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Soul Capsules
Implanted on arrival. Roughly egg-sized. Composition unknown. The material is classified, patented, and reportedly impervious to destruction. There have been no documented instances of a capsule being breached.
Some people say there’s a formula that can dissolve the capsule. Supposedly lost. The rumors claim its components were scattered across the galaxy to prevent their use. Fairy tales, mostly. Paranoia turned bedtime story. A whisper passed down during campfire tales. If you ask anybody, they'd laugh you off and tell you to dial your anxiety down and your chill to max. Just use the app, dawg.
Whatever the truth is, this much is fact: your capsule is you. If it breaks, you break. Usually, tampering with anyone's capsule is forbidden. Laws, regulations, punishment. Finding someone's capsule outside of their body is the equivalent of finding their corpse on the side of the road. Everyone is obligated to ensure a capsule makes its way to a printer ASAP.
But that's out in the real world. Here in town, accidents are bound to happen. A capsule could... "fall out". What happens if a character is alive? Or when another character touches one?
A body can live without its Soul Capsule for up to 24 hours, before it begins to fail. Characters feel empty, hollow. Emotions begin to feel dull. Sense of taste, smell, and touch begin to diminish. A ringing in your ears. Organs begin to fail.
When a Soul Capsule is touched by another, that person is flooded with the essence of whoever's soul is in the capsule. It can be overwhelming the first time; emotions that aren't yours, ideas and values you don't recognize. Everything that makes up you, but someone else. In your hands. You feel an overwhelming need to fix them, an innate sense that a soul without a body is wrong. In a deep, primal way you cannot explain. Most people find it best to wear gloves.
When someone tries to harm a Soul Capsule, they begin to behave in even stranger ways, as if unbeholden to the laws of physics. If you drop one, it seems almost liquid-like the way they flatten out, like a droplet of water that doesn't splash, before constituting itself back into the strange, glowing metallic orb.
Any attempt to crush the capsule, tools pass through it as if hollow. No force is transferred into the capsule, no matter the methodology.
If it is thrown, it stops an atom's width away from hitting and rebounds onto the one who threw it. When (not if) it hits them in the head as punishment, they are flooded with the essence if the soul they threw and they will adamantly believe they are that person for 24 hours.
You drop it into a blackhole (SOMEHOW) and it is rejected. Space-time doesn't bend, it crinkles around the capsule. "Holy shit, it fell into the singularity and bounced!"- [REDACTED]
Body Printing
When you die, and you will, you'll wake up again inside town hall, which houses the printer. It’s the only thing in there that looks new. A single machine sits in the center of the main room, box-shaped and humming.
There’s a slot on top. You insert your capsule and the process begins immediately.
A new body is assembled on a conveyor platform. It takes roughly 1 hour. Printed fresh. Clean. Intact. Good as new. Until it’s not.
Unless...
You decide how weird it gets, because someone, somewhere is always fiddling with a knob or pressing the wrong button.
Your body comes back better than you remember it. That old itchy scar, that leg that never healed right, suddenly gone or in perfect condition. A leg where there shouldn't be. Your sight restored, your lungs healthy.
A leg where there really shouldn't be. An extra arm. An extra toe. Just for this loop, as a treat.
OPTIONAL - SOUL DEATH: A SOFT REBOOT (CLICK MEEE)
Soul Death isn’t just a plot consequence. It’s also an optional soft reboot mechanic available to any character who has been active in-game for at least six months.
If your character feels directionless, irreparably traumatized, or like their story has naturally reached a close, you’re free to retire them through complete Soul Death. That version of them is considered permanently gone.
But the Multiverse is infinite. A new version can always be pulled in. Maybe they’re exactly the same, except this time, they grabbed a muffin instead of a bagel on the day everything changed. Maybe their powers are a little different. Their past slightly altered. Or their outlook shifted just enough to feel fresh.
These replacements must stay recognizable. Subtle AU changes only. Think of it like a parallel branch of the same person, trimmed and rebooted to fit new ideas. A new path for an old soul.
If you’d like to do this, just message the mods. We’ll coordinate how your old version is removed and help welcome the new one.
You are not meant to die this many times. Your soul is not supposed to be used like this.
Signs vary. The body begins to come back wrong. Scar tissue that shouldn’t exist. Phantom injuries. Skin that doesn’t match memory. Muscle tone shifts. Something in the eyes that doesn’t quite reflect the way it used to.
Then the soul begins to go. Emotional regulation weakens. Mood swings. Sudden depression. Joy that feels forced. The soul is struggling to anchor.
Late-stage soul death is unmistakable. Chronic pain. Memory gaps. Loss of coordination. Lingering fog that doesn’t lift. The body begins to reject the process. Each resurrection is harder than the last. Until, eventually, the soul can no longer take it. The Capsule ruptures and explodes, a force powerful enough to turn the body into spray. A force powerful enough to collapse a small house and leave a crater... certainly powerful enough to kill anyone nearby. Imagine the destructive power of more than one going off all at once. Impossible... right?
