Awakened non-sapients

[Reshy]

So, how does awakening work on non-sapients that have been at one point or another a sapient?  I'm asking as at the end of one of the quests in game you find a stag that allegedly has the soul of someone long dead.  The stag dies before it can really be explored what could or might happen, but it does make me wonder what would happen in that case.  Since as far as I know, the soul can literally inhabit anything and there's always the potential for awakening it's kind of disappointing in a way that PoE doesn't actually explore that aspect of things when it makes up awakening being a big freaking deal.

 

 

To a lesser extent this could apply to races that are also sapient just very different, say a Vithrack or a Dragon as both are shown to be sapient to some degree.  Though again none of these are explored in-game as far as I am aware (Not done white marches or the burial pit so I may be wrong).  I know Blights are, allegedly, kind of like this but they're just mad spirits (In the pretty typical insane = violent manner) and thus have basically no characterization to them besides for them being a hazard that you have to beat to death, which is a bit of a missed opportunity now that I think of it.

[Baltic]

I don't think non sapient can be awakened. The beastiary entry for wichts says that animal souls were used because they didn't awaken upon being inserted into the child's body, unlike kith souls. However the whole fact that there's a distinction between animal souls and people souls seems weird considering the example you mentioned above, where a person is reincarnated as a deer. Surely either animal souls and people souls are separate things and thus one cannot be reincarnated as the other or once a soul is out of the body it doesn't matter and thus the whole wicht thing shouldn't have happened.

[algroth]

I reckon non-sapient forms can't be Awakened because they probably can't process a situation or event in a way that would allow them to become Awakened, as in, they'd likely be unable to establish that similarity between what they experience at a given point and a memory from a very distant past. The stag that was once Persoq likely wouldn't have understood what Sagani was saying to it either. I reckon vithrack, dragons and the likes most likely could however, and that we haven't seen an Awakened non-kith isn't an indicator that it couldn't happen for other species (maybe in the sequel we'll see more about this?).

 

I'm also under some impression that the Matron Beregan could be a Watcher, given her dreams and her ability to foresee the Eyeless invasion. I could definitely have misunderstood this, but if not, can she peer into her past lives, and has she suffered an Awakening like Maerwald and the protagonist have? She doesn't share enough to know either way, but it would be an interesting possibility too. I could be way off-base though.