Raiding in The Arcadion: Our Heroic Hypocrisy

[Chasingstars]

The reason the warrior of light takes issue with it is its more spelled out in japanese.

A soul is made up of three aspects. The core, the memories, and the life energy.

The core of the soul is what a soul is by default, like if a farmer dies and then gets reincarnated, they will show an affinity towards being a farmer again along with any core personality traits they had in life. Think of it like a soul's natural affinity. Its why the warrior of light is like Azem, because the core of the soul is about adventuring and exploring and meeting new people.

The soul's memories are what you form while you are alive. When you die, such memories naturally fade away while the core is waiting to be reincarnated again while in the aetherial sea.

The life energy is what your soul naturally spends when you go about normal day. It regains this energy by simple activities like eating or sleeping. This energy is also known as aether.

When a person has an abundance of aether, it allows them undergo what is known as spiritbonding with their equipment, as the equipment is inheriting the excess aether that is being generated by the wielder. When we "extract" the materia, we are crystallizing that aether in our gear, creating materia. The reason it is random for what sort of materia we create is because of our fluctuating experiences.

The soul crystals that we use our from preexisting crystals that started off as blank slates. Over time gaining imperfect echoes of our memories from simply having it on our person. You can even see this with the blue mage soul crystal "Unlike other soul crystals, the surface of this multi-aspected stone has yet to be carved with the record of past deeds". Meaning that as the Warrior of Light, we are acting as the blue print for those memories that will one day eventually be passed down to the next bearer of our crystal as a blue mage, much like how we learn a new technique from an old soul crystal.

For a relic weapon, what you are a creating is an aetheric conductor. The more powerful the weapon is, the more easily your aether can channel into that weapon and allow you to use the full might of that weapon. To increase aetheric conductivity requires special materials and crafting methods. Yet more importantly, remember what he just discussed about spiritbonding? About it gaining increasing amounts of aetheric energy from simply being in use by the owner? That happens, except the relic weapon is also actively learning from you, trying to realize your intentions for what kind of weapon it should become. This can have the effect of creating new life, like with Anima from heavensward, where it is your intentions given a life all its own.

What happens with the regulators is that a person is briefly merging their core soul with that of another core soul, resulting in the created burst of life energy for the host. The reason the warrior of light takes issue with this is that core of the soul, not the memories or the energy itself, are not returning to the aetherial sea and thereby preventing reincarnation.