Souls
"In simpler times, Hell would take a soul on the death of the body. Death is more complicated in Fallen London, though not unknown. So it's not terribly uncommon to meet someone who's short a soul. Some of them become mumbling, dead-eyed husks: some of them simply turn to occupations where soullessness is a professional advantage."
Souls are an gaseous, inexplicable, metaphysical, and sometimes valuable part of almost every living thing.
WORK IN PROGRESS
A Metaphysical Caprice?
"An otherwise tedious anarchist pamphlet gained some notoriety when it claimed that eleven per cent of the citizens of Fallen London had traded, lost or otherwise mislaid their souls. An exaggeration, certainly. But the Bazaar does not permit the publication of the real number. Look around you when you next take a seat on a crowded omnibus. The girl sitting next to you could quite easily be one of the soulless."
Souls are the essence of life, present in every living creature - even plants and fungi. Each soul regulates one's emotions, and the more life experience it has, the stronger and more valuable it gets. No one's quite sure where souls come from, but in the Neath, souls are ferried to the Far Coast by the Boatman after death, and in the High Wilderness they go to the Blue Kingdom to be judged by the Sapphir'd King.
Even such a crucial part of one's psyche can still be removed; an isolated, bottled soul resembles a thin gas.. Devils along with the Bazaar run the Soul Trade, and are responsible for the vast majority of incidents related to soul loss. It's indeed possible to live without one's soul, but the consequences may be dire, such as losing aspects of one's emotion or memory, or they may be nearly unnoticeable at all, except for a feeling that something is missing. In fact, certain professionals known for passionlessness are even said to benefit from soul loss. It is also possible, through the right means, to get one's soul back.
The Empire of Hands, in the far eastern Unterzee, is a colony of intelligent monkeys who have managed to acquire souls - several in one body, in some cases. Being monkeys, they often go overboard about it and conclude that more is better; social status in the Empire is in fact based on how many souls one has, and they actively acquire souls from smugglers as well as careless zailors. Apparently, they "consume" the souls with the intention of inheriting the soul's traits and becoming more human-like, due to a burning envy of sorts for their less fur-covered counterparts.
Soul Flaws
There are many ways to "damage" a soul without losing it - these are known as Soul Flaws. In the Sunless Skies timeline, The Carillon Compendium, written by the Presiding Deviless, separates these Flaws into seven categories:
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"Soul is fully transparent. No swirls, no clouding, no personality." Those with Clear souls are known for their disregard for the cycle of life and death. Individuals who refuse to join the military, decline to eat meat, tamper with death and immortality for fun, or merely keep library books past their due date might find their souls more transparent than usual. | ||
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"The soul is icy to the touch. Dispassionate, clinical, removed." Cold souls are borne from dispassion, antipathy, and heartlessness. Owners of such chilly souls are the puppy-kickers, the willful bystanders, the murderers for money - the kind who let out a dark, villainous laugh when given a compliment. | ||
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"Overly willing to please, envious, obsequious... are those chunks? ...in the soul." A person's soul can become Curdled by not knowing one's place, especially by ignoring or violating the natural hierarchy of things. Owners of Curdled souls might behave too familiar with their superiors, lie their way to the top, pretend to be someone they're not, or even deny the superiority of any non-human creature. | ||
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"Soul appears faintly bubbling in its bottle. It is pungent of odour and indifferent to taboo." Partaking in dirty deeds, shadowy affairs, and repugnant behaviors can cause one's soul to become Fermented. These are the individuals who ignore other people's plans and schedules, debauch with tomb-colonists, wear unwashed clothes, and generally do disgusting things... like swimming in the Thames. | ||
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"Soul-light is unpersistent, incurious, lacking." The Flickering soul flaw relates to disassociation, the loss of identity, and self-delusion. Those with Flickering souls may be compulsive liars to themselves or others, forget important aspects of their lives, memories, or achievements, or more chillingly, may start to see something else in their reflection - perhaps because they passed through a mirror and came back changed, losing a part of themselves that defined them. Spores of the Uttershroom, mysteriously, can also damage a soul in this manner. | ||
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"Slothful, viceful, willful abandonment of talent and interest." The Lightless soul flaw can be caused by poor habits, playing things overly safe, or leaving things at "just good enough". Those with Lightless souls might have abandoned their natural talents, become lazy or greedy... or they might merely have eaten too many carob candies. | ||
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"Soul appears damaged, scorched. Reckless, dangerous and fatally curious." Arguably the most dangerous of the seven soul flaws, Stained souls are the mark of the overly curious: those who seek forbidden knowledge or the world's deepest secrets. Those who bypass censors, study the facets of star-killing or the Liberation of Night, learn dangerous Correspondence sigils, or look too closely into the nature of wells may gain a Stain on their soul. | ||
The Soul Trade
"Souls are traded to Hell for brass, hydrogen, devilbone, earthly delights, rare coins and other things difficult to find in a department store. Trade without a license is punishable by - well, I don't want to upset you. Nothing you'll need to worry about. After all, you wouldn't be daft enough to engage in spirifage: the unlicensed trade in souls."
The soul trade is the legal, healthy, and widespread trade of (generally unstolen) human souls. After London's failed invasion of Hell in 1868, the devils established the Brass Embassy on Ladybones Road, and set to work collecting souls from London's citizenry. They persuade, beguile, and charm people to give up their souls, and they may even trade with human spirifers, whom the Masters abhor. Devils are especially interested in unique souls, but damaged ones are basically worthless, and should never be offered to them.
Violations
"There's a healthy export trade in souls from Fallen London to Hell. But like all trade, it's licensed and overseen by the Bazaar. Spirifers are those rogues who bypass the Bazaar to sell directly to Hell. A soul may be a final desperate payment against a bad debt; it may be gambled unwisely; or it may be tricked from its first owner."
Spirifers are merchants who lack permission from the Bazaar to trade in souls. Most are humans, but a few may be devils. Their trade is called spirifrage; it is lucrative, but spirifers are often persecuted severely, especially by the Masters.
Spirifers often steal souls from the ailing or the foolish, and almost never with a person's consent. Stopping these villains is the top priority of the Committee for Vital Restitution, whose Shepherds work tirelessly to return stolen souls to their owners.
The Truth?
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Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here. |
"Finally, a soul returns to the sky, for the Judgements to absorb and savour and add to their nature. I do not regard this as ascension. I regard it as digestion. But I fear it comes to us all."
Devils use souls to manufacture laws, both natural and legal. With enough souls, one could even create a new law of gravity, but that would be overriding the Judgements, which would be a bad idea. Most of this manufacturing happens in the factories of the Iron Republic, where laws are created and destroyed daily. Certain devils, such as those in Carillon, can refine souls through torture or by other means. Devils who are skilled in this practice, such as the Repentant Devil, are sought out by the Judgements.
Judgements themselves also need souls. Not much is known about their habits exactly, but it is pretty clear that they seem to eat souls. Do Judgements burn souls to create laws like Devils do, or are they themselves a result of the soul's evolution, a combination of myriads of smaller ones? No one really has an answer to that, but mysterious Judgement Eggs, that resemble extremely powerful souls, are real for sure, whatever they actually are.
