First Book! Looking For Thoughts!

[FoxDen]

My book doesn't have a decided name yet, but the most likely candidate is probably either SoulSong, SoulStorm, or SoulRage. (Let me know which you like best.)

The book itself works on the basis of Souls. Every single living entity has a Soul. Just one, no more. The more sentient an entity is, the more powerful their Soul is. For example, most plant life has an extremely weak Soul, while a wild animal has a mid-range Soul.

Souls cannot be willingly transferred to another entity, but they can be taken by force. Killing an entity will essentially "absorb" their Soul into another one, therefore adding the power of the Souls together.

1. 
   Souls can be "burnt" to create different effects. The effects that can be created fully depends on what the entity chose to attune its Soul to. A Soul can be attuned to almost anything, but common attunements are Gravity, Steel, Kinetic Force, Acid, Time, Flame, various plants and animals, Space, Stone, Ice, etc.
   
   Attuning your soul also gains you some passive benefits, such as a Stone attunement making you tougher, stronger, and heavier, or a Kinetic attunement stopping you from being injured by anything that has a high amount of inertia. To a certain degree at least. It depends on how powerful your Soul is.
   
   Also, Souls move in stages. The more powerful your Soul is, the more stages it will be at, and the more stages your Soul has reached, the more attunements your Soul can handle. Some of the most powerful beings have upwards of 15 stages, and therefore 15+ attunements.
   
   Did I mention that every time part of a Soul is burnt to create an effect, that Soul energy is gone permanently. That's a thing too.
   
   I'm glad I could get this out there! The book is about halfway done, and should be finished by early 2025. There probably isn't going to be a whole lot of popularity surrounding it, this being my first book, but any recognition is very much appreciated!

 

[Diana Silver]

Hi FoxDen,

Sounds awesome. I have a bunch of questions that I'm just going to throw out here. Maybe one of them could serve as a prompt to further develop this soul concept, if that what you were looking for...

You state that every entity as only one soul. This imediately makes me wonder: what defines 'one' entity? A tree may have a very weak soul, but I image if you take a vast and ancient forest as a whole, its soul would be incredibly powerful. You also link the power of one's soul somehow to consciousness. But then... is a fox 'less' conscious than a human? What does that mean?

You say 'killing an entity will essentially "absorb" their Soul into another one, therefore adding the power of the Souls together'. By the internal logic of your soul concept, does that mean that murderers become 'more scientient'? I'm strongly wondering what that could mean, to be 'more' or 'less' scientient. Since you classify animals as less scientient, it feel as though what you're really describing is just more or less human. Which seems somewhat arbitrary and ill-defined.

The reason I'm asking the questions is because I think it might be great, in your concept, to embrace the ambiguity, the vagueness of life, the riddles and unknowns. Centering your world building around scientience and entities seems to beg for a deep dive into what those words mean. I wonder if the rather rigid line you started with 'Every single living entity has a Soul. Just one, no more' doesn't limit you too much in that regard. I hope you'll let your concept roam free and follow it to all the corners of meaning it can take you.

PS: I personally like the title SoulSong best. It's mysterious and has a nice ring to it.

 

[Joe McM]

My book doesn't have a decided name yet, but the most likely candidate is probably either SoulSong, SoulStorm, or SoulRage. (Let me know which you like best.)

The book itself works on the basis of Souls. Every single living entity has a Soul. Just one, no more. The more sentient an entity is, the more powerful their Soul is. For example, most plant life has an extremely weak Soul, while a wild animal has a mid-range Soul.

Souls cannot be willingly transferred to another entity, but they can be taken by force. Killing an entity will essentially "absorb" their Soul into another one, therefore adding the power of the Souls together.

1. 
   Souls can be "burnt" to create different effects. The effects that can be created fully depends on what the entity chose to attune its Soul to. A Soul can be attuned to almost anything, but common attunements are Gravity, Steel, Kinetic Force, Acid, Time, Flame, various plants and animals, Space, Stone, Ice, etc.
   
   Attuning your soul also gains you some passive benefits, such as a Stone attunement making you tougher, stronger, and heavier, or a Kinetic attunement stopping you from being injured by anything that has a high amount of inertia. To a certain degree at least. It depends on how powerful your Soul is.
   
   Also, Souls move in stages. The more powerful your Soul is, the more stages it will be at, and the more stages your Soul has reached, the more attunements your Soul can handle. Some of the most powerful beings have upwards of 15 stages, and therefore 15+ attunements.
   
   Did I mention that every time part of a Soul is burnt to create an effect, that Soul energy is gone permanently. That's a thing too.
   
   I'm glad I could get this out there! The book is about halfway done, and should be finished by early 2025. There probably isn't going to be a whole lot of popularity surrounding it, this being my first book, but any recognition is very much appreciated!

FoxDen,
I like your storyline, too. When someone kills a soul and absorbs it, I assume they don't have two souls now jut one but gaining the benefits of the other soul. I wonder if there should be negative consequences for that action. Perhaps, it's not even noticed at first, but down the line, after using some of the benefits gained. I like Diana Silver's comment that ancient forests might have more of soul energy because it is older and has seen shorter-lived beings come and go.

By the way, my book (recently published) also deals with souls but from the perspective that each is divine.

 

[AKaddams]

So here is an interesting question: Would this make predators more powerful than prey animals? Can they absorb souls? In this case, is there a limit to how many souls you absorb before something...bad happens?

On another note, how would society react to murderers? Because someone murdering another human would see great benefit from it, and they would be incredibly hard to stop. I reckon a device to dampen these murderers would be of benefit, otherwise you are going to have an anarchic world where everyone is going to have a lot of very good reasons to be killing each other (imagine what someone like Genghis Khan could achieve in this world).

If you want it to be a society that is advanced above stone age, and civilized, place some kind of control on soul magic in terms of acquisition

 

[Finchbearer]

I can’t say I’m a fan of merged words. I think a book title sounds better if it’s separate words as it just sounds more professional. So Soul Rage or Soul Song rather than SoulRage. Alliteration can also make your book sound less professional, however perhaps SoulRage sounds a tad aggressive.