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Anatomy of the Soul
The human soul is described by those who study such things as a “self-organising multi-phasic mana field”. It contains all of a person’s memories and feelings, their hopes and dreams, and it dissipates into the generalised mana field of the Universe a few minutes after death. For some people this was not enough.
Research into the nature and structure of the soul was always difficult, but through the perseverence of a few dedicated people its internal construction was revealed. After all the data had been collated and interpreted the soul was found to comprise three parts, the akh (person), the ka (life force), and the sheut (wellspring). With this information came the knowledge that a soul could, with the correct equipment and proper enchantments, be caught in a precisely constructed vessel. Now immortality beckoned and there were many that answered.
But their understanding of the soul’s structure was imperfect, and a great proportion of those who transited from their mortal shells to imperishable vessels were not as they had been in life. Very soon it was found that the sheut was almost impossible to capture - the wellspring, the source of the greater magical energies that the strongest sorcerors could call upon, did not transfer easily into a vessel. After much further research it was determined that the akh had three components of its own, that could not be detected seperately but that could be damaged within (or escape from) the akh during the process of capture. These were the ren (memory), the ib (emotion) and the ba (knowledge), and the lack of any one of these had a great effect on the soul and the person.
It was this knowledge and the improvements in the transition process that it led to that resulted in the creation of the first modern ka-bots. In an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences it also led to the birth of an entirely new breed of human, the elementally-empowered Dragons, and their effect on both the Conclave and wider galactic society has yet to be fully grasped.
