Soul Sight

[Pimsan20]

So we know that Soul Sight is a rare ability even for the ancient. So what happen if someone awaken to the echo with Soul Sight? How much can the user see with soul sight comparing to their past life as an Ancient?

And how much trouble will it be to control it after awaking it?

[MikkoAkure]

The thing that confuses me about the whole soul sight thing is that this is already at least partially a thing that normal people even without the Echo can do.

It’s been a while but IIRC, an ALC questline hinges on people being able to deduce the color of someone else’s aether.

[WhiteArchmage]

The ALC questline needs a certain potion and/or dust to show the color of a person's soul, so while regular people can do it, they need external aid for it. It certainly foreshadowed that different people have different soul signatures, but isn't something that regular non-Echo blessed can do on a whim.

[SannaR]

Yes soul sight is meant to be a rare ability. They wouldn't keep on telling us that every time we read a story that has Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch in it. Or when we first meet them in Elpis only to yet again have it mentioned by Hermes that one with said ability would be able to tell if Meteion has a soul or not right before we get asked to feed the lightning elementals. There's only three sundered that ever talk about or mention being able to see a soul. Ryne and Y'shtola talk about it after trying to figure out how the WoL didn't go full Lightwarden during our fight with Emet-Selch. The other being Zenos who we don't know if he always had the gift awakened in him or if he only awakened to it after subjecting himself to the resonant. I feel this thread might be popping up due to Scribe's latest video series.

[Cleretic]

The closest we've had is Krile's Echo. Which isn't quite soul sight, it's 'aetheric trails', and we've only seen her after she's got a handle on it, but it did sound like it was a bad time for her. I can't imagine waking up to soul sight is much better.

Zenos is hard to factor, since he's... not exactly neurotypical. Any way he digests this is different from how anyone else in several ways. And honestly, I don't think he even has that going, I think he's got other things happening that he happens to describe as similar.

[PorxiesRCute]

There's also Sadu, who's supposed to be able to see the souls of the other Dotharl after they're reborn.

[Cleretic]

There's also Sadu, who's supposed to be able to see the souls of the other Dotharl after they're reborn.

The Dotharl's beliefs in general are kind of hard to verify, though. With everyone else we either have clear evidence or at least a trustworthy authoritative statement, but with the Dotharl they might just have a lot of conviction in really specific beliefs.

Basically, we don't really have evidence that Sadu's actually got that power, as opposed to the Dotharl just thinking she's got that power.

[YianKutku]

The ALC questline needs a certain potion and/or dust to show the color of a person's soul, so while regular people can do it, they need external aid for it. It certainly foreshadowed that different people have different soul signatures, but isn't something that regular non-Echo blessed can do on a whim.

I'm still not entirely sure if the particular concoction in that ALC questline (50-60, if anyone was wondering) showed the actual objective colour of a person's soul, or if it shows a colour that happened to be unique to each person.

For example, using the dust, the colour of the WoL's soul is "blue". I don't know if that's just the colour as shown by the dust itself, or if Hythlodaeus would agree "yes, that soul colour is that exact shade of blue". In other words, whether the dust is fingerprinting (showing the actual form of the mark) or Luminol (showing the presence of the mark, but using its own output).

[SannaR]

I'm still not entirely sure if the particular concoction in that ALC questline (50-60, if anyone was wondering) showed the actual objective colour of a person's soul, or if it shows a colour that happened to be unique to each person.

For example, using the dust, the colour of the WoL's soul is "blue". I don't know if that's just the colour as shown by the dust itself, or if Hythlodaeus would agree "yes, that soul colour is that exact shade of blue". In other words, whether the dust is fingerprinting (showing the actual form of the mark) or Luminol (showing the presence of the mark, but using its own output).

I want to say the other person's aether was said to be red. The same color that matched the book or was it the ink used by the killer. So it would be fingerprints as in that questline is where we learn that everyone has their own unique aether color.