Ship Souls

-and standing in the center of the room was this figure of a woman made with a thousand little blue lights, glowing in the darkness of this long since destroyed ship.
She looked at me kindly, yet said nothing and simply gestured to a panel on the other side of the room. Behind it I found a huge haul of ancient Aether Crystals . I guess some shot from the Wyrm War nearly pierced the place but got stuck in that wall and just sort of grew like mold in a wet wall.
I think I'll head back there tomorrow and see if I can find my guardian angel again!

-Journal of a Scrap-Wise Scavenger, by Council Buchannon

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Ship Souls is a popular term for artificial spirits.
Through the use of rather advanced and delicate Aetherwork , a crystal can be created that has an incredibly complex structure. Internally it's layered upon itself a thousand times over, providing as much surface area as possible. Then, placing that crystal in an Aether Pool two individuals set out to create an artificial thought construct, similar to Living Aether but with a far greater internal structure. One creator will feed the Aether Pool as well as direct the Aether of the pool directly into the crystal. The other will attempt to fill each crevice of the crystal with Aether as well as imbue the Aether itself with purpose.
It's more of an art than a science.
If done correctly, whatever metric that may be, a nascent consciousness will take form in the crystal. The crystal will then be submerged into an Aether Pool that will need to be constantly maintained, and from there that consciousness will need to be nurtured. It will need to be given lessons on life, scholarly pursuits, warfare, commerce, medicine, etc, etc.
In the end, if one of many pitfalls is not reached, you will be left with a completely sentient spectral personality that can interact with the material world and more importantly, has a near-infinite amount of storage for memory. These were common on ships, it seems, in the days of the Old Empire as several can still be found active, though many of them have lost their mins in the interim betwen the war and now.
Only recently did the process of producing artificial spirits became understood enough to replicate it.

Item type

Magical