CREATURES
The beasts of Sunset Requiem are as varied as they are vicious.Humans
Humans. The indomitable creatures who made themselves into the image of Gods. They are the most populous sapient life on this world, closely followed by their own creations.
Souls / Ghosts
Souls. Whoever said the dead rest easy? In a world seperated from the Gods, the living have nowhere to go. Life finds a way.
Details
When the Rift opened and Humanity caught a glimpse of the Crossroads, a discovery was made. Souls are very much real, and a quantifiable aspect and organ of the living body. Like every other part of life, they were studied and examined, given scientific names and tested to their limits to learn exactly what made them go. And just like everything else in the body, humans figured how to take advantage of souls. A soul contains all the knowledge of the brain, an intangible replica of the human psyche- or perhaps, it is the human psyche. The soul will replicate any effects on the brain- for example, if someone sustains a brain injury and loses their ability to read, their soul will no longer be able to read. The effects will be permanent if the soul is removed from the body before the brain has a chance to heal- something Lawrik took advantage of when creating Steel Soldiers to remove their memories and emotions.Once the soul is removed from the body, the body will cease to function but will not die- as if all parts of the brain not essential for life had been deactivated. It was discovered a soul can be removed from the body and used elsewhere so long as they have a piece of living organic tissue to bind to. Souls function best when the tissue they are bound to is of the same genetic origin as their own body. Souls can still be used even when the body or tissue the soul was attracted to is dead, but will no longer be able to learn, becoming something like a computer with maxed storage.
These dead souls are called ghosts. Ghosts are often used for their knowledge, used to manipulate machines or act as referential tools. Ghosts must be caught in soul traps, which can be both physical and digital. Due to the latter, ghosts are commonly interwoven into computer programs to serve as a form of memory that doesn’t need vast storage modules. The reason ghosts are used is because even though they are limited, a copy of a human brain is significantly more advanced than any computer can be. Ghosts woven into computer programs are called viruses. Viruses are usually made from deceased soldiers, who even in death must still serve.
Viruses can be destroyed with special snippets of code that crawls through code and undoes the ritual soul trap code, freeing the ghost within. Within the Cities anti-viruses are constantly being produced and forced onto the population to get rid of any lingering ghosts from the past. However, in the Wastelands these anti-viruses are rare and it’s exceedingly common for a device to have a virus within, to the point where if your phone isn’t possessed by some dead guy you’re a bit weird.
Ghosts that aren’t bound to anything tend to just sorta exist in the world, unable to leave due to the closing of the Rift. Eventually they either dissipate or are destroyed, if they aren’t recaptured. Ghosts also form naturally upon someone’s death if they happen to be particularly exposed to Rift radiation, which… pretty much everyone is.
0UTRUN is a special virus, as it is a constantly expanding collective due to a specialised soul trap that passively catches any passing ghosts. Because of this 0UTRUN is vastly intelligent and hence can run its company and come up with "new" ideas (ideas someone within the collective had before death).
Steel Soldiers use the soul principle to power their mechanical bodies, with only a scrap of organic material within to bind the person to. The soul principle is also used within the Cyber-Blue project.