What do you think is the differences in souls?

[SannaR]

Besides aetherical density what do you think is the difference in the four different kinds of souls? I say four as there's the presundered, the sundered Ancient, the sundered new-life, and the post sundered new life. I'm not including Dragons or other alien unsundered life as we don't know what happens to their souls. I also feel that it'd be a little silly to think there's been zero new souls made/born after the sundering. Especially if we have beings like the Pixies and Fauth who are born from souls who didn't return to the Atherial Sea.

For instance are non Ancient souls i.e the new life created by Zodiark able to awaken to the Echo even though they didn't witness the Finals Days, but witnessed the sundering?

[TheMightyMollusk]

The Echo is seemingly awakened by a reincarnated Ancient soul witnessing something that awakens echoes of their past lives, often via traumatic events like a Calamity, or a meteor shower causing a flashback to the Final Days. Going by current evidence, it would seem that souls created post-Sundering can't gain the Echo (leaving aside the Resonant), but it hasn't really come up.

Dragons are effectively unsundered, since, well, they weren't here for the Sundering. However, they live on a much slower time scale than the Ancients did. Theoretically, the only thing stopping a wyrmling like Ohl Dee from becoming a nigh-godlike being like Midgardsormr is time, but it's a lot of time. That said, a dragon couldn't possess the Echo because there's nothing for them to be an echo of, unless somehow an Ancient soul fragment reincarnated into a dragon.

The only other confirmed aliens we've met so far are Gilgamesh, Omega, and the YoRHa androids. Gilgamesh is hard to call, but Omega and the androids, being machines, don't really qualify at all, what with not having souls. (And the Ea in Ultima Thule, but as they're nothing but aetherial souls......)

[Cleretic]

I think, Echo aside (which is a separate but very known thing that we don't need to discuss), the main difference is aetheric capacity. Ancient souls (and presumably bigger boys like dragons or aliens like Gilgamesh) have a lot more aether to work with; however, that doesn't mean they're inherently superhuman, because they still need to learn a way to use that aether. The devs mentioned in the latest live letter that someone born with an Ancient soul wouldn't be necessarily all that different, but might be a bit more powerful. I take that to mean that most techniques you can learn in the Source just aren't designed to make use of more aether than your average Joe can use, so if you teach someone with an Ancient soul thaumaturgy you're not gonna see someone all too much stronger.

The main soul-related question bouncing around my mind lately is the realization that, if souls are cycled within the lifestream of the nearest planet (which is usually the one they died on), somewhere out there are regular-ass people with Bahamut and Ratatoskr's souls.

[TheMightyMollusk]

A dragon's aether is stored in their eyes, and Thordan and his Knights Twelve devoured Ratatoskr's eyes to gain her power, so her soul might not have even made it intact to the lifestream. Which is a lot more disturbing written out than it was in my head. Bahamut and Nidhogg could be out there, though. Some of Nidhogg's power is still bonded to Estinien, but we did explicitly see his spirit move on after the Final Steps of Faith, so who knows.

Of course, all of this only applies if dragon souls follow the same rules as everyone else's, which we just don't know.

[SentioftheHoukai]

The main soul-related question bouncing around my mind lately is the realization that, if souls are cycled within the lifestream of the nearest planet (which is usually the one they died on), somewhere out there are regular-ass people with Bahamut and Ratatoskr's souls.

Are we absolutely certain souls from outside Eitherys are reborn as native species though? Can dragons from the Dragonstar not just reincarnate as another dragon if they die as Eitherys? If not, honestly that just adds a whole new layer of fucked up onto the cake. I know I wouldn't be pleased to be reborn as the species that arranged my death, especially if I happened to be something as prideful as a dragon.

A dragon's aether is stored in their eyes, and Thordan and his Knights Twelve devoured Ratatoskr's eyes to gain her power, so her soul might not have even made it intact to the lifestream. Which is a lot more disturbing written out than it was in my head. Bahamut and Nidhogg could be out there, though. Some of Nidhogg's power is still bonded to Estinien, but we did explicitly see his spirit move on after the Final Steps of Faith, so who knows.

Of course, all of this only applies if dragon souls follow the same rules as everyone else's, which we just don't know.

The way I see it, either Ratatoskr passed into the Lifestream when Thordan and his Knights Twelve died or Ratatoskr is quite literally a part of every soul in Ishgard now. Which is heavily ironic, now that you think about it.

[Lyth]

I don't think that souls in this particular in-game universe behave the same way that many of us would intuitively expect. Your sense of 'self' is largely a function of your memories, and most memories don't remain on a soul after it's returned to the lifestream without a good reason (i.e. powerful unresolved regrets, or Kairos' aetheric manipulations). Although I wonder what happens to all these memories. Perhaps there's a lifestream primal like FFVII's Minerva who sits around jotting all of them down somewhere.

Either way, if a soul does come back and there isn't one of those extenuating causes for retained memories as above, then it's a completely new entity. Who knows, perhaps a dragon soul might just spontaneously fragment in the Lifestream and spontaneously turn into 14 Elezen the next time around. I don't think that the native/alien distinction really matters either way, because it's just aether at the end of the day. I seem to recall something in one of the UT cutscenes that talks about lifesteams in other worlds, but I can't track it down at the moment. I might have a look later.

[SannaR]

Yet we have what happened with Titania. We beat them and are soon reborn as a different silver haired pixie that has memories/a sense of having been the Titania we beat. Which is already defies what we're to assume is supposed to happen. You die and yo go to the life stream where for most your body and mental aether gets unfused from your soul aether before hoping back in line to be reborn. Except EW and even when Midgardsormr goes to take his nap make it come off as you also have the option to go no I'm just going to float about for a bit. It also brings into question as to why the first's lifestream as far as we know works differently since unless pixie and fuath equivalents are in Maracidya or the New World we haven't encountered beings who are born from souls of children who died traumatic deaths or by those who've drowned.

I'm not sure if Omega's race don't have souls as if I remember correctly they were once flesh and blood but chose to do what Reapers from Mass Effect did to organic life that they made serve them. Which is slowly replacing said organic mater over to synthetic mater. I also believe that Omega at the end gained a soul or at least regained one if they had lost it when completing the conversion to becoming what we'd call robots. We know that things they create can gain one since Alpha some how was granted one.

Meteion said that souls sploosh back into the nearest working planetary lifestream. Even if it's aether at the end of the day most known alien souls are unsundered. That's a lot of aether to shove into a body let alone just float about the lifestream since we're already seeing what the sudden loss of Zodiark is doing to the different aetherical rivers.

[Kranel_San]

Ancient souls (and presumably bigger boys like dragons or aliens like Gilgamesh) have a lot more aether to work with

Say, is Gilgamesh have a heavy-aetheric density, or is more capable of manipulating dynamis?
I have been wondering about this for a long. He might be just like Meteion or any other alien lifeform.
This also opens the question in my mind about dragons as well. If they're aetheric-rich then what caused it to be the case? Unless their world is also aetheric-rich

[Cleretic]

Say, is Gilgamesh have a heavy-aetheric density, or is more capable of manipulating dynamis?
I have been wondering about this for a long. He might be just like Meteion or any other alien lifeform.
This also opens the question in my mind about dragons as well. If they're aetheric-rich then what caused it to be the case? Unless their world is also aetheric-rich

It's hard to seriously ask any questions about Gilgamesh, because he's a joke character that plays by the rules of an entirely different story written decades before this one. And even then, he played pretty damn loose.

I was going to give a vague power level based on what he's fought, but even that's inconsistent; he's consistently a match for an 8-person team in 14, but he was also an equal to characters in Dissidia 012, most of which are the same people Y'shtola was an equal to in Dissidia NT. He fought a team of four in 1, 5 and 6, a team of three in 12 and 13-2, a team of five in The After Years...

[TheMightyMollusk]

Gilgamesh also hasn't shown up since the reveal of dynamis, so we've yet to have a chance to actually compare. But I'm not holding my breath on actually finding out.