Warning! The post which you are about to read contains postulation, assumptions, terrible analogies and walls of text. Everything which you read here should be taken with a large chunk of rock salt. TLDR at the bottom of the post.

Since not a whole lot is known about the Soulborn engine and how it works I decided, in a temporary fit of insanity, to take it upon myself to present a detailed explanation of how something like the Soulborn engine might possibly work. Keep in mind that since this is written entirely from the top of my head, things may not always make sense, and I can almost guarantee that the contents of this post will not be wholly accurate to the game itself. My goal is to give people an idea of "how can a computer give me an interesting story?".

From this point on, I will be using "the Soulborn Engine" and "the Engine" interchangeably.

If you've made it this far, I'm assuming you're on board the crazy train, so let's get started.

Part 1: What is the Soulborn Engine's role in the game?

If Chronicles of Elyria were a tabletop RPG, the Engine would be the Dungeon Master. The greatest Dungeon Master ever, managing thousands of sessions simultaneously within the same world. The Engine's job is to facilitate the telling of stories. Due to Elyria being a MMORPG, the Engine doesn't necessarily need to do anything in this regard as players can have encounters with each other which create stories.

Instead of lining up encounters and skill checks for players to do at all times, the Engine can hang back and watch for people whose stories are going stale, and start dropping some plot hooks by manipulating the world around them.

Part 2: The Agenda

The Engine has two primary goals:

1) Advance the Grand Story (if it even exists!)

2) Facilitate the creation of interesting side stories

On the former, nobody really knows what the Grand Story will be besides SBS, but the Engine will try its best to slowly drive us along this path as needed. I see this as either the higher order conflicts between kingdoms (Civilization style), or potentially something of a more sinister, PvE nature like the awakening of the Old Gods

On the latter, the Engine is always watching players' lives unfold. While players will likely be creating a lot of stories on their own, the Engine will occasionally have to step in and shake things up.

The engine will, of course, always look for an opportunity to advance its agenda.

Part 3: What makes a story?

At its absolute simplest, a story is the encounter and resolution of a conflict of any kind. Conflicts can be a fight (mann vs mann), hunting (mann vs beast), traversing a landscape (mann vs Elyria), moral quandaries or physical injuries (mann vs self) or anything in between.

Plot hooks lead to encounters, which contain conflicts that, through the act of resolution, develop your character. Character Development in this sense can refer to both RP character personality development, and also mechanical character deveopment in the form of skill increases.

Part 4: Life, Mathified

If there's any one thing computers are good at, it is math. As such, the best way for the Engine to work with people is through turning "Life" into math.

For the sake of explanation, let's assume we have a chicken farmer. At daybreak Elyrian Time, he goes out to feed his chickens, then collect their eggs. He lets them out shortly after so he can clean the pen. At noon Elyrian Time he goes into the city to trade his eggs for some goods at Carl's General Store. At sundown Elyrian Time, he brings his chickens in, has dinner and goes to sleep.

Each action, time, location, and object can be assigned some numeric value. For example: daybreak (06:00), feed chicken (action 128 on object 15347), at some farm (latitude 45.76, longitude -23.8) We can turn this into a useable number through some (completely arbitrary) math.

600+(15347 mod 128)*(45.76/23.80) which is roughly 821.

From here we can let statistics take over, and look for a certain percentage variation in this chicken farmer's life. A large variation might be that the chicken farmer doesn't go to Carl's General Store that day and instead visits a travelling merchant, while a small variation might be that he checks the chickens' nests for eggs in a different order.

I'm not great with statistics, so I don't know how exactly that kind of thing works, also the equation I used is probably terrible.

If the engine sees little variation in a character's daily activities over however long a period, it may decide to step in to spice things up.

Part 5: What can the Engine do?

Looping back to the analogy that the Engine is Elyria's Dungeon Master, it has direct influence over just about every aspect of the game. Through the use of some arcanery involving your soul, sign, birth date, and powdered Dryas Elk horns, it can decide on a set of plot hooks which make up your "destiny", the things the Engine would like for you to do. Of course, it can use more hooks than just that. It can also make hooks based on your activities and the activities of those around you.

Take our chicken farmer from the last part. His "destiny" might be to be a Trison breeder, so one particularly dull day the Engine coerces a stray Trison onto his farm and it just throws a chicken at him because it's a jerk. Alternatively, he might discover that one of his chickens is molting early and has contracted some kind of pox (sorry not sorry) and needs to do something to keep the malady from spreading.

Plot hooks can take all kinds of forms, and are likely to be the only direct interaction the Engine has with the world. I personally don't believe the Engine will directly manipulate things most of the time, instead preferring to simply push things in a certain way. The exceptions being natural disasters and talents.

Natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, locust clouds, etc.) are certainly very good plot devices, but they affect a massive amount of people, and as such should be reserved for creating story at a higher order than the person, or even the hamlet.

Talents on the other hand, are massive plot devices, and will affect everything a Talented person is associated with, right up to the highest order of play. Though not quite apocalypse level, the sheer existence of a Talented person will send waves throughout society. I personally view Talents as a reward for exceptional RP, with a smattering of "destiny". If you set yourself apart from others through your stories, or maybe advance the Engine's agenda, the Engine/SBS may decide "hey, this guy deserves a Talent because he'd make good stories with it, also destiny says he was born with one"

Part 6: Conclusion

TLDR; The Soulborn Engine is the Dungeon Master of Chronicles of Elyria, it facilitiates the telling of stories and does its best to keep things interesting for everyone in the world. Because Math and Destiny

If you've made it this far, Congratulations! You're just as crazy as I am! I hope this post has helped give inquiring minds an idea of just how the Engine might work, or at the very least provokes some thought on the subject.