sutr

Kind, but not pragmatic. I think giving people an inspiration that leads to incredible rate of innovations and insight may actually bring that permanent solution way faster. I guess it all comes down to how you roleplay your Watcher. My Watcher is pro-Galawain/Magran/Abydon who believes in strength and strengthening of kith. Unless it involves destroying an oppressive culture that stifles innovation because that is wrong.

In Caed Nua you can read lore written by Engwithans that the cycle preceded them. A ghost of a Engwithan out rite tells you that his son would be reincarnated just not "properly"

Okay after listening to Ydwin intro again I'm convinced that the natural cycle of souls is that without the gods they don't diminish. Rather their memories are used to create new souls. Which actually makes sense because we know that Eros was created by a god, who currently is going to take a break because he was in game development for 19 years.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but I think my answer is: the same way. I'm only suggesting that the gods are creating more of them than there used to be, or at the least that's their goal. They observed a decline in the strength of souls over time, recognized it as an inevitable crisis and went about trying to solve it. Strong souls are associated with strong character: Spiritual fracturing doesn’t contribute to a person’s negative disposition, but is believed to have a subtler effect on their life’s vibrancy and potential. Heroes, brilliant scholars, and charismatic leaders are generally considered to have old souls that are well preserved. It's my supposition that the Engwithans attributed the decay of souls to the decay of kith civilization. Immoral people, people weak of character, were creating weaker and weaker souls. Religion was identified as the problem and the solution, and we all know the rest. And just a reminder of why I brought this up, in case that's been lost: it reconciles everything we know about the Wheel and reincarnation without it being a retcon, and without the gods lying or being wrong. What I'm asking is how the original kith with those strong souls reproduced? Your answer presupposes that death proceeded reproduction; one of the beings with those strong souls must have died in order to allow its soul to be fractured before any of the other beings could have engaged in biological reproduction.

Just so no one has any confusion, when I was saying "strong souls" in my post I was contrasting it to souls so weak that they've degraded beyond the point of viability. The "strong souls" that the guidebook and Caldara de Berranzi talk about are souls that haven't fragmented over time, but they're not immune to it. And, yeah, I think that's part of the regulation: After the soul’s temporary respite Beyond, their caretaking god delivers a set of instructions. The soul is tasked with finding a new beginning on Eora and acting on the will of its creator over the span of the next lifetime. The widely accepted notion that everyone carries in him or herself a seed of divine command is the pillar supporting organized religion. A balance struck between free will and the world-steering intentions of the gods offers hope that Eora is progressing toward an ultimate goal, even if the details are unknowable in their design. Those "instructions" are one of the ways the gods attempt to strengthen souls. The way I see it. As I think Eothas said(don't have a nearby save to check the exact wording) at the Ashen Maw, they don't know what makes a soul strong. Which is why there's so many gods with differing agendas: they agreed on what to do(become gods and establish control), but not how to go about it from there, so they're seeing what works. The godlike are probably another way they're attempting to strengthen souls. Then how did those strong souls originally reproduce?

I agree, either the writer who designed this world didn't understand the actual logical implications of his cosmology or one of the subsequent writers didn't. I was musing about this a week ago when beating pillars of eternity again that Eros as we know it can't work with any concept of entropy. At this point to make the lore workable I'm just going to have to assume the Egewithians and the gods they created are **** ups who don't actually understand the nature of Eros or souls all that much and are just good at screwing with both.

Exactly this, I think. The gods mentioned that the entire thing they've been trying to do for thousands of years, why they were created even? was an attempt to keep kith souls strong. I think the Engwithans realized with their soul meddling that entropy was destroying mortal life on Eora and created a system (gods) to regulate the flow of souls to try to keep life going on. It worked, to a large degree, but it isn't infinitely sustainable and now Eothas wants the kith to figure out something better for themselves. Except you can't have entropy to that degree in a closed loop system like reincarnation. Otherwise the number of souls must always continually be decreasing. Kith and animals would never have been able to increase in number and in fact must always be decreasing. The whole world has to be dying slowly which also means that in your particular interpretation, Eora must have been created more or less as it currently is, with a set number of kith and animals and must be decreasing from that point and god help them if plants have souls that breaks the setting worse. They can't have it both ways if there is entropy no reincarnation.

Except we know that can't be true because of the hollowborn. We saw what happened to children born without souls. If souls didn't exist in this world since the beginning literally kith couldn't have survived like the hollowborn are unable to even feed themselves. Engwithians were kith we know that from lore too. They were a collection of all the races. The writer who created the world and the subsequent writers seemed to not have an understanding of the implications of certain world facts. For example the concept of reincarnation, souls being cyclical and combining that with soul energy being a natural part of the world. The only way that could work is if there is no entropy in the world. I.E. energy or matter can't be lost or destroyed merely transformed otherwise population growth would be impossible for animals and kith. Furthermore its stated that the gods don't create new souls. So either new souls can be created though a natural process something Berath would be aware of because she is responsible for shepherding souls into their new life and would notice new souls being recycled. Which raises an interesting point that people's souls could not have diminished before the founding of the gods. Furthermore we know experience can strengthen a soul so soul energy can be created a stronger soul means more soul energy. Another important implication the writers probably didn't think through is that they implied that energy created from beliefs are different than the energy created by souls. Otherwise priests would diminish their souls every time they used their powers. And the power can't be directly given from the gods otherwise Paladins would always have to be religious but we know their power can be inspired by causes and they use powers similar to priests. Which means that a priests power comes from their belief not their god. When you put this all together it would imply based on the rules of this world, that power can be created through belief. So if their were gods and they were empowered or made, by belief the Engwithians wouldn't have been able to find them though animancy. I think there are only one of two ways this world can make sense is if 1. There were real gods at one point. These gods only exist so long as their is a need for them or belief in them. Once the Engwithians created gods there was no need or belief in the old ones and they stopped existing, where greatly diminished, or were merged with the Engwithian gods by their believers. 2. Go full on Pantheism all souls are essentially one and connected (which would explain how ciphers can read minds without being watchers) and the god who created them is made up of all our souls which is why no one could find them because they no longer exist in a form we could recognize.