In this universe, everything has a spirit - the rocks under your feet, the hairs on your head, the bacteria in your stomach, creatures without a soul, etc, etc. Everything. The spirits radiate "mana" (MP), or "mystical internal life-force" (MILF for short. Yes, I know what MILF means. 
) The amount of MILF a spirit releases is based on the life, motion, age, and various other factors of the object/person in question - a thundering waterfall is a source of these energies. These metaphysical energies are used to affect reality in either of three different ways (plus God Power, which is exactly what it sounds like and totally irrelevant to this discussion.) There's magic, which is a combination of willpower and belief. There's mental abilities, which come from the mind. And then there's auric powers, which come from the body. It is commonly accepted that the subdivisions within each of these powers can be combined without consequence.
Basically, a spirit is the smallest particle in existence. Smaller than bosons, quarks, whatever. Enough of them put together gain a presence appreciable enough to emit MP. Your entire body has a controlling spirit, but it is made of [large number] of individual spirits.
As far as souls go, souls are almost entirely reserved to living beings. Upon death, they are claimed by their Gods, or just "the gods" in general. This is not always a perfect process, as something is left behind. This is the explanation for some kinds of undead - enough soul was left behind to leave an impression. Sometimes it has a body, sometimes not. In
your case, your soul remained in the body after death, because you happen to follow a God who likes loopholes. There's possibly
less of it, but there's no "soul measuring device." When trapping a soul for the purposes of evil necromancy, that's what is being gathered - soul fragments, soul crumbs, leftover bits of soul. It's also what collects into soulsteel. Powers rely on souls to work. A bit of soulstuff goes into every use of powers. Hence, soulburn and soulbreaking.
Technology is somewhere around 1500-1700's, but there's still modern-ish techs around left over from TWoTG. Like, Roak Val's Undercity has taverns that have neon lights, although pretty much nobody understands it. Think clockwork with various magical scientists working, too. There's things that exist that have modern analogues, like iceboxes and radios, operating on magical principles as opposed to standard physics.
Yes, I know that's a HUGE range. Some places have good tech, others have basically nothing. Think sort of dungeonpunk, sort of steampunk. There are clockwork robots who have soulparticles, by the way. Yes, cannons exist, but they're considered interesting toys. Why have a big, heavy metal cannon, gunpowder, and lots of cannonballs when you can have a fire mage on your ship?
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Elementals exist for not just classic Western elements, but for quite a few things filed under "elements". Some are closer to reality - like dwarves being the realism-side of earth elementals, but dryads being on the fantasy-side. There's generally at least two species made from each element, and the technical classification is some manner of question and debate.
For example, Sprites: are they Feykind, Angelborn, or Elementalkind? Even the Sprites debate that question among themselves. Some say Feykind, others go "Angelborn Elementalkind", so on, so forth. To further complicate it, some folk believe that Humankind and Feykind are just Magic Elementalkind, with Humankind being on the realism side and Feykind on the fantasy-side.
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I can refer you to
Archlich for a partial, but keep in mind that my list may differ radically.
Generally speaking, there's a
lot of variants of common metals. Given that soulsteel is still steel, quite a few are alloys, special subtypes, forged in a certain way, etc.
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Just remember that there is a warning to not kill Shin-priests, because of:
a) you'll
definitely provoke Zoah and Morgrod to kill you, each for their own reasons
b) you'll become known as enemies to the Cults of some of the most powerful gods in the Pantheon if/when you do
c) Shin might just decide that it isn't the time for his priests to die, and directly bless them with power to lay an epic-level smackdown on you (which is to say, their chances of Shin/Mingan directly intervening are MUCH higher than it is for you upon death.)
Note to self: update rules about death.
If you die, your character is dead. I make a few rolls to see if your character is fated to die at that moment (spoiler alert: The answer is almost always "yes") and if the Gods you serve happen to see fit to intervene (Spoiler alert: the answer is almost always "They don't.", but the odds of them doing so increase with your Level and devotion to them.)
There are assorted expensive and/or illegal ways in which a character can be brought back to (un)life, depending on how messy the kill was and how much time has passed. These range from acceptable to generally crappy. No matter what, if your character takes enough trauma to die, you're not going to have the same character even if they are rezzed perfectly. Expect a new Flaw at least, or some new Virtues/Flaws that came about as a result.
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Topic: Adventuring Party OOC Thread - Adventures in Hiatus (Read 268247 times)