End Dawntrail Spoilers: What is the difference between a regulator and giving blood?

[Serilyn]

As soon as soul transferring stuff is mentioned, Alisaie hates it. Wuk Lamat outright tells Sphene they should stop it (what happened to respecting others cultures and learning first?).

But thinking about it... The soul is extracted, wiped clean (which the game itself says is done in the aetherial sea too), and then popped into a regulator to save someone from death. When used I assume it then goes to the aetherial sea where it goes back into the normal cycle. So at most, you're simply delaying the rebirth of that soul for a little bit and giving the person who used it a bit longer.

Ignoring the souls they forcefully take (because when we're first told we 'don't know' that they're forcefully taking any as despite having seen it none of the characters are smart enough to put two and two together). The souls taken from their own citizens are voluntarily given. How is this different from someone giving blood to save anothers life? Or as giving blood doesn't kill you, how is this different from organ donation of say a heart from someone who died going to a person who needs it?

(For that matter, how do they have enough spare souls for everyone? If at the start they all had one extra soul each half of the population would need to have died... Let alone having more than one soul each which is implied by the fact that they can buy them. Did we skip the part of their history where they harvested the souls of all their neighbours? And they have such a shortage yet accepted the people who got stuck in the dome into their population instead of just harvesting them, that means they would have been using even more.

Also, if the Endless are just electronic versions of a souls memory, why do they need souls to power them? They're not alive, all they should need is electricity/power, not souls (if they need souls, that means they are alive in some way). Seems to make far more sense to me that they would need all the souls to keep their living population supplied as that seems like the most unsustainable part.

I'm also confused about the passage of time... Supposedly a few days passed from the dome popping up to us going in. This was 30 years inside the dome, so let's say 10 years per day. Otis says he's 400+ years old, which at a day per 10 years would be 40 days since presumably Sphene first died and the dome went up. Or just over a month ago on the source. But Kriles parents left her behind 20 years ago on the source which would be..... A very long time ago on the shard.)

[Syln]

Because we need to understand each other as long as the other follow my moral compass ! Crazy how it work ? :3

[Kozh]

I'm also confused about the passage of time... Supposedly a few days passed from the dome popping up to us going in. This was 30 years inside the dome, so let's say 10 years per day. Otis says he's 400+ years old, which at a day per 10 years would be 40 days since presumably Sphene first died and the dome went up. Or just over a month ago on the source. But Kriles parents left her behind 20 years ago on the source which would be..... A very long time ago on the shard.)

just chiming in for this (for now), but the passage of time between shards isn't fixed. The Exarch mentioned this back in ShB, that sometimes a day in Source can mean a year in Shard, or vice versa. It's also why in ShB the time speed between Source and First is roughly the same (the First is slightly faster).

[kaynide]

2 things:

1) When you give blood, your body can make more blood.

If a person is given a soul, it can’t return to the life stream to allow a new individual to be born. Unless souls are infinite, there will be a point where souls run out and new babies can’t be born. We can infer souls are not infinite because Sphene plans to harvest every last ounce of life-energy until there is none left, then move on to other shards. If it was sustainable to “harvest life force” in any way, the AI would have thought of making a gigantic fish farm or something.

2) The extraction process turns the persons memories into an endless.

They will live (essentially) in a never ending twilight zone of a theme park for eternity. That is not a peaceful exit, and it might even be desired for a short period, but all indication is that they are in a sort of purgatory.

[Kozh]

2 things:

1) When you give blood, your body can make more blood.

If a person is given a soul, it can’t return to the life stream to allow a new individual to be born. Unless souls are infinite, there will be a point where souls run out and new babies can’t be born. We can infer souls are not infinite because Sphene plans to harvest every last ounce of life-energy until there is none left, then move on to other shards. If it was sustainable to “harvest life force” in any way, the AI would have thought of making a gigantic fish farm or something.

2) The extraction process turns the persons memories into an endless.

They will live (essentially) in a never ending twilight zone of a theme park for eternity. That is not a peaceful exit, and it might even be desired for a short period, but all indication is that they are in a sort of purgatory.

1. Actually though, souls are infinite because the planet can just make a new one instead of recycling from the aetherial sea. For example, Alpha the chocobo. And also hermes/hythlodaeus said that the planet will imbue a creation magic creature with soul so long it "follow the law of nature". That said, the rate of which it create new soul probably is very slow.

2. While the regulator use soul aether (after it's purified from memory), I don't think they're perma destroyed since Erenville said that he will meet his mom again in the aetherial sea. Meanwhile Endless is powered up by living force (different thing than soul aether and memory aether), which can only be harvested from currently living beings. Why do they not use feral living force? idk. Maybe it will corrupt them the same as people being corrupted by using regulator filled with feral soul.

[Plumerian_Ariadust]

2. While the regulator use soul aether (after it's purified from memory), I don't think they're perma destroyed since Erenville said that he will meet his mom again in the aetherial sea. Meanwhile Endless is powered up by living force (different thing than soul aether and memory aether), which can only be harvested from currently living beings. Why do they not use feral living force? idk. Maybe it will corrupt them the same as people being corrupted by using regulator filled with feral soul.

We don't know if that is the case and i don't remember Erenville being knowledgeable enough to know how the aetherial sea works.

[Vhana]

1. Actually though, souls are infinite because the planet can just make a new one instead of recycling from the aetherial sea. For example, Alpha the chocobo. And also hermes/hythlodaeus said that the planet will imbue a creation magic creature with soul so long it "follow the law of nature". That said, the rate of which it create new soul probably is very slow.

Maybe? But we don't know the mechanics of imbuement because it's not actually ever explained.
It's possible that completely new soul aether is spontaneously created by the star when a creature gains a soul, which would potentially be infinite. It's also possible that already existing soul aether is somehow drawn to a construct that becomes compatible with it, which would potentially be finite.

2. While the regulator use soul aether (after it's purified from memory), I don't think they're perma destroyed since Erenville said that he will meet his mom again in the aetherial sea.

They are definitely not permanently destroyed, we see the souls that Zoraal Ja had taken into himself released after his death and as they are not captured again through the regulator system they would return to the aetherial sea.

[Sivante]

If a person is given a soul, it can’t return to the life stream to allow a new individual to be born. Unless souls are infinite, there will be a point where souls run out and new babies can’t be born. We can infer souls are not infinite because Sphene plans to harvest every last ounce of life-energy until there is none left, then move on to other shards. If it was sustainable to “harvest life force” in any way, the AI would have thought of making a gigantic fish farm or something.

Query: How can we infer that from Sphene's plan? They established animal life was insufficient in 'Life Aether' in some way so an animal farm wouldn't work. Why, I don't know, as clearly animals have 'souls' as we learn from Arcadion, but they did mention it was insufficient.

Even if souls are finite, the fact that the aether stream crosses shards, and multiple shards are destroyed/wrecked, that would tell us there's plenty of extra souls entering and exiting the aether stream than is normal for a given shard which would suggest that what Sphene planned was entirely valid as a sustainable tactic (if not entirely immorale.)

Mind you I'm not arguing: I don't think we know enough about 'Life Aether' or 'Souls' in this canon to make these determinations and wish to highlight that. What we've seen of 'Life Aether' and 'Souls' makes no sense already, so I'm hesitant to try arguing about the nuance of it. PoTD touches on it, Y'Shtola dying and coming back like she gets stickers for a free sunday touches on it, resurrection as a spell touches on it, but it remains so absurdly vague its hard to put a finger on and most of what I just listed as examples complicate if not directly conflict with what DT touches on it.

We'll have to wait and see, I suppose. I personally suspect the writers are going to intensely regret these story line choices for the implications they create.

[kaynide]

Query: How can we infer that from Sphene's plan? They established animal life was insufficient in 'Life Aether' in some way so an animal farm wouldn't work. Why, I don't know, as clearly animals have 'souls' as we learn from Arcadion, but they did mention it was insufficient.

I'm 100% guessing/assuming here, but my understanding of what Origenics does is something like.. I dunno.. Fission?

As in, rather than separating a molecule into elements and harvesting the released energy, the machine separates a dead life into "Memories" and "Soul", but harvests the life-energy (Dynamis? I dunno) as a power source for maintaining Living Memory. And something about the life of a person is more...valuable..than animals. I'm not sure it's actually the soul itself or the memories themselves that are important for the energy system.

....which is also to say the entire setup is incredibly nonsensical considering what we know can be used as a power source for magic devices and whatnot (dragon eyes, crystals, etc), especially given that they have electrope which supposedly can convert aether A into aether B.

The only thing that makes this work is that their system is specifically powered by Dynamis, which as far as we know is only held by people split from the sundering (and of course Thule).

Even if souls are finite, the fact that the aether stream crosses shards, and multiple shards are destroyed/wrecked, that would tell us there's plenty of extra souls entering and exiting the aether stream than is normal for a given shard which would suggest that what Sphene planned was entirely valid as a sustainable tactic (if not entirely immorale.)

My understanding is the souls of the rejoined fuse with their source counterpart, rather than float in the stream...but the writers might decide whatever.

Again, the only way any of this makes sense is if they were harvesting Dynamis, as that's the ONLY resource I can imagine that is specific to people, and people only.

[MangoSimulation]

They don't stop the practice at the end of the story. It can be assumed that they are using what remaining souls they have in storage and those that come from natural death. What did stop was sourcing those souls from other shards. Other than the endless, the cast is trying to respect that part of their culture.