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For myself one of the most fascinating aspects of Poe that has been announced is Animancy, it makes sense that in a setting where the Soul is real and can interact with the mundane, that there have arisen individuals who wish to study it in more detail. Applying the scientific principle to what would seem a supernatural phenomena to us, but to the denizens of Poe is indisputably natural. However due to the use of Animancy in update #73 as a flawed means of immortality resulting in actual Undeath, one has to question the morality of the science and its practitioners. Is it only the most amoral of Animancers who would promise immortality to the desperate and foolish, or is there a number of them who are genuinely trying to research the disparity between the mortality of the flesh and the immortality of the Soul? And whatever their motives is it right to practice their art when its current application is, to say the least imperfect? At the moment in the Dyrwood the role of the Animancer is legal, and one suspects that their research is legal until they are brought to book, for whatever crimes have resulted from their actions. This would seem to suggest that there have been no great tragedies arising from their research as yet, and that the immortality they have offered to the unsuspecting is a secretive and rumoured matter not common knowledge, indeed pursuing such immortality (in effect spurning the gods and the cycle of death and rebirth) may be an amoral pursuit that none would willingly admit to. Of course as mentioned in the first paragraph of the Update segment above Animancy is not the only method of making the Undead, and maybe any occurences of Undeath can be blamed on these other influences, after all the Dyrwood rests on the ruins of the Old Engwithans. Their potency in Animancy seems to have been undoubted, but they are now long gone and have a foreign race guarding the remains of their culture, perhaps this is a warning to the younger cultures stumbling into the region and the secrets it holds? Is the manipulation and research of the Soul a moral pursuit, after all the people of Poe manipulate their own souls all the time, and surely Animancers are merely taking one more step along that road towards the mysteries of the infinite. Or is the method used to conduct that research the important matter, and Animancy is a tool only as moral as its purveyor? If you get the chance in Poe to support the research and experimentation of an Animancer, one who seeks to unlock the secrets of existence itself, will you?