To Reshape a Soul

[Icarion]

I have been working  on a narrative campaign my group will be running next year and this has lead to me wonder on some points about the Lumineth that leave me intrigued. I thought I'd share them here, and gather some input.

 

1.)As far as we know so far, while Lumineth can sexually reproduce, or clone themselves to create new Lumineth, Is there any reason to assume that Teclis is no longer harvesting souls from the  captive Slaanesh?

2.)If he is still saving souls and reincarnating them as Lumineth, does he implant them into newborn aged vessels (likely made by Illiatha, as he sought them to create Eltharions body due to their expertise in cloning), or are they incarnated as adults as one would also assume the original Lumineth were. 

3.)Would there be a cultural divide in the Lumineth between natural born and incarnated, seeing as one was reshaped by a god. (There is also a third option that Aelf souls cannot be created any longer, and all "naturally born" or cloned aelves are filled in some manner, by some means with a rescued soul.)

4.)Would the reincarnated souls still be shaped directly by Teclis' hand, (as we might assume the first Lumineth were) or has he set up trusted acolytes to run an assembly line to shape them, and spit them out once they have been saved?

5.) Is it possible that reclaimed souls are not immediately put to use (either incarnated, or bound to a newborn)? And the corollary is new Aelves might be created one at a time, or in batches, but is it possible there are caches of Aelf Souls reclaimed from Slaanesh, stored/hidden somewhere, waiting to be used, when whomever does the reshaping (Teclis or Acolyte) gets around to them. 

 

There are no solid answers to any of these points (Yet), but I'd love to have a discussion concerning the implications of the above questions and what it could mean for the Lumineth. 

 

[LuminethMage]

I think the harvesting of souls is finished. They always talk about it in a way that he made the Lumineth out of part of his share. After that it was basically over. Mostly because this whole proceeds fits better with the Age of Myth, where you do not have to ask questions like the ones you are posing. They also as far as I know never talk about Teclis still doing it, or that he is worried that he can’t harvest all of “his” share of souls before Slaanesh becomes free. 

Teclis likely would also have tried to amend his harvesting process after the Spirefall to improve the Lumineth in that way, rather than go on his journey of spiritual reorientation., if that would have been an option. 

It just seems to me it’s more of a creation myth, than an actual process where you have to think about the steps, allocation of workforce and factors like that. 

But I might be wrong, as you say it’s not clearly stated anywhere as far as I know. As the storyline likely leads to the freeing of Slaanesh we hopefully get more information about this. If they are still harvesting souls, finishing that process should be the no. 1 priority and would be also a good tool to increase urgency and tension. 

[Overread]

Slaanesh ate a LOT of elf souls. I believe the harvesting is still ongoing since DoK references that melusai and khinerai are made within the great blood cauldron by morathi and are still released every so often. Plus the twist on the magic that Morathi wove to get more souls than normal is a continual point of weakness in the chains that bind Slaanesh. In addition one of the Malign Portents stories was specifically set whilst Malarion and Morathi were harvesting souls and having a conversation. 

So the soul harvesting is still ongoing. With the Idoneth they were clearly made in one large batch and then escaped, so they have no more fresh souls being added from Slaanesh and breed true within their own people. Daughters of Khaine only have Melusai and Khinerai and we've no real understanding on if there are male counterparts for them or if they breed true with regular male aelves. So we don't know if they can reproduce or if they can only be made from released souls. 

Lumineth I've not read the tome on, but I'd imagine that either they were like Idoneth - one big lump creation - or they are still getting souls added to their ranks, just that its a much smaller number than those birthed and born to them. So its happening but isn't a huge element to their population growth. 

[Lord of the Isle]

I never quite understand whether 'normal' Witches Sisses of Slaughter etc are untainted, ie once lived on Azyr and were never in Slaanesh, are born from Slaanesh rescued souls just don't show it as much as Scathborn, or a mixture

I could see Morathi still greedily harvesting while Teclis got it all over with in one huge necessary display or power? Leading, notoriously, to two batches

[Overread]

18 minutes ago, Lord of the Isle said:

I never quite understand whether 'normal' Witches Sisses of Slaughter etc are untainted, ie once lived on Azyr and were never in Slaanesh, are born from Slaanesh rescued souls just don't show it as much as Scathborn, or a mixture

I could see Morathi still greedily harvesting while Teclis got it all over with in one huge necessary display or power? Leading, notoriously, to two batches

Witch aelves and Sisters of Slaughter are simply regular aelves. They are temple warriors of Khaine, but they are regular born and bred aelves from the mortal realms. They are thus not tainted in any way by corruption from Chaos.

Souls saved from Slaanesh are typically shown as corrupted by the chaos energies in some form; for morathi these are the khinerai and melusai. For Idoneth its the whole people, but they do breed and reproduce, but the taint persists and torments them through life. We don't yet have enough lore on Khinerai and Melusai to know if they breed or not, but one would expect if they do the taint would persist. 

Lumineth I'm not as sure on as I've not read their lore. I would expect them to be like the Daughters of Khaine though - some of their warriors tainted and some regular aelves. Though after the failure of the Idoneth, the taint in the Lumineth might be far more subtle or he might even have worked out how to cure/hide it for good. 

 

Far as we know Slaanesh is still being harvested by all the Aelf gods. It might be that Morathi makes agents as fast as she gets souls, whilst the others build them up in a store and then create new peoples in a wave. Idoneth we know don't get any more since they fled their god and hide. So any new would go to the Lumineth.

 

As I said before it might be that the new additions just get lost into the sea since with the size of the Realms, once you get a breeding and expanding population that would continually expand in growth, whilst the flow of souls form Slaanesh is likely a fairly steady rate. So initially in the Age of Myth the flow would have been greater than the birthing, then at some stage it swapped over. During the Age of Chaos and Sigmar I'd assume natural birthing is greater than creation

[Lord of the Isle]

I’m pretty sure all Lumineth are in fact by definition from Slaanesh; glorious with a hidden flaw

[LuminethMage]

8 hours ago, Lord of the Isle said:

I’m pretty sure all Lumineth are in fact by definition from Slaanesh; glorious with a hidden flaw

Correct, all the other Hysh aelves, like presumably the original Phoenix Temple fled to Azyr during the Age of Myth, before Tyrion and Teclis woke up. 

Really doubtful about all the gods still syphoning souls, it’s not mentioned at all anywhere in the Lumineth book. Not even when they talk about Slaanesh escaping or in any other context. It’s just about keeping him chained. It would be also strange if Teclis after the Spirefall, when it became apparent that the Lumineth weren’t perfect, wouldn’t have tried to make yet another aelf race. Also in the context of the Spirefall, where they almost got wiped out, it wasn’t mentioned. 

Morathi is cheating anyway as we know, so she might be still doing something of course, because she took more than her share and isn’t a god (yet), so it might take her longer. 

But, let’s see, this topic should hopefully come up, in the current storyline and might show that in fact they are all still doing it, but to a lesser effect as Overread says. 

Edited November 7, 2020 by LuminethMage

[Icarion]

I tend to agree, with the thought that Since Malerion and Morathi were still extracting souls in the Malign portents short story. that it's likely the other Aelven Gods are too, although perhaps to a lesser extent. 

It's also entirely possible that the story in question takes place much earlier in the timeline of the realms to give context to the (at the time) Brand new concept of the Daughters of khaine and Idoneth Deepkin. I don't recall if in the conversation between Morathi and Malerion there was any comment which could place the story as chronologically set during the build up to soul wars era.

It worth remember that as per the IDK battletome, Slaanesh didn't just eat all the elves alive during the End times, he also raided the old Elven underworlds to eat the souls of every elf which had ever lived. So it definitely seems like their might enough souls to save that task is near enough to endless and I cannot imagine Tyron or Teclis being willing to say "that's enough" while their are still Aelf souls to save. 

 

[elfhead]

In BR Morathi, she goes into the belly of slaanesh and there are still a lot of souls in there. She seems to only take interest in elf souls of Phoenix kings but there are more still in there. I’d imagine Tyrion and Teclis would want to keep extracting souls. Not only to make more Lumineth, but simply to save their kin from the horror of Slaanesh. 
 

In the malign portents story morathi and Malerion throw a soul back in when it hisses ‘Teclis’. I always wondered who that soul could be and if it was mad at Teclis or simply recognizes his name. 

Edited April 10, 2021 by elfhead

[LuminethMage]

1 hour ago, elfhead said:

In BR Morathi, she goes into the belly of slaanesh and there are still a lot of souls in there. She seems to only take interest in elf souls of Phoenix kings but there are more still in there. I’d imagine Tyrion and Teclis would want to keep extracting souls. Not only to make more Lumineth, but simply to save their kin from the horror of Slaanesh. 
 

In the malign portents story morathi and Malerion throw a soul back in when it hisses ‘Teclis’. I always wondered who that soul could be and if it was mad at Teclis or simply recognizes his name. 

That was one of the interesting things in BR Morathi - that either on purpose, or because they couldn’t - they kept most of the most powerful souls within Slaanesh. 

The whole thing is a bit weird - it often sounds like they are finished with the soul extractions, except when they are not. They probably keep this open as a plot device. 

Didn’t Morathi also take some souls with her as presents for the Idoneth? 

Normally Lumineth souls at least seem to go to their own underworlds though, and aren’t sucked back into Slaanesh. 

[Marius au]

Yep, the souls she took were some Cythai (the original lummineth) which also raises the question do Aelf souls still end up in Slaanesh if they die now?

[LuminethMage]

25 minutes ago, Marius au said:

Yep, the souls she took were some Cythai (the original lummineth) which also raises the question do Aelf souls still end up in Slaanesh if they die now?

Lumineth seem not to - as it was mentioned in BR Teclis that Nagash destroys their afterlife, and that was one reason to get rid of him. 

DoK also don't seem to be afraid of this. It's not mentioned anywhere afaik. And the City aelves never came out of Slaanesh in the first place, so likely they don't either. 

So I think for most of them at least we can say that they don't.