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I'm pretty new to Age of Sigmar, so forgive me if I get any details wrong.

It seems to me that there's a very strange economy in the Age of Sigmar lore. You have a lot of different factions that are very interested in controlling souls. Sigmar recycles souls into warriors to create the Stormcast Eternals. Nagash uses souls that naturally come to the realm of Death to power his spells and create his underlings. Slaanesh ate a ton of Aelven souls which are now being yanked back out by the Aelven gods (and also Morathi) to be turned back into new kinds of aelves, and on top of everything, the result of the Malign Portents campaign released a lot of souls from Nagash's prisons to be resurrected, some as heroes long thought dead. Then of course you have the Idoneth Deepkin that go on regular raids for souls to keep their working/fighting population alive!

There are some factions that don't seem to care much at all for souls. I doubt that Orruks or Beastclaw Raiders care about the collecting of souls, and Khorne collects skulls and blood, but does he care about where the souls go? Do the dwarves or free peoples care about souls?

What's not very clear is how do you make new souls? There's been so much recycling of souls, but not a lot of talk about how souls are created in the first place. If the gods could make souls, then Sigmar and the Aelven gods wouldn't have to yank them from different places, and the Deepkin would be able to find a more sustainable way of harvesting souls.

Are souls naturally made when a person, be they elf, dwarf, or human, is born normally? Are souls provided by the gods? Is there a limit to the number of souls across the mortal realms? If there's no limit to the souls available, then many factions wouldn't be fighting so hard to collect them. The aelves wouldn't bother recycling the corrupted souls drawn out of Slaanesh and the Idoneth wouldn't have much to worry about since they'd be able to collect as many souls as they need to keep their people alive. Nagash would probably not care either, as long as he's getting more souls than everyone else, or as long as souls follow the natural process of death. So, that leads me to believe that the number of souls in the mortal realms are limited. They might be a renewable resource, if new souls are created through natural birth, but my thinking is that there's a deficit of souls and that this resource is going to be running thin.

What's interesting about Age of Sigmar and the new factions that are being covered now is this strange economy of souls. The major players seem very keen on controlling this resource. Nagash, Sigmar, the Aelves, Slaanesh... I'm thinking this is going to lead into some very interesting wars into the future.

What are your guys' thoughts? Have any information to add to clear up these ideas? Do you think GW has considered things very far when it comes to the soul economy?

I believe the next narrative arc has a book called Soul Wars about it so I think you very much hit the nail on the head.

I like it. The realms are quickly becoming far more interesting.

Not spelled out explicitly yet, but having read more or less all of the lore so far here is my rough assessment:

A given being generally has a mind, a body, and a soul. When the body dies the soul leaves and the mind tends to 'stick' to it. However once 'unattached' both mind & soul will erode over time, but at different rates. The mind seems to degrade much more rapidly, leaving the souls as an imprint of who that person was, but without any nuance, memory, or personality. More or less distilled down to basic instincts and faint remainders of major character traits. It seems to be possible to get the soul or the essense of a soul without the mind, or the mind may be part of the soul, it isn't really clear.

As for how souls are created and the 'soul economy' things are a bit more clear. Mortal beings are born with souls, which start with and/or accumulate quality over time. Souls are not finite in number, making them renewable, but the key part is that they are also consumable. Some beings, such as Sigmar, recycle the same souls but others (everyone else) consume them by various means. In cases such as the Chaos gods this can be literal consumption while souls can also be used as fuel for powerful magic or to create minions (that may wear out over time depending on context).

To give a run down of the major players in the soul economy:

-Sigmar has and still does collect particularly high-quality souls (according to his values) to reforge into Stormcast. This is only a tiny amount of the 'soul production' overall but once he has them only rarely are they lost again, normally being reforged over and over. Thus their number is quite large due to being accumulated over a long period with little to no loss.

-Nagash completely, 100% believes that all souls rightfully belong to him. 'Naturally' speaking the souls of the dead will indeed travel to Shyish to dwell in one of its underworlds until they erode away, but Nagash has more or less siezed control of all underworlds for his own ends. This is detailed further in the malign portents book & Nagash battletome.

-Chaos gods get the souls of those devoted to them, those sacrificed to them, and may get others depending on context. Generally being that when one or more gods is in ascendence they gain and increasing ability to just take whatever they like (for example, Slaanesh and his elf buffet in the end times).

-Teclis, Tyrion, Malerion, and Morathi are interested in reclaiming the souls Slaanesh ate but seem to have no interest in obtaining them beyond that.

-Most Idoneth are born with the soul equivalent of muscular distrophy; the one they have is simply too weak for them to survive. Accordingly the faction raids other races to take their souls and give them to their own offspring so they can survive. It seems like the eyeless ones are this kind, where the ones that look like conventional elves are the ones lucky enough to be born with functional souls.


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I'll come back and update this with any further info after I've read the Idoneth battletome.

This is a personal theory of mine. Souls are simply a manifestation of the universal energy, in a way the AoS gods are accumulation and manifestation of certain type of energy. When awareness is formed the energy of the universe is drawn to it. To put it simply with birth comes energy into the body (I'm not going to debate the exact time) and forms certain relationship with it. This way the number of souls is related to the available energy.

The Cythai for some reason seem unable to maintain coherent energy. In majority cases it dissipates over time, as if something is pulling it back. I'm interested what this means for such a soul. Does it simply dissipates back to where it came from or is it pulled toward the realm of Death. I'm looking forward to the battle tome and later soul wars to see what GW writers have come up with. Of course I'm interested in ideas of others as well.

One thing that also intrigues me is how Ur - Phoenix comes into this. Is the god beast capable of pulling souls from Shyish ?

As for how souls are created and the 'soul economy' things are a bit more clear. Mortal beings are born with souls, which start with and/or accumulate quality over time. Souls are not finite in number, making them renewable, but the key part is that they are also consumable. Some beings, such as Sigmar, recycle the same souls but others (everyone else) consume them by various means. In cases such as the Chaos gods this can be literal consumption while souls can also be used as fuel for powerful magic or to create minions (that may wear out over time depending on context).

Creation of magical artifacts is also a possibility. I think it was in the spear of shadow, where Grugni re-shapes a daemon and a tzeench follower, daughters of Khaine battle tome hints that Khorne re-shaped the remains of Khaine into weapons and Nagash uses aelf souls to create potent artifacts.