THE NATURE OF LIFE: A SHORT THESIS
Throughout my expeditions whilst travelling the grander Edelith region, my encounters with specimens both in the angelic, mortal, and demon variety have yielded understanding about what truly constitutes our physical and metaphysical beings whilst underneath the Circlet. I have witnessed creatures gain and lose their lifeforce. I have turned in creatures in my ecological studies that have consumed other creatures’ lifeforce. And, records of abstract golems dating back to before the Great Schism have even referenced the imbuement of lifeforce into different “vessels”. Thus, with this short notation, I will attempt to gather all of my theories and conclusions into one complete manuscript so that future scholars within the university may delve into this field of study further.
For starters, I would like to propose there are three elements which construct our physical manifestations. The first is the Luminessense, the life. This isn’t a forlorn conclusion to make about our forms, many religious texts and preachings have actively reinforced this assumption that there is a physical form to our lifeforce within ourselves. And, upon witnessing the extraction of this fabled Luminessence through the rites of a holy artifact, I may confirm this once presumptuous aspect of our being as definite fact. Yet, I’d like to continue on this line of thought by asserting that unlike other aspects of our being I will elaborate on further, Luminescence is the dynamic portion of our beings. It is often said lifeforce may hold the memories of our past life within, similar to a biological signature. Yet I believe this could expand further, as a living, dynamic memory that changes overtime.
Thus I will introduce my next proposition: creatures also must possess a Will. The Will, to put it simply, is the biological encoding to which all creatures are driven by. This then has a relationship with the Luminessence to dynamically reflect the Will upon different actions a creature may take. The tale of the reanimated is a good example. Whilst the creatures reanimated via necromancy have the Will of their master necromancer staked upon them, they cannot dynamically realign their Will without a Luminessence. Thus, a creature who has lost their Luminessence in true death cannot act as they once did in living.
Another thing to note: I believe the Luminessence and Will are manifested physically in the form of Prominence. As proven through multitudes of study, Prominence is the primordial energy that was gathered by the Aurumics when the realm first “basked in light.” And, if the accounts of the mythos are to be believed, Luminessence is a “refined” version of Prominence, able to be imbued into creatures to live. So, if my theory is correct that the Will is a less dynamic medium compared to Luminessence, would then the Will be just expressed as primordial Prominence, instructions to which a being cannot change?
The final element I theorize could comprise our being is the Vessel. Luminessence and to the extension, Prominence has been a force scholars for millennia have struggled to harness. I believe the key lies within the Vessel to which these two elements are held. For a creature to withhold the Luminessence of another, it must itself have a strong enough Vessel to contain such dynamic life. With our own lives being products of the gods themselves, we naturally are born with strong Vessels. But, for those born of artificial means, could they hold Luminessence with a weak Vessel? Or would attempts at doing so break down one’s form? It is a question that while intriguing, could pose some… ethical concerns.
To conclude, I theorize our being is made of three primordial forces. The Luminessence (the dynamic lifeforce), the Will (the static encoding), and the Vessel (the container). But, I feel as though I am left with more questions than answers: Is it possible to transfer the Will of a creature to another creature? Could a creature born without Luminessence gain such Luminessence back? Could we create a Vessel strong enough to hold Luminessence? Would this research be practical in restoring Vessels deteriorated by Corrosion to the brink of Luminessence collapse? Or even creating new Luminessences to those severed from immortality through Refraction? Could a creature’s Luminessence even be reconstructed?
Author’s Note: It is helpful to think of life, fittingly, in terms of light. The Will, a beam of unrefined Prominence, is what carries our actions. Yet, it is undynamic in nature. That is where the Luminessence comes in, a shard of crystal able to reflect our light in multiple directions. Depending on how we rotate and move the crystal, the light or Will too is beamed off into different directions. Then the Vessel, in this analogy, would be the mirror holding the crystal. It contains the means to hold the Luminessence into place.