Artificial Soul Core

The vessel flows, the body abides, but shall the soul accept?

One of thaumaturgy's greatest achievements in all of arsharin, reverse engineered from the shockborne, the artificial soul core is what allows artificial beings such as craftborne constructs to be considered alive at creation instead of happenstance of memory and love eventually birthing a soul in them. Through the process of experimentation and research over thousands of years, the creation of the soul core came to fruition and the ability to imbue creations with the soul had been brought to the forefront of the thaumaturgic community.
Initially seen as heresy due to it's tapping into the process of the soul cycle, soul cores caused an upset and debate over their ethical use, it was not until petition to the god ysajeb to decree whether or not such research should be allowed to continue that the device was sanctioned. The magical engineering required to allow the core to be a suitable vessel for an actual soul primarily focuses on what is needed to allow soul energy to interact with a core in the same manner it can with living flesh, in this way, a soul core could be considered an artificial heart, meant to pump and refresh soul energy and help a soul produce it while within it. This process can be done with a set of special materials such as living metal, a material capable of recovering naturally overtime and shifting in form slightly in the same way flesh can be mended. The living metal is smelted in combination with blood and then requires a very specific shaping, meant to mimic a soul's natural flow of soul energy. After the intricate crafting rituals and the carving of the necessary life sigils, the soul core becomes an appropriate vessel, supernaturally emboldened and protected.
However, as the core is only a vessel, a repository, it is not enough on it's own to power an artificial body. After a suitable physical container is crafted, it must be powered, so that it can replicate life force, energy, cycling through and around the vessel, this can be done through any means, natural or otherwise, and quite unfortunately there has been no power source found that does not have a drawback of some kind for the soul core. The most commonly used sources however, usually depend on the financial capability of the craftsman, either a heat stone or arcane power being the most common choices.
While a practice of creating soul cores for craftborne through thaumaturgic means has resided in the world for at least 200 years, the original progenitor race that such a device was copied from are not keen on the alternate means of artificial acts of creation. Unwilling to provide their secrets of electrical imbuement and harnessing causes intense bitterness to fester between them and the thaumaturgic community, mages and alchemists alike feeling entitled to know, while the shockborne feel only disgust for what they see as subpar mimicry.

Aptitude
Thaumaturgic Expert
Related Skills
Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Engineering), Knowledge (Planes)

Related Species

• Gearborne
• Magitborne
• Shockborne