The soul (魂, tamashii?) is a record that acts as the blueprint of the body.[1]
Nature
The soul is the second element.[citation needed] It is something independent from the body, not belonging to the same material world. It is an existence of a higher order in concept of the astral plane, acting as a record of the body containing the memories, mind, and Magic Circuits. The body itself can be called a terminal for the soul to move around, and the soul itself can be considered an invincible command structure.[1][2] While the body itself possesses a record of its composition in its genes that allows it to heal itself, that blueprint is not applicable when a person has lost their original body. The soul itself contains a record, the "genes of the soul", that allows both the body and its genes to be restored even if they are lost, should the person take another vessel.[1][2] Souls are the only existences that are eternal in the material world, but they are unable to remain in the world by themselves without a container like a body. Once it is fixated in a body, the soul is destined with "eventual death."[3] In that state, time affects even such ethereal bodies, so the soul can start to rot, corrupting even the body's blueprint. The person inhabiting a new body can only take their own form, overwriting the body no matter its quality, and that form will degrade more quickly as the rot progresses.[1][2]
The Dress of Heaven can materialize a soul for a few seconds, allowing a human soul to be put into another container like a doll.[4]
It is a general rule that the human body can only hold a single soul.[5]
The Hundred-Faced Hassan was born with a compartmentalized soul despite having a singular physical body, resulting in them manifesting as multiple personalities in life much like multiple personality disorder. As each is a different soul with a unique personality, they are able to manifest in different shapes once they are no longer bound by his living body as a Heroic Spirit. [6][7]
It is possible for some magi to use reincarnation, creating an offspring with their soul after their death. The process is difficult, and if they are unable to inherit all of their previous self's power, they can only be called a copy rather than reincarnation. This copy, degraded by its very nature, will be inferior to the magus' previous self.[3]
It is impossible for a magus to give shape to the soul, requiring a powerful artifact like the Holy Grail to assist them in being able to recreate a soul and give it a body.[8]
The resurrection and restoration of soul are divine mysteries that can only be performed with Magic.[9]
The Third Magic allows for the materialization of the soul, bringing about an immortal existence of a higher dimension able to take a spiritual form while influencing the physical world. Part of it is used to bring forth Servants, but since its true purpose is not to duplicate a soul perceived in the past, it is an intentionally imperfect method and materialized souls given spiritual form are not considered alive as part of the current world or timeline.[10]
When the body dies, the soul disperses and gradually fades away back to the Root to be recycled. This also applies to Servants, and magi need to feed them with Magical Energy to maintain them - something that shouldn't be doable normally on one's own, unless backed up by the Great Grail. This applies again when the Servant is killed, but the Holy Grail is here to store them temporarily to power the Great Grail.
vampirization - that is, making the flesh undead - is a way to prolong the soul after the death of the body; yet, the soul still decays. Vampires need to drink the blood of humans to maintain their body, and thus, their soul.[11]
The core that binds the soul is the head - the brain. It is said that there are three parts required for a lifeform: the soul, the brain, and the body. The brain keeps the soul anchored to the body. The soul can reshape itself with the brain and the body. Usually, it is said that destroying either two out of these three is required to completely kill someone. In the case of a vampire, it seems the vampirization, which transforms the soul, can bypass the necessity of the brain to hold the soul: after a while, vampires can regenerate their body, and thus, their brain, to maintain the soul.
Michael Roa Valdamjong is probably the only one who ever succeeded in turning the unchangeable soul to a changeable information; it is how he acquired his nickname of Infinite Reincarnator (転生無限者, Tensei Mugensha?). However, revival of the soul is difficult, and what really transmigrates is his tenacity more than the actual Roa.
As he can't actually transfer the whole 100% of his abilities, he reproduces them, and always ends up inferior to the previous incarnation.
Souls are noted to have color, at least in the case of Gilgamesh and his soul that glows golden.[12]
Magecraft and conversion
As their privilege of being Spiritual beings, wraiths and Servants, and beings like unicorns, have the ability to convert souls into magical energy to act as nourishment.[13][14][15] While magi believe them to exist and they act as a necessary element for performing magecraft, they have been considered hard to handle since ancient times. They are simply viewed as "things to be investigated" and "things to be moved into containers", only allowing them to be moved between vessels, rather than having any applicable use in such a state. They cannot be converted and transformed with magecraft, and as they cannot act as nourishment to humans or be converted to anything else, the ability to harvest them would prove meaningless to anything other than a spiritual being.[13][15]
It is said by magi that only one magus has ever truly understood the soul.[13] Other people include:
- Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia, devoting his attention into studying the soul due to having interacted with a Servant, has found a way to turn the souls of other humans into nourishment for himself. Compared to spirits that can do so without issue, it is a dangerous ritual for a human that can lead to death if even slightly off, and the result of multiple rituals will end in his very identity being overwritten.[15]
- Michael Roa Valdamjong has taken the soul, incalculable and something that instantly disperses upon leaving the body, and processed as something that can be "transmitted."[16]
Purity and weight
The souls of humans are pure and sturdy as infants, and they are dyed with their experiences in life, each year of accumulated experience adding to it. Beings created in an already-matured state like most homunculi have empty souls bereft of any such experience, keeping the same initial purity.[15] Given enough time, even the soul itself can begin to rot along with the body.[1] In the case of possession, the experience of the souls of the two will mix, becoming jammed and clashing due to a lack of compatibility. Only those like homunculi that lack such experience can do such without rejection.[15] While Heroic Spirits can take in the souls of others as sustenance without impunity, humans performing the same will begin to have the precision ratio of their body and soul start to reduce, eventually leaving them as "someone else" should they continue the process enough times. While that person will share the same memories and have every detail of the person perfectly recorded, that new person will still not be "them."[15]
Heroic Spirits are considered souls of the greatest purity among humans, said to be vast and overwhelming compared to living humans, that can fill the Greater Grail with only seven.[17][15] Gilgamesh in particular is noted to be worth hundreds of thousands of human souls, and he alone is enough to fill the rest of a Lesser Grail when only the souls of four Servants have been consumed compared to the required seven.[18][19] Compared to the souls of humans, those of Heroic Spirits are completely different in all aspects, greater in purity, density, strength, and solidity. For one to possess a human for even one second is considered a miracle, and the idea of taking in souls of such density is impossible for a normal person who would be unable to endure them.[15] With the specially created vessels of the Einzberns, they can take in the souls of seven while slowly losing human functions.[5] With the backing of a Command Spell and the lack of his experience in his soul, Sieg is able to take in Siegfried's soul for three minutes at a time, and while Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia cannot actually devour the soul of Lancer of Black, he takes it in and engraves his very existence on Lancer's soul due to a number of circumstances.[15]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Heaven's Feel - Day 7 - Gap between the two / Madness
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Heaven's Feel - Epilogue - Return to the Spring
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Heaven's Feel route day 06 - Winter castle - Ilya (II)
- ↑
[] Fate/side material - Encyclopedia: Dress of Heaven [Armament], p.067 [T] Dress of Heaven [Armament]
A magical artifact passed down by the Einzberns.
As the heart that governs the Great Holy Grail, it is imbued with sorcery that can materialize the soul for just a few seconds.
Though the dress is pure white, it is actually made of gold. It is inlaid with seven "rings" said to control creation, and the souls of others.
The seven holes in the dress are the seven transformed rings, and they are designed to light up one by one every time a Servant's soul is harvested.
Since any human who touches the dress will be turned to gold, its management must be handled by elementals, demi-humans, or homunculi.天のドレス【武装】
アインツベルンに伝わる魔術兵装。
大聖杯を製御する心臓にして、魂を数秒だけ物質化させる魔術を帯びている。
純白のドレスだが、材質は黄金。万物・他人の魂を支配するといわれる“指輪"を七つはめ込んでいる。
七つの孔は指輪が変形したもので、サーヴァントの 魂が収納される度に一つずつ光を帯びていく仕掛け。
人間が触ると黄金になってしまう為、運営は精霊や小人、ホムンクルスでなければならない。 - ↑ 5.0 5.1 Heaven's Feel route day 13 - Gift
- ↑
[] Fate/Zero material - Encyclopedia: Hundred-Faced Hassan [Servant], p.103 Hundred-Faced Hassan [Servant]
The Assassin Heroic Spirit who participated in the Fourth Holy Grail War. One of the "Old Man of the Mountain" amongst the generations of Hassan-i Sabbah.
He was an exception in Hassans, as he did not undergo the body modification called "Zabaniya". Instead, he took advantage of his affliction of Multiple Personality Disorder and acted as an assassin without a true identity.
When summoned as a spiritual entity and emerged as a Servant, segments of his compartmentalized soul each materialized as an individual. However, due to the potential of the spirit being only that of one person, the abilities of the Assassins produced by the division were extremely low, reaching the nadir of the capabilities of Servants.
In addition, each personality has his strengths and weaknesses. Among them, there are impatient glory-hounds who ignore orders like fools, and individuals who are terrible at ambushes despite being assassins. However, if one can comprehend their characteristics and apply their skills in the right situations, the Hundred-Faced Hassan can be a very dangerous Servant. Unfortunately, because his Master had no intention of winning the war, he was damned to the fate of a voyeur.
The Hundred-Faced Hassan was summoned by Kotomine Kirei when he was still a lackey of Tokiomi Tohsaka, thus he was truly a servant of a servant. Even so, he still harboured a wish that he hoped the Grail could grant (by the way, it was "to have a perfect and unified personality"). He even plotted to hijack the Holy Grail before Kirei and Tokiomi, had the war have gone in their favour. However, in the end he did not even have a chance to show his rebellious side before becoming the first Servant eliminated from the war.百の貌のハサン【サーヴァント】
第四次聖杯戦争に参加したアサシンの英霊。歴代のハサン・サッバーハを襲名した『山の翁』の一人。
『ザバーニーヤ』たる肉体改造を行っていない異例のハサンであり、自らが患っていた多重人格障害を逆手にとって活用することで、正体不明の暗殺者として活躍していた。
霊体として召喚され、サーヴァントとして現界する過程で、分断された魂のすべてについて別個の実体化を果たしている。ただし元々の霊的ポテンシャルはあくまで一人分しかないため、分割された個々のアサシンは、能力の点では極めて低く、サーヴァントとして通用する最低レベルの力しか持っていない。
また各々の『別人格』は得手不得手についてもまちまちで、中には功を焦って命令を無視するお馬鹿さんや、アサシンのくせに不意打ちで失敗するダメっ子とかも含まれる。彼らの個性をすべて把握し、適材適所を考えて計画的に運用した場合には絶大な脅威となるサーヴァントだが、そこまで本気で勝ちを狙う意図がマスターになかったせいで、ひたすらピーピング一筋に徹する羽目になる。
まだ遠坂時臣の走狗にすぎなかった頃の言峰綺礼によって召喚され、いわば下僕の下僕という損な役回りに甘んじるしかなかった4thハサンだが、実はちゃんと聖杯を求める秘めたる想いは持ち合わせており（ちなみに悲願は『統合された完璧な人格』）戦いが佳境を越えたら綺礼や時臣を出し抜いて聖杯を横取りする心算ですらあった。が、結局はそんな翻心を露わにする暇すらなく、第4次聖杯戦争における最初の脱落者となる。 - ↑ Fate/Zero - volume 2
- ↑ Unlimited Blade Works - Day 3 - First Command Spell
- ↑ Heaven's Feel route day 10 - Artificial Phantasm
- ↑ Heaven's Feel route day 15 - Truth - Antihero Angra Manyu
- ↑
[] Tsukihime Dokuhon PlusPeriod - TSUKIHIME Dictionary: Vampire [Term], p.178 Vampire [Term]
A general term for those that suck human blood. Refers specifically to the Dead Apostles, or those that have become bloodsuckers because of them.
The vampires in Tsukihime extract human blood to maintain their own flesh. If, during this process, the vampire injects their own blood into their human prey, that human will be unable to peacefully pass away. For a normal person, death will still find them before long regardless. However, on rare occasions, if the victim has high physical potential and the capacity of their soul is excellent, they will remain in the world of the living.
Afterward, their corpse is interred, and left alone for several years. During this time their brain melts, their soul is liberated from the cage of the body, and finally they arise as a kind of living dead called a "ghoul".
As a ghoul, they feed on the corpses sleeping in the graves around them to supplement their own missing flesh, restoring their physical body little by little. After many years of this, they will eventually regain their brain and intelligence. At this stage, they can finally be called a "vampire".
However, although this new vampire can move by their own will, they cannot escape from the rule of their sire's blood. Finally, after spending decades acclimating to life in the darkness, the vampire will begin attacking humans to create servants of their very own, while remaining subservient to the vampire that made them.
In order to obstruct this infinite cycle, the Church created the Burial Agency, Inquisitors that exist to slay Dead Apostles. The Burial Agency's goal is the utter eradication of all vampires, and the sealing of the 27 Ancestors that made them.吸血鬼【用語】
- ↑
[] Fate/side material - Encyclopedia: Gold-glitter [Others], p.059 [T] Gold-glitter [Others]
The name Rin called Gilgamesh when she saw him.
Gil was called "golden" not only because of his armour when he was fully armed, but also the fact that his soul glowed golden.
The wealthiest character in this story, our Gil.
His compatibility with large-spender Rin was the greatest, but that was the secret just between you and me.金ピカ【その他】
凛から見たギルガメッシュのコト。
ギルが“黄金の"と称されるのは完全武装時の甲骨からだけではなく、その魂の色が黄金だからである。
本騙中最高のお金持ちであるギルっち。
金のかかる女・凛との相性が最高にいいというのはボクラだけの秘密だぞっ - ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Fate/stay night - Prologue day 3
- ↑
[] Tsukihime Dokuhon PlusPeriod - TSUKIHIME Dictionary: Seventh Holy Scripture [Weapon name], p.184 Seventh Holy Scripture [Weapon name]
The conceptual armament that Ciel is authorized to carry. An iron hammer created by the Church in order to renounce the heretical doctrine of transmigration.
It was created by felling a miraculous beast said to consume souls, then using its horn as a key. The surface of the horn is inscribed with tightly-packed complaints about how "transmigration is really lame".
Since it's been almost a thousand years since it was first created, it even has an elemental living within it.
It was sanctified over the course of many years, but eventually fell into Ciel's hands.
"A horn!? That's not practical at all. The higher-ups are totally out of touch!"
Unable to hold herself back, she set about improving it, and because of that the Scripture's elemental ended up having the essence of its personality warped.
Before Ciel remodeled it, it was only effective against spiritual entities. Now, however, it has been transformed into a lump of iron that can pound a vampire to death with its physical attack power alone. It has a gross weight of 60 kilograms, and a maximum weight of twice that with optional attachments. It's a… Gatling scripture!?第七聖典【武器名】
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 15.7 15.8 Fate/Apocrypha - volume 2
- ↑ Tsukihime - Arcueid route
- ↑
[] Fate/side material - Encyclopedia: Servant [Magecraft], p.061 [T] Servant [Magecraft]
The Heroic Spirits summoned by the Holy Grail. They fell under the "Familiar" classification.
Seven Classes (only) were designated in advance. They were souls of the greatest purity called forth by using relics tied to the specific Heroic Spirits.
Originally they were not existences that could be controlled by mere humans, but they were forced to cooperate with the Masters due to the Command Spells. These Command Spells represented Masters' right to rule. For Servants, obedience towards the Command Spells were "the absolute condition required for materialization".
Servants could revert to Spiritual Form at any time. While in Spiritual Form, they could pass through inorganic matters that lack mana.
During Lancer's surprise drop attack from the ceilings at the Emiya residence, he phased through the roof and entered the living room. He then materialized after clearing the ceiling.
While in Spiritual Form, Servants were not affected by physical interference. However, their abilities to affect the material world decreased. As a result, it was considered advantageous to materialize during combat.サーヴァント【魔術】
聖杯によって召喚された英霊たち。分類的には使い魔になる。
予め七つのクラス（筐）を用意し、英霊を繋ぎ止める依り代を利用して呼び出される最高純度の魂。
本来人間に御しえるモノではないが、召喚される時に刻まれる『現界のための絶対条件』として命令権を背負わされる為、マスターとは協力関係を余儀なくされる。
任意で霊体になる事も可能で、霊体時はマナの薄い無機物をすり抜ける事も可能。
衛宮邸を奇襲したランサーが天井から降ってきたのは、屋根から居間へすり抜け、居間の天井あたりで実体化した為。
霊体のままなら通常干渉を受け付けないが、現世への干渉力が落ちるため、戦闘時は実体化していた方が有利とされる。 - ↑ Heaven's Feel route day 12 - Nightmare, awakening
- ↑ Heaven's Feel route day 13 - Misery