1. The ramps would carry over but by not utilizing them for a full life they would not be as high the next life. You wouldn't get the full benefit from them but depending on how advanced you were they could still be available in some form.

2. If you leave the family open and spark into a ward or another open family it's very possible someone could through their choices at character creation spark into your decendant. Your family will never leave the game and after a few generations they would be available for anyone to join. Now after you die and need a new body if there is a place open you could spark back into your original bloodline.

Firstly, welcome to the community dapperdragon

In answer to your questions.

1) Skills are connected to your soul so if you were to use the same soul with each incarnation, then yes it would be possible to learn those skills quicker in your new lives. However, if you were to use a new soul then you would be starting from scratch and the skills don't carry over.

2) No, you wouldn't have to abandon your family. You would have the option to leave a character in that family and begin a new soul for a different tribe. If you wanted to continue on with the same soul as you explored a new tribe. Then it is my understanding that it is possible you won't be able to return to your bloodline family until there is a child available to possess, or you are given a child code for that family.

1)

• Souls possess skill ramps, characters don't, but characters take advantage of skill ramps it's soul has got. Skill ramps are build up over multiple lives the soul has experienced where the most recent life has got the biggest influence on the skill ramps and the previous lives gradually decrease in their effect on the skill ramps the more distant they are.
• Souls have got skill ramps from past lives. So you may want to choose a different soul (that suits your needs in terms of skill ramps) for every new life where skills diverge too much from one another. However while you start with 3 souls on your account, additional souls would have to be purchased separately with the current system we know of at pre-alpha.
  As newly bought souls are adjusted in skill ramps to allow new players to compete when joining the game late, a new soul doesn't necessarily mean you have to start from scratch, but you'll probably be somewhat behind in skill progression in comparison to the very determinated, diligent players who play regularily.
  However it doesn't matter too much unless you play the game for it's competitive side. In that case you may want to stick with a family to min/max your skill ramp in the best way possible and stick to a small number of professions.

2)

Locking characters is described in this DJ:

• Like mystichaze said, an additional character of your own or a friend's character within the family can lock a direct descendent (child, grandchild) of yours/his for you to return to that family as one of those children, grandchildren. They also know the NPC codes for cousins, uncles, aunts etc. within that family if they're not in a close relationship to the character of a new player who joins the family.
• There is currently only a way to lock your children, grandchildren etc. (that is direct descendents) of your family. Your parents are automatically locked if they are NPCs at the time you join the family. However more distant relatives such as uncles, aunts and cousins cannot be locked by you, but you'll be able to see their character codes and can use that knowledge to have friends take over those characters by inserting the correct code upon entering the world with a soul.
• I'm looking into for how long locking persists. Will update this as soon as I know for sure.

Thank you guys for the response! For some reason I didn't expect anyone to get back to me for a few days.

I think I assumed at some point that I would only be playing one character. It makes a lot more sense if I have one character that's "creating a dynasty" and one or two more for exploring the world like I mentioned.

This looks like a great community. I really have no idea whether or not it's typical for a game to already have this kind of following when it won't come out for another few years.