The Laws of the Living Soul and its Journey Across the Planes of Existence

The world of Ad Meliora is an expansive setting with a diverse in-game universe. Likewise, this universe follows a large set of divine laws that are unbreakable and infallible. Additionally, Ad Meliora is not the only universe in existence. Across the metaphysical plane, many alternate realities exist that are bound to one another existentially. There are laws governing the interaction between these realities, and some of the most important of these laws govern human life. A human soul is an eternal thing; You cannot destroy a soul, though the Will of the Macrocosm can create souls whenever it wants to, to the possible point of creating infinite inhabitants for the various alternate realities. Upon the death of any individual in the Macrocosm, the soul returns to the Will and enriches it with the memories and experiences it gained during its physical lifespan. This indirectly enriches the lives of all physically-bound souls and encourages the creation of new souls, expanding the diversity of life across the Macrocosm and enhancing the probability of the creation of brand new realities. A soul is then recycled; It is randomly reborn into physical existence in one of the many, many alternate realities, to live and die and retun to the Will again, and again, and again.

It is impossible for a human soul to ever regain the memories of a past life, as they become a part of the Will at the moment of absorption; This law is immutable. However, it is possible for a soul to redevelop or retain traits from past lifetimes. Which traits repeat across lifetimes cannot be predicted, and more often than not the traits that do stick are random and insubstantial (for example, a soul may retain an affinity for red clothing or a preference for a certain type of meal).

A soul can also be called from the cycle at any time if one performs the proper arcane rites to do so. There is, however, a single stipulation: You cannot summon a specific soul. The incantation to invoke a soul is modular, allowing the invoker to ask for a soul with up to three non-personal traits (for example, asking for a female soul with high intelligence and mechanical engineering skills). The portion that asks specifially for a soul is also modular, but there are only three variables: Requests for a specific soul (which are ignored), ambiguous requests (which are normally sucessful), and requests to create a surrogate ‘soul’ (a weak life force used to ‘power’ homonculi). In some realities, not every element of the practice of soul-summoning is understood; Some realities only know the incantation to ask for a specific soul, and after repeated failure, they conclude that soul-summoning is an impossibility. Other realities might understand every element of the practice (indeed, some in Ad Meliora are intimately acquainted with the art).

The souls of all beings follow these rules with a few exceptions; There are further rules that govern the souls of the divine beings that preside over the realities in the stead of the Will. A divine being’s soul can be resummoned at will, largely because a divine being isn’t recycled. Their souls are proprietary to the cycle of a single reality and they can return to power over a domain in one of two ways: summoning by invocation, or gradual regeneration. A destroyed divine being can take form again if its essence is restored through an extremely costly series of arcane rites, and the performer of said rites must select a medium with which to trap the essence. If the essence is fragmented upon destruction, the previous medium is preserved across the next invocation (for example, if the last medium used was a mirror, then the fragments of that mirror must be used to forge a new mirror or be destroyed to reset the medium).

If a divine being’s destroyed essence is left alone long enough, it can evolve and re-emerge in a new form, dynamically redesigning itself to adapt to the changing conditions of the reality to which it is assigned (in this sense, it is possible for the emergence of entirely new divine beings which are based on either the fragments or complete essences of prior divine beings, lending a sort of recycling action to the lifespan of their essences).