Souls
Souls are a particular topic of contention when it comes to the lore of the station. Anyone who wants to discuss things should swing by the discord server, but the short version is "there is no official specific lore on souls". None. It is ambiguous. There is no proof of the existence of souls, nor any proof of the nonexistence. You can speculate in-character all you like, but there is no definite Canon.
It is a deliberately created black hole in the lore that exists specifically because the instant someone says that official canon is that souls are real, the following will happen:
- Everyone who's preference is contrary to that gets stomped upon.
- Everyone who has an even slightly differing interpretation of how they prefer to do things also gets stomped upon.
- We start getting arguments over whether it's possible to harm/destroy a soul which also leads to one side or the other getting stomped on.
- Someone will show up within a matter of days and "prove" it in-character in a roleplay and announce it over open comms and start yelling OOCly at anyone who ICly disagrees.
- Everyone gets pissed off because it was better when there was some mystery about it.
In short, it's one of those subjects that makes for a better narrative and more enjoyable RP because it isn't defined, designated, fixed, labelled, quantified, identified, clarified and classified in minute detail with which everyone must conform.
For more information, see the TV Tropes article on Measuring the Marigolds which explains why overanalysing every detail doesn't make for an enjoyable story.
Official Policy, such that it is
As per Aronai on the lore discussion on Discord:
| You can do whatever the hell you want, in private, in terms of RP lore or abilities or whatever. If you want to say you have the ability to eat souls and you totally know all about souls and whatever in a private RP between you and another person who also understands this policy, that is fine. If you want to say you have a secret cannon arm and you're holding someone hostage with it in a dorm room in your RP with just two of you, fine. BUT. The moment you bring that RP into public where other people who have not necessarily agreed for your things (which are essentially changes to the admin-moderated setting/lore/mechanics) to affect them, then it causes issues, so you're not allowed to do that part. The part where you do any of that stuff in a place/way that other people can stumble into it.
My advice for people who ARE doing stuff in private with soulvore (or whatever) and sec stumbles in is to immediately LOOC what you were doing and work out 'what really could have happened' that satisfies you lot without altering the setting. You'll have to retcon stuff. 2bad. That's the price. |
The other important rule to follow when another character starts spouting stuff off:
| Just because another character says something, that doesn't make it automatic perfect canonical truth. It is possible for characters to lie, and it is possible for characters to simply be wrong. Just like real people.
Maybe they misinterpreted something. Maybe they went out on a xenoarch expedition and took the name "soul stone shard" literally as Definite Proof, rather than just a name given to a particularly bizarre type of alien artefact, that was given as a result of its rather unsettling properties that should probably be looked into. Maybe what they're talking about isn't actually a "soul" in any sense that would be recognised in a theological discussion but some sort of psionic resonance field. Maybe it's just a name and the only "soul" to be found is in the musical archives under "Franklin, Aretha". tl;dr - the nature and existence of the soul is about as known, knowable, proven and provable as it is in the 21st century. That is, not at all. |