Soul Born
A body needs a soul and a soul needs a body. So goes the law of the universe.
While mages have tried for millennia to understand souls, most things that are known about them are fuzzy at best. It is well known that souls, minds and bodies influence each other, so changing one changes the others. Furthermore, souls grow and change over time.
The questions on what souls are and how they come to be are hotly debated. The prevailing theory is that there is an aether that clumps together in bodies during gestation and then it builds up over time. At death this clump would slowly dissolve back into the aether or get taken care of by other beings, such as gods or other divinities.
Birth by Soul
Most who procreate do not think about what happens in regards to the soul, but those who want offspring but cannot procreate naturally eventually have to think about this question.
Not being able to naturally birth offspring can happen for a variety of reasons, with the most common being, in no particular order, infertility, being of a different species, being of the same sex. It is possible to still get offspring, but that requires a mage who is willing to create a soul born.
In general the process has four major steps to go through.
- Creating a soul seed
- Have a host carry the soul seed until birth
- Care for the child
- Have the child cast of their soul seed on their own behest
Soul seed
A soul seed, also called seed soul, is created by taking a part of the parents souls, without actually cutting them off, then sticking them together. Trying to get a more accurate description has proven difficult.
Imagine the parents souls like two pots of very thick tar. I take a bit of both, then I put these bits together without breaking the connection that the tendrils still have to the rest of the tar in the pots.
By leaving a connection with the parents souls the parents should be left unharmed by this process.
Soul Host
Because this soul seed is very fragile it needs to be put into a host body. Usually one of the parents offers to be the host, but that does not need to be the case. It does not matter if the host is male of female, but having the host be a different species can cause unexpected results, such as a changeling.
Once I have these bits together I then put it into the host parent, being sure to put it into the body and not placing it back in the bucket.
The child then forms around the soul seed - some say that the child forms from the soul seed - and gestates inside of the host. Towards the end of gestation the child begins to form their own soul.
Birth can be a bit unpredictable since the way it happens depends on where the soul seed was placed in the host.
A child
A child who is soul born will have an unusual life growing up. They are able to change their body to both look and behave more like one or the other parent. Changing something can take weeks or months, depending on how large the change is.
Interestingly, soul born can change their sex as well, even if both parents are of the same sex. Generally mages agree on that this means the soul does not matter when it comes to determine the sex of the child. However, fights have broken out when they tried to figure out why this is.
During childhood and until the naming the child's soul will grow as during a normal childhood.
For as long as the soul seed is inside of the child both parents have a vested interest in ensuring the child's safety. This is because if the child dies with the soul seed the connection to the parents is severed, which causes any number of ailments, potentially driving the parents mad or to suicide. That is, if the ailments don't get them first. This is sometimes referred to as Soul Shock.
An interesting phenomena has been observed with normal children that they detect, or feel, when something bad happens to someone close to them. This phenomena is significantly more noticeable to soul born when their parents die, to the point where they can tell exactly what happened to them, although this normally doesn't cause as much harm as the other way around. Sometimes this connection extends in part to other emotions, such as sadness or anger.
This is commonly explained as the seed soul still being in contact with the parents soul.
The Naming
As the child grows into adulthood they normally also come to grips with who they are and who they want to be. This can be accelerated by talking to the child and encouraging them to think about who they are and their place in the world.
While coming to a decision is a process, actually deciding is a moment in time. What triggers this moment varies wildly. Known examples include emphatically stating their own name, looking at their reflection in a mirror, hugging a friend, and looking up after staring memorized at their hand for an hour trying to see all its details.
In this moment the soul seed is cast off from the child's soul. The soul seed divides into the bits from the parents, which then return to the parents souls. The parents will be able to feel this change.
Furthermore, the soul born's soul become slightly more rigid, putting an end to being able to will change to their appearance.
Your child deciding who they are is the way their soul becomes independent. Be warned that you trying to force this moment or trying to prevent it from happening will almost certainly cause more harm than good for everyone involved.
Indecision
Some soul born struggle to find out who they are, while others embrace their ever changing nature.
This has very little effect on their lives, but the parents remain at risk should the child die.
Variants
While most soul born have two parents with a biological host, that is not the only way things can be.
Guardian born
It is possible to create a soul seed from a single parent. This tends to create a stronger connection between the parent and the child which can influence them both to a significant degree. Particularly the emotions of one can spill over to the other at inopportune times.
Soul Forged
Those mages who tried to push for understanding souls and soul born sometimes tried to put soul seeds into objects as hosts.
Parents suffer in this case as the host is so different from the parent. The child, depending on how similar the host construct is to the parents body, suffers because soul seeds want a biological host.
Only one or two instances have proven successful, but none have been properly documented as these experiments were made by slightly mad mages.
Changelings
If more than two parents are involved in the creation of the soul seed, or the host is of a different species, the chance of the child being a changeling increases significantly.
A changeling is not bound by the normal limitation of only changing between their parents traits and looks, but can change into almost any shape or form. Furthermore, they can do it in a matter of seconds or minutes rather than weeks or months. The only limit is that they can't change their size or mode of locomotion, at least not quickly.
Some say that love knows no boundaries. Others say that there are boundaries, but that they can be breached or bypassed.
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