Soulful

Description

The Soulful are just that: they have a very strong soul. However, this is not a random chance event but the doing of a swarm-intelligence intra-cellular parasite or symbiote depending on your opinion. The entities can be likened to medichlorians but they manifest in a unique way that is neither the Force or sorcery but somewhere in between. Those affected develop incredible abilities that can be as beautiful as they are terrifying. Sorting into two classes, the Instinctive and the Illusionists, they are opposite sides of the same infection with roles that the other requires for success in a dangerous galaxy and beyond.

Illusionists and Instictives need each other. They are compliments and not counter agents. Instinctives possess superior combat power and Illusionists can control the world in invisible ways. Working together, they stay out of sight even when hiding in plain sight, they tend to their own, and when they must, they hunt and kill.

Illusionists are also gate keepers and control the ways into and out of the Wild Lands. Instinctives are protectors first and hunters second that will take on foes Illusionists would struggle with including Jedi, Sith, and Sorcerers.

System

Soul

The key stat to the Soulful is their Soul which is similar to Arete. It is an advanced skill that limits all subsequent skills. After the 5th dice, it also requires quests to enable to the next level transition specific to the advancement of the soul. No skill can exceed Soul. This can also be sensed by Force users and sorcerers but it comes off as confusing at first. Soul is the overall strength of the symbiosis and eventual fusion of the organisms.

Instinctive or Illusionist

The secondary stat for a Soulful is either Instinctive or Illusionist. A being cannot be both at once unless they want to feel what a binary explosive feels like when it goes off. The powers compliment each other when in single beings working together, but a single soul cannot handle the strain of both powers bound to one soul. This is likely while the legendary goddess of the Soulful is the only being said to be perfectly tuned to both with mastery of all arts.

The more one invests in their secondary stat, the more obvious signs will show. Instinctives may show constant changes to some aspect of their body. Illusionists use illusion to hide and are dependent more and more as they use it to hide the fact they may end up looking like a magical creature without their seeming. In both cases, Control is the key to hiding these traits.

Tertiary Stats

Soulful use the same Control, Sense, and Alter stats that Force users to, and for this reason they are sometimes mistaken for them. However, these stats have different meanings for the Soulful.

• Control: Sustaining the Self
  • Instinctives need Control to choose when they change shape, how much they change shape, and when to back off from their instinctive drives to hunt, protect, or flee. All new Instinctives and offspring start with no control, and so they must be kept in the pack for a time until they learn this skill. Thankfully they also start with minimal soul and so almost no ability to do great harm to anyone even themselves.
  • Illusionists need control to sustain their seeming and hide their true selves from the world. They also need it to sustain other effects like opening portals into the Wild Lands from which all Soulful must eventually visit. This also allows them to make their illusions more believable.

• Sense: Finess
  • Instinctives use this as a wild animal might. They gain additional ways to perceive their world up to being able to sense life in the area or even sense Force users. They can also use it to see through illusions and mind tricks when their mind and their Soul are perceiving different things. Finally, it helps them anticipate their enemies in combat giving them a supernatural edge to attack and defense. This also can help them find wounded Illusionists and guide them so they can come to their aid.
  • Illusionists use Sense backwards. They use sense not to augment themselves but to meddle with the senses of those around them. This might include altering a scent trail, making a group silent to observers, making someone struggle to remember what someone looked like and so on. These skills also help them hide Instinctives when something goes wrong.

• Alter: The Big Guns
  • Instinctives use this to change their form from anything as minor as fingernails to claws to turning themselves into terrifying primal beasts that can tear soldiers limb from limb. Combined with Control, this also regulates their self healing abilities that can mimic accelerated healing in Force users all the way up to healing before someone's eyes. As a rule, Instinctives Alter the Self.
  • Illusionists use Alter verbatim: they change the world around them using this power. This can range from the most basic hiding of their Soulful self to creating entire fantasy realms that can operate for hours or days as if they were real before they start to crumble, usually because the Illusionist has long since evacuated. As a rule, Illusionists Alter the Environment.