Guns for Hire Trifecta of Self
In Guns for Hire, a fully realized and sapient being consists of a trifecta of constructs working together: The Body, the Mind, and the Soul.
Soul
What is the Soul?
A soul is a bundle of organized magic energy, condensed into structures that perform tasks. A normal human soul looks like a sphere with various structures all over and inside it. All things which are considered sapient by Draconic law and tradition have souls.
Think of a sphere of gelatin. Now stick fruit in it and put bands of candy shell around it. The candy shells have some value in keeping the gelatin in the right shape, and in keeping it coherent. They are like the memory structures in souls. The fruit bits are personality, skills, quirks, gates, and the soul-bound components to bloodlines, and can collectively be thought of as spell matrices formed from the soul itself. They act like rebar in concrete and add stiffness, strength, and coherence (also called soul size) to the soul overall. The gelatin itself can be made stiffer with the right treatments (a case of soul coherence going up innately instead of as a result of specific structures). In a soul seated in a body, there are slim little lines from the soul to each of the chakra points. Those are the chakra gates, and as is implied by the name gate, they're actually two-way connections. Because the mind and body exert influence on the soul, a being can slowly change the shape of his soul by thinking the right thoughts or doing the right things to his body.
Now, imagine this candy coated sphere of fruit laden gelatin is being exposed to heat. As the temperature of the gelatin goes up, it becomes less stiff. If the sphere becomes just warm enough, it can be reshaped easily. If it is overheated, the gelatin will eventually melt and become a goopy mess. In a soul, free magic energy acts like that. It reduces the stiffness value of the soul-matter and puts pressure on the soul itself. Once the amount of magic (the potential energy, also called capacitance or volume) in the soul is above its capacity to contain, the soul loses structural coherence and fails. When the soul is near its total capacity for magic, it is very easy to shape, either through experience and mental exercise by the first party, or by soul crafting by either a third party or the first party.
What Should I Do for a Near-Capacity Soul?
A skilled soul manipulator can put patches on a soul that is ready to burst, but in general to permanently solve the issue one must find a way to use or eject the magic in a magically overloaded soul. Increasing soul coherence is also very helpful, but does not remove the energy.
One technique for ejecting magic is to channel it through existing soul structures instead of allowing it to gather in the soul. The gate formed by a bind to a spirit animal can perform such a function, since spirit animals can use excess power to overcharge themselves safely to some degree (this solution will not work with most sorts of familiars, because the magic energy will corrode their connection to their body, eventually killing the body and leaving the ex-familiar a normal spirit animal).
Certain chakra techniques can allow a third party to forcibly flush excess energy from another person. In Istanbul, the required expertise is rare enough that Baki Yamada has made it one of his special services in his massage parlor.
What is Soul manipulation magic?
Soul manipulation magic is ultimately everything that chakra manipulation in it's totality strives for. Unlike chakra manipulation, which plies the power of one's soul filtered through natural gates (the seven primary chakras) within the body, soul manipulation magic directly uses the soul itself. Like all bloodline formats, Soul Manipulation is divided into three categories: Internal, External, and Hybrid. In general, the most common soul manipulation format is internal, followed by hybrid, with purely external soul manipulation being exceedingly rare in an already relatively uncommon bloodline class. This focus directs both what is used as a power source for magic, and what one is able to target for manipulation. Internal purists use their own soul's energy to alter itself; a very recursively oriented ability, often excelling in disguise, impersonation and at sufficient levels of mastery crude simulation of other internal bloodline abilities through sufficiently advanced soul sculpting.
Soul Sculpting, along with Soul Binding and Soul Breaking, is one of, and in fact the most prevalent, of the three principles on which all soul manipulation is based. Soul Sculpting is the act of reshaping a soul like clay to change its properties, and potentially the properties of its host vessel. Soul Binding is the act of imposing rules, conquering and/or enslaving Souls in a lasting manner by use of magical structures imposed on and integrated into the target's soul. Such bindings are not able to be Soul Sculpted away, and in fact cannot be undone without the assistance of a Master of Soul Manipulation that specializes in Soul Binding. Soul Breaking, as the name implies, is the act of breaking a soul but this does not only mean permanently rendering a soul broken. One can either use the fragments of a broken soul, or break off fragments of a healthy soul to create new Souls. Soul Breaking is by far the most uncommon aspect of soul manipulation to be used, and is the hardest to find reference material on. Attempting self-study of Soul Breaking is one of the most dangerous acts a student of magic could ever dream of.
How do you use Soul Manipulation?
While one can, to a degree, use it's 'little brother' Chakra Manipulation to experiment with some measure of safety, the same cannot be said of Soul Manipulation. Due to how easily it can alter the seat of consciousness, it can very easily cause irreparable harm if one is unaware of what they are doing. With Soul Magic, more than any other type of magic, it is imperative to do as little experimentation as is necessary, and always strive to learn of what happened when others tried such a thing, if one is to have a prosperous career.
Flesh
What is Flesh?
Flesh is literally matter which can, in quantity, act as a body. The most common examples of flesh are amino acid based lifeforms (i.e. lifeforms that use proteins and have protoplasm contained in cellular membranes). These versatile and chemically self-organizing systems provide a good framework for containing magic, but are not the only examples of flesh.
Technically anything which acts as part of a body proper, and which has sufficient magic signature to be integrated into the rest of the body, and which can seat a perispirit connection to the soul, is flesh. An ensouled shadow has flesh made of shadow, while an ensouled computer would have flesh made of semiconductors. A golem with protoplasmic flesh and highly integrated metal armor would have flesh of metal and protoplasm both.
For our purposes, protoplasmic flesh is the most common sort of flesh. Almost the entire body of extant fleshcrafting knowledge is dedicated to manipulating protoplasmic flesh.
What is a Body?
A body is a corpus of matter of some sort which has sufficient presence in the NeverNever to serve as an anchoring point for a soul, and which has the capacity to contain magic energy. Traditionally, a body has structures to help house a mind (i.e. a brain and nervous system) and to help circulate magic energy (i.e. a blood circulatory system which can eventually interface with a soul's chakra).
What does Flesh Manipulation do?
Traditionally fleshcrafting is based on manipulating biological tissue. Each flesh manipulator has an affinity for one of the following groups moreso than the others, and it is this affinity which sets the tone for their abilities. The specialization categories are Muscle, Connective, Nervous and Epithelial tissue.
| Tissue | Journeyman | Adept | Master |
|---|---|---|---|
| Muscle | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Connective | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| Nervous | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Epithelial | 1 | 4 | 2 |
Ranked, from 1 for best to 4 for worst, in terms of how much innate material there is for people at assorted levels of expertise. Please note that Muscle and Connective tissue focuses in general progress faster than Connective and Epithelial focus.
• Most Internal, martially orientated fleshcrafters go with some mixture of Nervous, and muscle or connective. Most don't really try for glandular funtimes the preference is usually to simply cave a skull in one hit and be done.
• Focusing on nervous tissue or epithelial tissue in general requires a larger knowledge of biology as well as outside fields to properly utilize.
• Nervous gets rather gimped glandular control compared to epithelial, and epithelial gets rather incomplete nervous control.
• Beginning nervous tissue focused fleshcrafting would be naturally inducing positive neural plasticity on command-with a goodly headache afterward from the blood flow fun resulting from it's use. When I say this, I mean it would 'sharpen the mind' in a manner not unlike a strong cup of coffee and a slap in the face.
• Fleshcrafting epithelial focused students learn on day one how to reset drug tolerance, or otherwise moderate it. It's kind of a fundamental skill. Even for the brain, since fleshcrafting's gotten REALLY good at building filters in the sack around the brain and in the blood vessels leading to it. So-strictly no, not the brain, not as a beginning student. But all the paths something can take to REACH the brain, yes. This does exempt glands already in the brain, obviously.
• Beginning Musclecrafting students learn how to localize muscle changes-render an arm wholly one type of muscle, for example. The ability at face value is not as useful as what one can initially learn with other focuses, but with sufficient skill is exceptionally versatile in it's application.
• New Connective tissue focused students of flesh manipulation will learn how to render joint dislocation completely harmless in both the short and long term, reinforce joints and increase flexibility. Similar to Muscle focused flesh manipulation, these initial teachings require skill to use properly
• Out of all four formats, Muscle tissue focus leads to the greatest raw gains in general regenerative ability as a result of this focus involving working with comparatively more mass than the other focuses.
• Out of all four Connective tissue allows one to become the most efficient at healing large wounds involving limb-loss, and can render such things far less costly or time consuming to regenerate.
• As something of a balance for their innate lack of sufficient higher level function compared to mastery of Nervous tissue or epithelial, Muscle and Connective focuses will always have greater regenerative ability than their otherwise focused peers.
• Out of all four formats, Nervous tissue focus allows one the most resilient fleshcrafting-based defense against mental attacks, and the fastest reflexes.
• Out of all potential forms of organ grafting and the act's impact on flesh manipulation, Glands are the easiest thing to integrate possible of organ grafting, and as such Epithelial focus is the most suited to
• Epithelial will never make you as strong as muscle focus-will never make your joints as monstrously enduring and flexible as connective, or your brain/reflexes as sharp as nervous focus-that's a fact, for equal levels of skill.
• Connective Tissue also means that, once you learn external flesh manipulation, having a pretty easy time fucking other people's joints on contact. Including monsters.
• Muscle, manipulate their muscles, move them like a puppet.
• Nervous, enjoy randomizing (and at higher levels) controlling their senses.
• Epithelial, their glands are yours, and can be rewritten to new functions.
• Nervous control would arguably control pain better than glandular, which would chemically mask the signals, whereas nervous would just handle the signals differently.
• The realm of poisons, caustics, paralytics and toxins is wholly dominated, with fleshcrafting, by epithelial focused fleshcrafters.
Mind
What is the Mind?
The mind is a construct formed from willpower and magic. A common analogy for it is to think of the mind as software running on the hardware provided by the body (usually in the brain) and soul (usually in the cognition soul structures on a healthy soul). As the mind ages, it automatically constructs a self-image and builds its own internal reality based upon accumulated will, which is commonly called the mindscape. Most people's mindscapes are vague and weak, but a very mentally oriented person will have a more defined one, as will a very magical person (as the mindscape's formation is a function of will acting on magic energy within the confines of a soul and body).
A very well developed mind can be extracted from the soul and body and be capable of operating independently.
