Itadaroa

This article, which refers to concepts that exist across many elven cultures, uses Classical Seelie Elvish for elven words.

Itadaroa is a condition that affects elven souls where the soul manifests in a body that for some reason cannot easily contain it.

To understand Itadaroa, one must first understand the elven life cycle. While elven bodies live for about 700 years, their souls only inhabits between 100 and a 120 years. The first soul grows up from being a small child to a full grown elf, after which each soul succeeds the previous, manifesting in the body and growing and learning for about 10 to 20 years before replacing their predecessor. How much memory of the predecessor are retained comes down to the will of the dying elf. During the seventh soul's time, the body becomes capable of producing children, after which the body begins to age and die.

Causes

The most typical form of Itadaroa is early and twin manifestation. Either due to a soul manifesting before the time of its predecessor, or because multiple souls manifest to take the place of a predecessor, a soul will become fully grown without a body entirely to itself.

The nature of early and twin manifestation is sometimes used as evidence against the idea that an elf's body has all of its infant souls tied to it predetermined, a philosophy which has had major influence on the cultural behaviors of many elvish societies, such as the mourning of unborn souls at funerals of premature death.

Post-final manifestation is when a new child soul begins manifesting in a dying body of a seventh-soul elf. In this case, the soul will pass on along with the body right as it reaches maturity if not treated.

In the case of an improper predecessor, this only becomes case of itadaroa due to social perspective. This is where the predecessor, for reasons such as criminal history or illness, is deemed by the culture to be a threat to the child soul that manifests to replace it.

Development and Treatment

Kidarime

When early or twin manifested souls are allowed to develop, they often develop into Kidarime. Kidarime are traditionally seen as wise and powerful warriors and tricksters (positive in a fey kind of way) in most elven cultures. An internal dialogue between the multiple individuals is seen to allow the Kidarime to better see into the hearts of others, as well as cause confusion and confoundment in others with ease. Objectively, the presense of multiple souls create a resilience against magical enchantments.

In all cultures, each member of a Kidarime are given separate names and are acknowledged as separate individuals. In certain cultures, like the Sylvic and Feylinic elves, Kidarime also carry a collective name together. Depending culture and the nature of the itadaroa, the relationship between the souls vary between equal co-control, controller and observer, and in the case of certain Sylvic cultures, day and night split control.

Soul Death

Rarely, when a certain soul is weaker in will than another, a soul will be overpowered by the force of the other and fade out from the body.

Hudarai

Hudarai are construct bodies that hold and are used by souls that suffer from Itadaroa. This is usually employed in cases of post-final manifestation or an improper predecessor. Using special branches of the arcane developed in elven cultures, the soul is removed from the body and placed in the body, traditionally made up of magically enchanted plants. Because of the ways Hudarai bodies are different from a typical elf's, they are resilient against certain magical affects, while also being more vulnerable to others. Hudarai often live up to twice as long compared to most elves because no new souls manifest in their bodies, a trait responsible for creating a trope of old Hudarai sages often appearing in elven folk tales. However, even the souls in Hudarai will eventually reach their time and shall pass on.

In the Esiteshi Empire, Hudarai are often also created for cases that could be left to develop into Kidarime, a practice which is frowned upon by the rest of elven societies. The use of mechanical artifice to create these imperial Hudarai are also becoming more and more widespread.

Darimara

Sometimes, when an elf is deemed improper to be the predecessor to a soul, the child soul is transferred to a volunteer who already has a child soul within them. These two child souls grow like twin souls becoming Kidarime, but when the improper predecessor dies leaving behind a healthy body, the Itadaroa soul is quickly transferred back to its original body. It is usually around this time that the other child soul matures and succeeds its body. These kinds of pairs of individuals are called Darimara, who have profound understandings of one another through connections between their souls despite inhabiting separate bodies from each other.

The equivalent word to darimara in certain elvish languages have evolved in meaning to essentially mean 'lover,' usage often beginning to drift first in poetry.

Type

Physiological