IQ sapient sentients and not rodents?
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Vampire Sourcebook, pg 127: Only sentient beings can be used in a Soul Forge, not animals, machines or inanimate objects. It is the life energy of intelligent life that makes the icy fires of a Soul Forge burn.

WB35, pg 92: Nature of the Soul: Is this the soul of a mortal or “something else?” Something else can mean a number of things, like a supernatural being, a creature of magic, a god or avatar of a god (or Alien Intelligence), the undead, an entity, or something unknown. Unfortunately, the spell caster will not know exactly what kind of being the soul belongs to, just that it is not a humanlike, mortal being

I don't know to what degree that suffices. As for species, it's a shame a Zavor is likely immune to the Rip Soul spell. Rabblers and T'zee both have really high birth rates, and I'm sure there are others similarly fecund.
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Axelmania
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Mice are "mortal", so that isn't really too helpful. I remember T-Zees but can't recall where Rabblers are (maybe one o the newbies in DB30?)

VB127 sounds like a good starting point, nice find.

I guess the question of what is "sentient" or "intelligent" though...

Plus does that mean that non-intelligent / non-sentient animals do not have souls, or simply that their souls aren't compatible with Soul Forges?

If they don't have souls then would that mean stuff like Soul Harvesting / Resurrection also doesn't work on animals?
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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While the word mortal means "susceptible to death" it has a pretty long association with personhood, and the latter use, as bolded in the above quote, is used both repeatedly and consistently in WB35.
Spoiler:
Soulmancy/Blood Magic is said to trap, enslave and devour the soul as a form of “life energy.” Whether this is strictly true or not remains up for debate. Many mages and scholars believe that Soulmancy actually steals and captures the life essence and P.P.E. energy that is momentarily doubled at the moment of death, and not the intangible essence that is the eternal soul itself. That life essence becomes more powerful with the accumulation of a person’s experiences.
Interpreting life essence as intrinsic to personhood, but distinguishable from the notion of a soul, allows spells that raise the dead to work on non-people while preventing things like making spells permanent via a bag of rats.

As for defining personhood, there ain't exactly a useful hard and fast standard. As fun as it is that Santa Clara v Southern Pacific allows us to joke about taking a rune sword to the dark heart of the Amazon, legal personhood includes entities that shouldn't apply in this case. Similarly, going with natural personhood excludes people held as slaves. Better, then, to go with a necessarily handwaved standard of "actual personhood" and allow species that provide the most satisfying narrative options. As for niche cases, I'd start with if a given species is depicted as an optional PC and work from there. Rifts Dolphins, Psi-ponies, Mega Horses, and Blood Lizards are examples of what I'd consider viable targets for Rip Soul/Soulforging/Permanency.

Rabblers are from PFRPG14:LoD1. The book doesn't specify their gestation period like with some other beings, and their average life span should probably take into account that millions of them are slaughtered within 1d6 months, but save for the fact that they explode upon death they'd be great for Soulmancy. They're even able to metamorphose into a rat, if you wanted to have characters in game question the nature of a soul.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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having demons throwing permancies around like candy due to rat souls kind of seems fun to me tbh
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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It's worth noting that multiple spells can simultaneously be made permanent via soulmancy, so it's worthwhile to consolidate sacrifices just to save on that initial requirement. Also, with how expensive it is to rip souls and place them in crystals there's no reason to bother with them unless absolutely necessary. It isn't made explicit if the PPE of a sacrifice is available to apply to the spells being made permanent in addition to it counting as a life essence, but I'm inclined to be cool with it.

I began going through spell lists to find everything that could be made permanent in this way, in hopes of coming up with a series of templates that could be bestowed upon wiping out a kindergarten class with a pixie chaser. My main takeaway was that incorporating some of the mobility focused demon magic spells from DB12 would make the Blood Pit scenario on Rifts Earth less one sided.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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If a given game did allow rodents to have soulmantically-viable life essences it would make the Minion War a fait accompli, and would be a really different setting from most Rifts games. As it is the only thing keeping a caster with the right spells and a small company of demons from whipping up Blood Pits on top of a nexus as quickly as a Black Jinn can shape the pillars and summon LMM to dig the pit are narrative concerns. If the rodent summoning circle is able to provide a pool of 30 life essences/caster level, then while efficient demonic invaders might take a couple of extra hours in creating the seven pits needed to take over the planet, by spending that time giving each other permanent effects like Impervious to Energy and Wings of the Demon Locust it ensures that once they've won they've won.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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edit: fixed quote tags
Curbludgeon wrote:If a given game did allow rodents to have soulmantically-viable life essences it would make the Minion War a fait accompli,

Well, there is still the idea that those who know how to make stuff permanent, while they might use it generously for themselves, might use it sparingly with other demons to avoid competition.

Curbludgeon wrote:and would be a really different setting from most Rifts games

The vanguard really ought to start mass-producing "negate magic" talismans to at least temporarily lower all the permanent magic buffs some demons might have up, in such a case.

It makes me wonder... how feasible might it be for vanguard to sneak talismans into the hands of CS grunts where they don't know they are talismans, and somehow have them unconsciously use them?

Curbludgeon wrote:As it is the only thing keeping a caster with the right spells and a small company of demons from whipping up Blood Pits on top of a nexus as quickly as a Black Jinn can shape the pillars and summon LMM to dig the pit are narrative concerns.

I think you need a certain number of souls to cast the spell to make that pit...

Curbludgeon wrote:If the rodent summoning circle is able to provide a pool of 30 life essences/caster level, then while efficient demonic invaders might take a couple of extra hours in creating the seven pits needed to take over the planet, by spending that time giving each other permanent effects like Impervious to Energy and Wings of the Demon Locust it ensures that once they've won they've won.

Maybe the key is to hit them with anti-magic clouds?
Last edited by Axelmania on Sun Jun 21, 2020 2:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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-is there anything in palladium that establishes rats have souls?
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Orin J. wrote:-is there anything in palladium that establishes rats have souls?

Hm... pg 58 of TTGD seems to imply that at least cats/dogs and other tame animals have souls, as "Watching Enchantment" merges "the spirit" with "the magic of this spell". It refers to "the watching spirit". I expect horses would be a good candidate, maybe all those animals who get the free psychic abilities towards supernatural beings?

On same page the "Soul in a Bottle" refers to "psychic energy" as being the "soul" and there doesn't seem to be any restriction on what SIAB can be cast on. So if you wanted to give your pet guinea pig a +5 to save vs magic / mind control / possession then SIAB might be a way to do it, but would require you to acknowledge the guinea pig as having a soul.

Nxla's soul harvesters probably prefer higher-tier souls like humans (more PPE, might know some spells) but if they're in a situation where it's inconvenient to murder, it might be feasible that they'll just temporarily stab out the eyes of a local cow and use that PPE for awhile instead until they are able to upgrade?

WB35 (MIF) pg 84 talks about one possibiltiy of a soul being "life essence and PPE energy" which resembles the "psychic energy" definition used by SIAB in TTGD.

One thing standing out to me is this part:
    When one’s life essence is lost via a wound, injury or illness, or removed via magic, the body
    dies.
    Evil and callous practitioners of magic are able to tap and use the energy of life when they perform a blood sacrifice.
    The P.P.E. doubling at the moment of death is the body’s last burst of life energy.

I'm pretty sure we agree all animal PPE doubles like this, so they do have "life energy" which is probably analagous to "life essence and PPE energy".

Pg 92's "Peer into the Soul" spell could be informative here too:
    Determine if a character has a Soul: A Soulmancer will be able to tell if a character is merely an automaton, or an empty shell who has had his “soul” removed/taken from him.

If rats and other animals didn't have souls then this spell would treat them like automatons? Pg 96 "Reveal Soul" similarly useless?

if animals didn't have souls, then I guess they'd be immune to soul-drinking rune weapons?

That might not seem too good normally (rune weapons could probably 1-hit kill your average rat) but if you buffed the rat up with some spells (like Giant or Superhuman Strength) it could be an interesting countermeasure to rune weapons (aside from armor)

It would also make them potential countermeasures to the Soul Pools of Dyval (DB12p212), since if they didn't have souls it would be like animals were robot vehicles and you could just ride them without needing to touch the vat yourself.

The description says
    "The pools thrive on souls, so any living creature that comes near them is at risk, except for the Deevils"
which I would take to mean as evidence that ALL living creatures have souls.

Also Sahtalus probably throws bags full of kittens into the soul pools so Grim Mortis can get 3D4x100 PPE per 10 kitten souls consumed. He WOULD do rats, but perhaps doesn't want Kirgi on his bad side. Kirgi perhaps appreciates Sahtalus removing the rats' natural predators.
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Orin J.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

Unread post by Orin J. »

so you're assuming "spirit" is equal to "soul" then. it's possible that life essence is separate from soul (after all, plant have life essence but clearly do not have souls for spell purposes).

i think this is one of those cases where palladium assumed everyone was on the same page of "a soul belongs to a sentient being" and you're arguing it just for the sake of trying to break the magic system.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Does anyone know offhand about a rules citation regarding targeting an area of effect spell on an individual? A permanent Anti Magic Cloud would be seen by certain characters as absolutely worth sacrificing 10 people. In that the AMC doesn't affect rune or magic weapons, I wonder about interactions with a Magebane's empowering SDC melee weapons/armor. Considering the OCCs already high resistance to magic, allowing that would for a large part just be switching out the ability to use TW items for being able to conceal mages from Psi-Stalkers patrols.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Orin J. wrote:i think this is one of those cases where palladium assumed everyone was on the same page of "a soul belongs to a sentient being"

Explain why Soul Pools specify "all living beings" then?

Are rats not living beings?

Are rats immune to soul pools?

Orin J. wrote:and you're arguing it just for the sake of trying to break the magic system.

I wouldn't say it BREAKS it, it just makes soulmancy hugely more flexible if you can substitute easier targets for rats.

If not literal rats then you can always breed Mutant Rats escaped from Lone Star for the purpose (or Ratling D-Bees)

Either way life/souls will be pretty cheap and plentiful for demons to breed, just needs a little more space/food.

Curbludgeon wrote:Does anyone know offhand about a rules citation regarding targeting an area of effect spell on an individual?

BOM138's writeup seems to indicate it would be fixed on some location rather than a person.

Though of course that type of fixation/anchoring is a confusing concept when you realize the earth is a spaceship moving in an orbit, so if you can anchor to the ground why not to the Ticonderoga or similar?
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Orin J.
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

Unread post by Orin J. »

Axelmania wrote:
Orin J. wrote:i think this is one of those cases where palladium assumed everyone was on the same page of "a soul belongs to a sentient being"

Explain why Soul Pools specify "all living beings" then?

Are rats not living beings?


please crack open a dictionary for that one......
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Re: setting the bar for "what is a soul" aka "life essence"

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Orin J. wrote:
Axelmania wrote:Are rats not living beings?
please crack open a dictionary for that one......

What do you mean?

Do you at least agree rats can be "ilving"?

All I can assume is maybe you're questioning if they are "beings" ?
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