Prince A'tor was soul-trapped, and they attempted to release him into (a new? his original?) body (Redguard). Mere-Glim was also soul-trapped and released into a new body (Lord of Souls).

Well, that's sort of the point of a mortal/immortal soul dichotomy - only the immortal soul has your personality, and the mortal soul is just energy and soulstuff that performs a function for your immortal soul. Sort of like the food you eat becoming part of your physical body, but the contents of your stomach being different from your brain, even if they are both physically part of your body. The necromancer could steal other people's mortal souls to keep his own immortal soul considered "alive", and they'd just be dead, and his own mortal soul would have slipped away.

Oh, crap, there's an entire set of canon novels I have to read to catch up on the lore now?

I don't suppose you could give more information relevant to the conversation on how these things work?

Most of what I know comes from pvssyr here, and TIL's lore notes. http://imperial-library.info/content/lord-souls-lore-notes

There's one interesting thing relating to the manufacture of soulgems - however this might have just been a poorly-thought out quest and not a part of Canon.

In the mage guild quest line, when the Illusion trainer gives you some 'mystic tuning gloves' to purify several mystical focus points that had become out of whack, the act of purifying each one gives you a pile of random soulgems - it's possibly that soulgems naturally form around magic - perhaps Blackreach is magical enough to produce geodes of soul gems?


As far as the dude being completely immortal in Azura's star, and it being a little 'world' inside - that doesn't necessarily mean that all soul gems are like that. After all, Azura's Star is not only a very special, unique soul gem, but it had been extremely heavily modified on top of being Blackened (after all, you couldn't just consume the soul inside.)

Consider that whether or not the soul gem will remain after the soul was consumed is pretty irrelevant to someone who wants to keep his soul inside - after all, he doesn't want his soul to be used, ever. So, we can guess that Azura's Star has unique properties beyond that, which might harm any evidence we might have gained from that quest.

Do you perhaps have more information about this quest? These "Tuning Gloves" bring my thoughts to the Dwemer's tonal architects and such, would be really cool if they were connected somehow and this technology survived in some way or another. But I guess it could be "tuning" as in "adjusting a knob" as well.

Regarding this being the star and that it's special; yes, obviously it's special, but since we have nothing to compare it to we can't say much. I'm just saying it's not wise to throw away a new piece of lore when it's the only relevant thing on this subject we have.

Those gloves are a custom (and awesome) model, so I'm guessing Beth put a lot of thought into that quest. This may very well be the answer to our questions.

Actually, speaking of soul gem canon changing from game to game... didn't Morrowind have no such thing as black soul gems, where you could trap even the soul of Almalexia and Vivec, if you chose to kill him? Now, suddenly, someone has to "corrupt" Azura's Star to do something it could do a couple games ago?

Further, someone was mentioning in another thread that Falmer have "common" souls (not even grand ones), as opposed to "grand black" souls like other humanoids. The difference is purely in the type of character mesh the game uses...

Black soulgems did exist during Morrowind, just not in any place you went. This is likely due to the strict restrictions from the mages guild, the hatred Dunmer have towards necromancers and the rarity of them in Morrowind.

In Oblivion black soul gems did appear but were a lot harder to get by, here you can buy them at half a dozen random shops. So you know, obviously they became more socially accepted in the last 200 years or Skyrim just never cared much about them to begin with.

Well, I guess since black souls are just another form of grand soul, and grand souls weren't particularly hard to come by in Oblivion (just summon and backstab a Xivlai) I guess they figured that there was no particular point in keeping them away from the player.

But then, that's a Doylsian explanation rather than a Watsonian one.

First thing the arch-mage says when you talk to him in the college is that the college doesn't ban necromancy like those "foolish" mage's guild types, and that he basically doesn't care what you do so long as you don't actually kill other students and don't cause a pitchfork-wielding mob to arrive at his door. So I guess that, yeah, nobody really cares if you're a necromancer anymore.

Of course, at the same time, you apparently can just get black soul gems from the geodes that you can mine for soul gems, which means they don't even require that ritual to Mannimarco anymore, which means apparently that whole thing got retconned.

The Tribunal had a way of pissing everyone off, including Arkay. My Morrowind Soul Library contained Vivec's soul, but not, say, Archmage Tribonius (head of the MG) because mortal souls were off-limits. I think this is one case where gameplay and story converge.


This, on the other hand, is exactly what you said it was: gameplay. Falmer have hunchbacks, and that makes them invalid for the possession of black souls.

I think I once read on this forum, or actually the previous forum, that this was just a game mechanic thing. Keep in mind this was back in 2004 or something so I might be mistaken. Still I don't think their souls were actually capable of being captured..

Yes, the dividing line between what is considered a "sentient" creature or not (it's not whether they are mortal or not - I can soul trap a rabbit for a petty soul, and that rabbit was certainly mortal) is in whether they are capable of wearing humanoid clothing on their meshes or not. Dremora were not soul-trappable in Oblivion, because they were built like humans. Other daedra were. Yagrum Bagarn and Golden Saints were soul-trappable because they had unique models, but Golden Saints from Oblivion required black soul gems because then they were using the human models then.

Apparently, it's not Arkay, but common clothing that prevents your soul from being stolen so easily.

I think that the only real difference between the souls of the playable races and that of others like Falmer, Goblins, Giants (Who are all sentient in one form or another) is the protection of Arkay.
In Oblivion the reason for black soul gems was the Shade of the Revenant, when Mannimarco eclipses Arkay and that allows the ritual to take place.
Interestingly, the ghosts of playable races in Morrowind can be soul trapped.

I think a soul gem might be like a cage of Faraday in reverse, keeping things in not out.
The soul itself does not seem to be used up, destroyed, when used for enchanting, more like a 'motive force'.
When you use a battery powered torch, you have not harmed the electricity when the battery has run out either.
There is no hard evidence for that, but there certainly is no evidence that souls are harmed or destroyed in any way. Youd think that would have been mentioned by now if it was.

Electricity and a sentient being are entirely different things, however. Electricity is a force generated by a collection of nearly indestructible particles.

Comparing electricity to a soul is like comparing water to an animal's body - you can mix up and rearrange that water all you want, and it's not going to hurt the water, true, but stick a small animal in a blender, and you're going to completely destroy almost every trace of what that animal actually was, even if the physical mass of that animal still remains.

It may very well be the same for the souls of soul-trapped creatures - being strained through a weapon enchantment, being bled out as the enchantment is activated, having other souls of radically different creatures poured into your own soul to have a "recharge" of a weapon, only to gradually have most of your lingering soul finally bleed out may completely and irrevocably destroy a sentient being.

Well, yeah - but that goes along with the dying part of the soul-trapping process.

Not really, a ghost that chooses to linger around their corpse, or a piece of their corpse, like the Dunmer ancestor spirits, are completely sentient beings in full control of their own faculties.

Which does raise a question, I think we can rather safely say that the Soul capturing of Vivec and Almalexia was due to game mechanics, the same goes for being able to capture the souls of Falmer and the last living Dwemer, and prevents you from capturing Dremora or Golden Saints souls in Oblivion...

But were ghosts supposed to be able to be soul captured? Is that a game mechanic thing or is that completely logical? They are already dead, so I don't see why Arkay would protect them.

But eventually they all go crazy & get recycled. Any sort of death will mess stuff up eventually.

Do all mortals do this, though?

What about Hircine's werewolves? Do they eventually get recycled?
What about Molag Bal's enslaved mortal victims? Do they eventually get recycled?

It also makes me suddenly think about how daedra are "immortal" in that they return to the waters of Oblivion when they die to be reborn. Isn't this just "recycling" but where they somehow keep their consciousness? Are mortals just daedra that lose their consciousness when they go through the reincarnation process, and as such, are immortal, themselves?

They don't get recycled (at least, not for a very long time) but they do get messed up. Werewolves become little more than bloodthirsty predators, and its best not to speak of Molag Bal's realm.


Their souls are immortal, but their minds are not. So basically, what you said.

But a sentient being is not its soul, that would be its mind.
The comparision is not so off, a soul like electricity is not physical.
Its mind would naturally already be destroyed in the dreamsleeve, so if being soul trapped destroys the identity, it may function as a miniature dreamsleeve.

Aren't ghosts already spitting in Arkay's face by being undead? He doesn't like them any more, so he doesn't protect them.

Except that if people can be put into a soul gem, then taken back out, given a new mortal form, and brought back to life, as M'Aiq was pointing out, did happen in a few cases, then their "minds" ARE a part of their souls.

It would be more akin to ancient thinking on the matter of the mind, soul, and brain - the brain is just a lump of physical flesh, the mind is actually a part of the soul, and the mind travels with the soul. To associate mind with brain is modern thinking which TES does not necessarily support.

You could capture Vivec's soul in Morrowind and not other humanoids because technicially Vivec's NPC was a "creature" not an "NPC". Skyrim no longer has those limitations. In Skyrim both humanoids and creatures can be captured in soulgems, however humanoids require at leas a black soulgem to capture.

Gameplay mechanics should not be confused with lore. When they contradict eachother, lore wins.