Soul States

A space fantasy / space opera setting
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Joshua
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Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 11:59 pm

Soul States

Post by Joshua »

As stated, the teleporters kill you. What this means depends on the person.

Souled: Naturally born humans, panthers and nephilim. They've either never been teleported, or have always had a friar protect their soul during the process. A few things that are specifically only for people with souls:
  • Only those with souls can naturally think of objects as extensions of themselves. While this can be trained to some degree, it means that those with a soul are better drivers, computer users, and handle cyberware better than those without. On some level, the soul allows the person to treat the device as an extension of themselves.
  • Only those with unmodified souls can use magic or necromancy.
  • Some necromantic spells kill by snuffing out the soul, you're vulnerable to them.
  • I suppose chi-based martial arts are possible, but not currently researched.

Shred: Soul-shredded, or just shreds, have been teleported and flat out killed by the device. Their soul has moved on. (It was originally believed their soul was destroyed by the teleporter, but necromantic research has shown this is not the case.)
  • Again, you do not suffer from phantom-limb syndrome. Likewise, it's hard to think of anything bigger than a weapon as an extension of your body. In general, this doesn't effect basic combat.
  • Any magic or other skills you had... Well, you can probably teach others, but they're forever barred from you. Mort (see characters) is an exception, but he's basically using a soul-graft.
  • Legally, only your primary person is considered a person. Teleporter clones are considered property of the primairy person, and are sometimes used for suicide missions. In the militairy, the primairy is called a Revenant with the clones being Zombies. There is actually no physical difference between them, just which teleporter pad they stepped off of.
  • Shreds are the only peopel who might have a 'stored backup'. The backup has no memories from after the backup was made.
  • As only the soul creates life, if you attempt to procreate, you will have a perfectly healthy child, that will not take its first breath or show brain activity. Since this discovery, shreds are forbidden from procreating.
  • On the plus side, necromantic attacks can't damage you as you're already dead.
  • On the neg side, necromancers can animate you. since, you're already dead. Thankfully, shreds are highly resistant to being animated.

Slider: Soul-strong or sliders have had their souls galvanized by the teleporter. The only test for this is to throw someone through the teleporter and see what happens. These people occupy all of their teleporter clones simultaneously. Their soul and memories slide between their bodies instantly, defying the normal light-speed limit on communication.
  • A human has a 1 in 10 chance of being a slider the first time they're put through a teleporter. Panthers cannot be sliders. Nephilim have a 1 in 4 chance of becoming a slider, but... most would rather die.
  • Sliders cannot use magic or necromancy.
  • Slider bodies are difficult to desync. They're easiest to handle when they're all performing the same action. Often, a slider will have one body sit still while another body performs a task.
  • The disparate sensory input is likewise confusing. Effectively a slider sees multiple overlayed visual inputs and all sound and touch happens to all bodies at the same time. Effectively they do not have multiple cortexes to deal with the multiple inputs. New sliders will often have their clones wear blindfolds and restraints so that they can focus on one body at a time. Combat sliders always do this.
  • The only way to stop a slider from communicating with it's other bodies is with necromancy. This will actually kill the body that's severed from the others.
  • The only way for a slider to abandon a body is for it to die. This is difficult if a one of a slider's bodies is captured for interrogation.
  • Stored copies of a slider are viable for about a day or two. Beyond that, they're too out-of-synch to reconnect with the slider's soul. if ALL other copies of the slider die first, the teleporter clone will be viable, but will be a shred.
  • Finally, sliders are resistant to necromantic death, but a successful attack can kill multiple bodies.
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