A soul is the character. It's what records your character's development, notably skills, that can then pass on into the next lifetime and is used to accelerate relearning of the skills you knew in a previous life.

A spark is the life. It's what buys your character the 12 months of play time over which they live, grow and die. This can be shorter than 12 months if you die and die often. Once you can no longer spirit walk to reach your body, your spark expires and life ends.

Here's a very early example of the Soul Selection page, which most of us would know as the Character Selection page.

The souls you get in the pledges are more of these. The reason this is nice isn't just in case you want to start over again, but because each soul is randomized. Some might be combat based. Some might be crafting based. Some might even be "older souls" (which makes them stronger). So the more options you have, the more likely you are to start with a soul that has the skill experience you prefer.

Good question, by the way.

a soul is basically a character slot.

Like Galliad said, the Souls are character slots basically, the Sparks of Life are your subscription or length of time in your characters 'life'.

The more you die on that character the shorter your Spark/Spirit and subscription length becomes and once it runs out (or if you dive into a volcano lol) that character is 'perma dead' but the soul lives on and can be reused in another character enhancing it's ability to learn skills.

Posted By Hieronymus at 11:38 AM - Mon Jan 14 2019

A soul is the character. It's what records your character's development, notably skills, that can then pass on into the next lifetime and is used to accelerate relearning of the skills you knew in a previous life.

A spark is the life. It's what buys your character the 12 months of play time over which they live, grow and die. This can be shorter than 12 months if you die and die often. Once you can no longer spirit walk to reach your body, your spark expires and life ends.

To add to Sintax reply, the soul also records the decision you made during your lifetime. A measure of how good /bad in short. The story engine will then offer you story archs based on that info in your lifetime.

When you create a character you get to select a soul from your list of available souls to put into that character. The soul will contain skill ranks. When you finish creating the character and begin play, a spark is activated with a set timeline until expiration. That is your characters life.

When your character finally dies, the spark is used up. The soul that you had selected for that character returns to the list of souls you own. it retains the skill ranks, at least partially, that it learned while attached to your previous character.

Now you can create a new character. You have the option to put that same soul in the character or a different one. When finished you need to use another spark to start playing again.

You can have more than one active character at a time but each one will need it's own soul and a spark to bring it to life.

Some say its a character slot, others say it is their version of a sub. Yet, pretty much how I explain it to my guys is that it is a periodically forced re-roll for yourself. That allows you to keep some of your skills, as well as allowing you the chance to gain new ones. So if you have three you get your first roll, then you have two force re-rolls later to use, or you can make three different characters. Yet the idea of this game isn't for alts what I can tell. Its for you to focus on one and play that souls "story" from birth to death.

We have a ton of people that can answer questions like this for you in Darkholm. Please message for the discord if you would like an invite.

The majority of players who will be using alternate souls will either be the nobles wanting to go and do a bit of exploring without risking their main character's, or those trying to hide their other character's criminal actions.

This is a deep philosophical question that will be pondered by the professors in colleges opened in Elyria for the entire five hundred year scope of its future history. Entire forests of virtual trees will be chopped down just for the paper needed to scribe those works.

Short answer, COE has reincarnation. Sparks of Life are what cause souls to reincarnate, and souls are what tie the reincarnated lives together.

Souls