[Spoilers for all of the books, of course. You have been warned.]
Some speculation concerning Serioli artifacts & souls.
[These ideas may be completely wrong. You have been warned.]
I had a thought - which might have been obvious to others -
about the nature of the "strength" of Morganti weapons, which
lead inevitably to other notions about what we've seen in the
various Dragaera books regarding souls.
Since the strength of a Morganti weapon seems to be unrelated
to its size (c.f., a "weak" Morganti greatsword (Drg), or a very
"strong" Morganti dagger (Iss)), perhaps that quality of strength
might be compared to an attracting force, such as gravity - a
Morganti blade "pulls" on any soul close by, or perhaps on that
part of the soul that extends out from the body (what mystics
in our world would call the aura); hence the deep disturbance
felt by those who come near them.
Gravity, of course, is an inaccurate analogy. If it were, the
greatsword concealing Pathfinder should not have been able to
do so - it would have simply added to the "pull" of the Great
Weapon. But perhaps the nature of that "pull" is such that one
can mask another.
Part of the problem is we don't really know what a soul *is*. How are
souls created? Where do they come from (is there some central
repository of life essence)? Are souls created at all, and if not can
they even be destroyed? Maybe souls can split, and that's how new
souls are created (and perhaps that's how they can be destroyed as
well - split so finely that they no longer have anything like their
original nature). Where do they go after death?
Well, some souls go to the Paths of the Dead, where the Lords of
Judgment try and figure out what they want to do with them, and some
souls go to limbo. Yet they seem to retain some sort of cohesion,
even in limbo, otherwise, how could reincarnation take place? This
travel (to either the Paths of the Dead or to limbo) does not appear
to happen immediately, so for a certain amount of time (approximately
3 days), the soul stays "near" the body.
It is noted that if someone is killed in a mundane fashion, using a
Morganti weapon on the corpse doesn't harm the soul. Perhaps normal
death transforms the soul, which is to say, translates it in a
direction that the Morganti weapon can't reach, or, to use a quantum
mechanical analogy, perhaps it is more like a neutrino of one type
transforming into another type, one of which has mass (and is
therefore affected by gravity), and one of which doesn't, and
therefore, revivification is possible by reversing the transform.
Let's say souls *can't* be destroyed, and hypothesize about what
Morganti weapons actually do assuming that is the case: What
the Morganti weapons are actually doing is taking the soul and
transferring it to somewhere else - some dimension that is
completely outside of the reality of Dragaera, such that it
cannot ever hope to return. In support of this idea, I note that
when the Serioli that Vlad and Morrolan met was discussing Blackwand
(Magical-Wand-for-Creating-Death-in-the-Form-of-a-Black-Sword), he
suggested that instead of "creating death", a closer translation would
be "removing life-substance" or (and this is what really supports my
notion) "sending the life-substance to..." (and he unfortunately fails
to complete the sentence).
Now, my notion may be wrong because perhaps the Serioli is only
describing how *Blackwand* behaves (although I note that given
the above full name, perhaps Blackwand is actually the very first
Morganti weapon created, or the strongest Morganti weapon ever
created (a black hole to a regular Morganti weapon's mere planetary
gravity). Or perhaps my notion is completely wrong because the
final word that the Serioli was about to say was something like
"annihilation".
In Issola, we actually *see* a Morganti weapon acting on a soul, and
>from the description, it sounds like the soul is shredded and then
stored. Well, that doesn't quite contradict my notion. Perhaps each
Morganti weapon has a pocket dimension for storing the souls that it
pulls in and shreds. From the point of view of the outside world,
it would certainly seem like the soul was destroyed. But if the
Morganti weapon were properly destroyed, perhaps the soul-shreds
captive within could be released. This may not be useful, other
than releasing the life-essence to be reincarnated, but it might
still be better than having them trapped forever.
Some thoughts about the events in "Taltos": When Aliera's soul is
captive in a staff, some have questioned why it was necessary to
petition the Lords of Judgment so quickly - couldn't the expedition
have waited until Sethra could go herself, or at least join Vlad?
But I noticed that when Vlad asked "What is the state of her soul
at the moment?", Sethra starts talking about Morganti weapons, which
makes me think that Aliera's soul was in danger of being lost to them
forever (like the soul of someone more than 3 days dead) or destroyed
(like a soul shredded (or transported) by a Morganti weapon). Perhaps
the staff was doing very slowly what a Morganti weapon would do?
Another question that arose from "Taltos" in "Athyra": How did Loraan
come to be undead when his soul was presumably consumed by Blackwand?
When Vlad and Morrolan killed Loraan, I think Morrolan must have
thought, "We may need him to undo whatever was done to Aliera",
and told Blackwand "Hold his soul but don't shred it". That
seems sort of obvious, but what happens next? Well, here's a few
ideas:
1) Loraan, being a necromancer, has sorcerous machinations in place
which are meant to pull his soul in if it ever became detached
from his body. Those mechanisms came into play, and slowly
reeled Loraan's soul back to its body. Of course, more than
3 days had passed, so either the soul or the body or both had
changed to the point where he could no longer go in living
as a "normal" entity.
2) Morrolan took Blackwand to the Paths of the Dead, which has its
own pull on souls. Perhaps Blackwand would have been able to
hold on to Loraan's soul indefinitely in most cases, but was
unable to do so in the Paths of the Dead, which are by definition
where souls go to anyway. From there, Loraan's hypothetical
necromantic soul retrieval routines took effect, or he had his own
little adventure with the Lords of Judgment.
3) While in the Paths of the Dead, Morrolan fought the a Dragon and
killed her, but (presumably) didn't shred her soul because
"[Blackwand] does what he tells her to". Then he fights several
other Dragons at once because Vlad has bollixed things up. Perhaps
Blackwand couldn't juggle 2 sets of instructions for multiple
different souls, and lost hold of Loraan at that point.
A thought about Jenoine souls: Ignoring the whole question of
what happens after the Great Weapon pulls in the soul, the notion
of a Morganti "gravity" might explain why the Jenoine are so tough,
yet vulnerable to Morganti (Great) Weapons - they have a personal
"gravity" on their souls, or some form of "gravity" nullification,
that is sufficiently powerful that even the Greatest of Weapons
can't affect them unless the Jenoine is distracted to the point
where his control over his soul slips.
A thought about Iceflame: As long as I am speculating about Great
Weapons, I wonder if Iceflame's name is a broad hint towards its
special property, which might have something to do with control over
thermodynamics - a Maxwell's Demon, as it were. In fact, I wonder
if *that* is why Sethra has lived so long (and needs to eat so little,
even as a vampire): Iceflame grants her direct control over entropy,
at least on a personal scale.