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Earlier today I read in the 6th edition rulebook that Dark Eldar can keep themselves alive by feeding off the agony of others, as it feeds their soul.
I also recall The Doom of Malan'tai being able to suck out your soul, and that the soul is the reflection of yourself in the warp.
Then I recall that Slaanesh takes the souls of dead Eldar (if they are not stored in something).

And this has brought me to the question: How much does the "soul" impact on life forces, and how much does an individual depend on it in the world of 40k?

The soul (link with the warp) is not neccesary for life sentient biological life, this is seen in pariahs, humans that are literally soulless.

The soul can be looked on as a door between the real universe and the warp. The larger the soul, the larger the amount of warp energy can pass through the warp into the being. This is where the problem lies, the warp is not just a universe of odd energy, it is full of hungry and mostly vindictive lifeforms. Beings with 'large' souls attract these creatures as they want to either destroy them or use them. This is why most powerful psykers have to train and maintain a strong level of control over themselves to stop any attacks.

In universe this has caused many worlds to fall to chaos, was a main cause of the downfall of humanity's first stellar empire and is what allows most deamon excersions into real space.

Also, if your soul is powerful enough, you will maintain awareness after physical death as your soul enters the Warp.

Human souls as a whole arn't strong enough to do this, more powerful psykers are an exception.

Eldar souls are powerful enough. Thats why dying without a Soulstone is so bad. You enter the warp and get nommed by Slannesh, and are aware throughout the process.


Also, getting your soul forcefully removed will kill you(Ala Doom)

 Grey Templar wrote:
Also, if your soul is powerful enough, you will maintain awareness after physical death as your soul enters the Warp.


Also, getting your soul forcefully removed will kill you(Ala Doom)

But if you can live without a soul (like pharias or [in theory] necrons), why would it's removal kill you?

Pariahs didn't have their souls removed. They never had one.

You can live without one, but having it forcifully removed is traumatic to the point it will kill you if it is removed.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Pariahs didn't have their souls removed. They never had one.

You can live without one, but having it forcifully removed is traumatic to the point it will kill you if it is removed.

*Points at the 'crons* Didn't they have their souls torn out? Or could a person be saved if his consciousness is transferred to another vessel?
In addition to this, if the emperor is the most powerful psyker ever, and thus is likely to have a huge soul (which now explains to me what the astronomicon actually is), wouldn't he be a liability in that practically half of the warp would be trying to eat him?

Selym wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Also, if your soul is powerful enough, you will maintain awareness after physical death as your soul enters the Warp.


Also, getting your soul forcefully removed will kill you(Ala Doom)

But if you can live without a soul (like pharias or [in theory] necrons), why would it's removal kill you?

No idea, most likely some form of shock, this could be very bad for eldar due to their psychic power and hightened sences/emotions.

Necrons are really alive they are machines with a copy of a brain imprint.

Yes, but their souls got put into metal bodies. Their physical bodies are long gone.

Your soul = your conciousness. It can be transfered into physical form(as data) but the trauma will kill your body.


Those poor Guardsmen the Doom used his Soul snatching on are just souls feeding his power. Fortunately they are incapable of being aware of what is happening. Eldar arn't so lucky.

Selym wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Pariahs didn't have their souls removed. They never had one.

You can live without one, but having it forcifully removed is traumatic to the point it will kill you if it is removed.

*Points at the 'crons* Didn't they have their souls torn out? Or could a person be saved if his consciousness is transferred to another vessel?
In addition to this, if the emperor is the most powerful psyker ever, and thus is likely to have a huge soul (which now explains to me what the astronomicon actually is), wouldn't he be a liability in that practically half of the warp would be trying to eat him?

The Astronomican pre-dates the Emperor's internment in the Golden Throne (after all, they were using it to fly around the galaxy during the Great Crusade). It is not His soul, though He does direct its energies through the Empyrean. His psychic presence is... awe-inspiring, to say the least. After all, 1000 psykers a day are exposed to it and consumed utterly.

The Necrons did have their souls removed, and they did die, though some very faint glimmer of it remains even in the base model warrior, which is otherwise essentially a mindless automaton. Interestingly enough, these tools used to be the merchants, poets, artists and philosophers of their culture, who railed against bio-transference most vociferously. The higher-ranking one was in Necrontyr society, the more of your "self" you got to keep after bio-transference. This is why the Necron Lords still have personalities and idiosyncrasies and such. Of course, it also bears noting that the mechanisms by which bio-transference were done are so advanced that we can do little but consider them "magic". There is no other society in the 40K universe that approaches this level of technological sophistication.

Hmm..

So far this thread has brought me to the understanding that in 40k:

Life is not dependent on a soul.
A soul is your warp presence, and gives you psychic powers [sometimes], and is linked to your consciousness.
If your soul is forcibly removed, the shock will [probably] kill you.
Warp entities feast on souls for power.
Some beings do not have a soul (and some research tells me that the "phariah" gene in humans causes a lack of a soul [maybe they're ginger-haired {Joking ofc}])
The larger your soul, the greater your psychic power and warp presence, and consequently you will be a bigger target for daemons.

Intriguing...

But that leads me to next wonder:

In the early days of humanity there were very few psykers, and eventually genetic mutation caused them to crop up everywhere. If the soul is linked to psychic power and the warp, how would genetics affect your soul [bearing in mind phariahs have a gene that gives them no soul, and the "psyker" gene will make yours larger]?

It could be inferred that your soul is partly genetic.


And mankind did have lots of psykers originally. They were the Shamen that eventually merged to form the Emperor.

Their mass suicide and reincarnation in a single body deprived mankind of psykers for the next 20,000 years or so. They depleted the gene pool of those with the psyker genes. So it took many thousands of generations for the genes to reemerge.

Good thinking.

The implications of this would ofc be that we are naturally linked to the warp, even though it is the exact opposite of reality...

Selym wrote:
Good thinking.

The implications of this would ofc be that we are naturally linked to the warp, even though it is the exact opposite of reality...

Well what is something without an outline of something it isn't? You need a backdrop to define something. Also yes, the warp is pure energy, emotional, spiritual and physical reality is just that. physical. construct. One cannot live without the other. To provide the physical realm with real life there has to be that spark of spirit, that bit of energy. To provide the warp with substance, it needs, well, substance.

Yin/yang stuff here.

Psykers and a soul size are genetic, or in some cases genetic mutations. But you can still exercise your control over your soul. Can you exercise (not exorcise) your soul size? Can good deeds and righteous duty expand your soul? maybe?

Icculus wrote:

Selym wrote:
Good thinking.

The implications of this would ofc be that we are naturally linked to the warp, even though it is the exact opposite of reality...

Well what is something without an outline of something it isn't? You need a backdrop to define something. Also yes, the warp is pure energy, emotional, spiritual and physical reality is just that. physical. construct. One cannot live without the other. To provide the physical realm with real life there has to be that spark of spirit, that bit of energy. To provide the warp with substance, it needs, well, substance.

Yin/yang stuff here.

Psykers and a soul size are genetic, or in some cases genetic mutations. But you can still exercise your control over your soul. Can you exercise (not exorcise) your soul size? Can good deeds and righteous duty expand your soul? maybe?

Interesting point - if we take the soul as something that can be trained (like a muscle?), then we could infer that the emperor is actually still growing in power, as he guides all of humanity with his will constantly...
Maybe this could lead to the rebirth of the emperor, and by extension, the great crusade? Maybe humanity's greatest enemy is also it's salvation?

Selym wrote:

Icculus wrote:

Selym wrote:
Good thinking.

The implications of this would ofc be that we are naturally linked to the warp, even though it is the exact opposite of reality...

Well what is something without an outline of something it isn't? You need a backdrop to define something. Also yes, the warp is pure energy, emotional, spiritual and physical reality is just that. physical. construct. One cannot live without the other. To provide the physical realm with real life there has to be that spark of spirit, that bit of energy. To provide the warp with substance, it needs, well, substance.

Yin/yang stuff here.

Psykers and a soul size are genetic, or in some cases genetic mutations. But you can still exercise your control over your soul. Can you exercise (not exorcise) your soul size? Can good deeds and righteous duty expand your soul? maybe?

Interesting point - if we take the soul as something that can be trained (like a muscle?), then we could infer that the emperor is actually still growing in power, as he guides all of humanity with his will constantly...
Maybe this could lead to the rebirth of the emperor, and by extension, the great crusade? Maybe humanity's greatest enemy is also it's salvation?

1. Unfortunately one's soul is not a muscle in the sense that it can grow.That's why powerful psykers are born, not trained. It can be toned however. Why trained psyker could beat an innately more powerful psyker - he could use the muscle he had better than the bigger muscle.

2. The Emperor dying and joining the Warp is considered good by some. The theory is that once he dies and ascends to the Warp he can kick the Chaos God's ass and bring stability to the Warp.