Important stuff is underlined. For a Cliff Notes version, I guess you can just read that.
ffs has stated that
the body and soul (star) are completely separate. This leads to a natural question:
What is a soul?One obvious answer is based on the fact that
we control the Target, whose Soul Star is the Astral Influx. Perhaps other Soul Stars are much the same. This theory gains additional evidence from the fact that we have no knowledge of what happened to Ciro before he entered the Warrens, and that we continued to do so even when Ciro became less Ciro-ey.
Could Soul Stars be a link from a body to some extraWarrens entity, like the players?
No.For a while, we controlled Al. Later, we controlled Cherish. Both of these have Soul Stars that are NOT the Astral Influx. Unless the Astral Influx can somehow override the other Soul Stars' signals, this theory doesn't work, and when we have more exceptions than evidence we have a problem.
Another possibility is that
Soul Stars are containers for the essence of a being (
I have nothing to be ashamed about here). This would imply that
the body is nothing more than a shell, a robot with a CPU one can install. Or, rather, connect with wi-fi or something, because they are not connected in any way to the body. This is a simple and fairly likely explanation, but it has no evidence either way. A bit towards would be Ciro switching to a massively different body; a bit against is that it doesn't make much sense. Why separate the two, especially so far from each other (e.g, Warrens entrance/chest elsewhere in the level)?
Finally, we can consider that
Soul Stars are tools made by Angels or someone else, intended to help control the people in the Warrens. Again, the Astral Influx only began affecting Ciro
after he entered the Warrens. If the Angels' influence does not extend past the Warrens, they would certainly want a way to more firmly control the people inside the Warrens. How? Several indirect methods. First,
they can make the Soul Stars' owners do something like what they want them to do. Basically, "programming" them, and hence the people they get a link to,
however much control this link gives to the Star. Secondly,
they can hold the Soul Star "hostage" to provide leverage. This also explains
why Soul Stars are only rarely found in the possession of their owners, and why those that are are in the possession of long-term Warrens residents.
Then
why do Angels seem to be having problems? Two possibilities. One is that
the trouble is from somewhere outside the Warrens. Another is that
Oric, possibly with Cain, unlocked the secret of the Soul Stars. If Cain helped, he obviously rebelled against Oric at some point (which fits with the origin of his name, save his eventual defeat). In this case, Oric would have had to leverage his power against the Angels, which presumably lead to them sending Spira to him--a convenient servant, no doubt, but also there to keep an eye on Oric. In this case, Oric wants the Target dead because
the Astral Influx is presumably the most powerful Soul Star not under his control, hence the greatest threat the Angels pose to him.
Despite being an appealing conspiracy,
there is little real evidence for this theory whatsoever, merely speculation.