Pnévma - The Essence Of Life

All living beings have both a physical and an energetic body : the stróma and the pnévma. It is a manifestation of Nankaï, a concentrated amount of various elementary essences which are subject to constant little changes. It is weak and unstable by nature, that's why it needs a physical body which stabilize it and allow it to interact with the world.

Life cycle and origin

Creation and origin

The first soul randomly appeared with the first living being as an essential part of its existence, giving it the energy and the will to change and change the world around it. Newborns would inherit their soul from their parents, be it from sexual or asexual reproduction. Each method induces a different way of creating the child's soul. With sexual reproduction the child inherit from two soul fragments, one for each parent, which merge during the fecondation creating a new soul. The fragments are copies of a part of the parents' souls. With asexual reproduction the child inherit from a partial or complete copy of the parent's soul. However, the soul being created early in the process, most childs don't inherit even tiny bits of the memories and knowledge of their parents.

Life

The life span of a soul is theoretically infinite, however the stróma have a finite one. As such the life span of a soul depends on its ability to find a new body before or soon after its death. During its lifetime a soul evolves a lot with its stróma. Its composition can change creating and losing affinities with elements and its quantity of energy vary reinforcing or weakening the body. Many things can be the origin of these changes :

• the growth and the aging of the body respectively increase and decrease its quantity of energy
• the use of magic slightly alter its composition, reinforcing the used elements
• the absorbed Nankaï (ex: food, ambient, ...) affects both the quantity and the composition, high concentrations can lead to corruptions or adjustments
• manipulators of Nankaï can store it in their soul to use it later, temporarily altering both the quantity and the composition
• the Nankaï can be lost by many means altering both the quantity and the composition (ex: casting spells, parasitism, damaged soul ...)

Death

Depending on its size a soul without a physical body take more or less time to dissipate itself in ambient Nankaï. However, under certain circumstances it is sometimes possible for them to stagnate and remain. These phantoms tend to get mad faster than physical beings.

Characteristics

State

In a body a soul is either active or passive. Under normal conditions active souls can be found in sentient beings while passive ones are in others. However, there are cases where an active soul can be made passive and inversely causing various problems to the being. The state of a soul should not be seen as "sentient" and "not-sentient", a more accurate understanding of it is considering it as a computer tha can be turned on or off without losing its data.

Density

The density is the quality of a soul. It mainly depends on the characteristics of the body and as such greatly vary. It oscillates between 3 main states : the perfect density, the dilated density and the overdensity.
The dilated density is the most common. In this state the soul fills between 50 and 75% of the body's capacity. Going under 50% start to cause various problems and reaching 25% is very dangerous. Such weak proportion of the soul makes it instable. It doesn't have enough energy to maintain its normal functions and enter a passive state often plunging the body into coma. If prolonged it can cause memory loss and ultimately the death of the body.
The perfect density is a rare and often passing state. It means that the soul perfectly fills the body with energy. In this state the soul is perfectly stable and in perfect harmony with its receptacle providing numerous advantages.
The overdensity is uncommon and most of the time artificial. When natural overdensity often resolves itself quite rapidly. The body regulates the overload by crystallizing the excess of energy. The produced crystals appear quite randomly on or in the body (although mostly on as groups of small stains) eventually leading to its malfunction or death. However, it can be desired and as such quite easily provoked. It is for example used in the krystosma.

Balance

The balance deeply impact the body and the inverse, although very limited, is also true. This relation is at the origin of the sak'ahn of all living beings. As such each species have their own balance and much can be learn from it. Although mostly determined by the species each individual has its own balance which allows it to be used to distinguish them.

Type

Metaphysical, Elemental