Dwarven soul source

That’s correct, Eric.

Alternatively, what if the powerful magic that the Gods of Man put up to turn Celestial Giants into Dwarves also blocks off their souls? By this theory, Celestial Giants from far distant Realms (where they are still giants) have their souls go where they always went. Former Celestial Giants (now Dwarves) in the Realm of Arcanis (and possibly cosmically-nearby Realms) are blocked off in their souls not being able go to the “Celestial Giant Cauldron”. The most obvious result is the need for Soul Shards. The source of new Dwarven souls is unclear. Maybe the Gods even wanted this so that some Human souls get put into Gnome bodies so that when They eventually release the Curse, there will be many magically powerful Half-Celestial Giants who’d otherwise have been not-so-magical Men.

This may have some analogies with Eloran Orumar and the way they seem to have souls go to the nearest Orumar (despite the official party line of their being only one universal Orumar).

Further speculation: If the Dwarves teamed up with someone who knows how to build an Orumar, could they build a Dwarven Orumar? That could be an interesting story/adventure idea….

Ok, if the assumption is that there’s a block of souls for the dwarves, then lets look at how this plays out.

1. A segment of the celestial giants is cursed by Illir. That population (all living at the time) are shrunk to dwarves. Each gains a soul stone.
2. Each dwarf’s soul goes into the soul stone when they die.
3. Dwarves continue to be born.

Conclusion: There must be a pool of souls beyond those of the original cursed, as all of those should be accounted for.

What would be interesting to know is whether there’s a correlation between the diminishing dwarven population and the number of gnomes born.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Perhaps a better question to ask is ” where do souls originally come from?” Highly doubtful (to me) that Pengik, Undir & other elementalist types come from the Cauldron…particularly if their “ethnic group” was never aligned with the First Imperium.

My best guess is that Ourumars, Cauldrons, Kassegore’s belly etc are all ways to boost a diety’s power.

Without knowing more about the “free range” variety of Celestial Giants we don’t have a lot of clues to work from on where there souls come from and why the dwarves are dwindling as a people.

The alternative is that everyone goes to the same place, and the ‘owner’ of that place is whichever God is currently in power. This would mean that all the (non-Varn worshiping) ssethrics and any Elorii not tied to a particular Orumar would go to the Cauldron while on Arcanis because Beltine (and Illiir) are the current “big dogs” of the afterlife.

Wouldn’t that just make all those other races feel so dirty

I think it is possible that most souls go to the same place, just known by different names, but if that were the case then there could be humans born with a patchwork soul of a ssressen, etc. We don’t see that (that we know of) so mechanically that seems unlikely. But that is a mechanical explanation, not a plot, so it could be very wrong.

Additionally, is seems likely based on written material that souls go where they chose to go (assume no magical intervention or soul consumption occurs). This is supported by the Varn getting the souls of their worshipers, despite them being creations of Kassegore. All the mortal had to do was chose to change their worship and their souls went to a different place after death. This is also supported by the effects of the Myrantian demoness that could seduce someone with so much pleasure as it killed them that it would take their soul (I’m assuming because they would choose to stay with her because of the pleasure); even preventing Elorii it killed from going to their Orumar. It is unclear if Elorii and the Orumar is just a matter of choice of which Orumar to go to, or if there is an “attuning” that needs to be done to go to one.

If this is true, than it seems likely that most non-celestial giant souls go to the Cauldron, since they often worship the PoM. It raises the question of who the celestial giant worshiped before they became servitors of the PoM, since that might indicate how their soul “reserve” works. IT seems interesting that belief dictates where your soul may go upon your death, but it does not control where your soul comes from. IT would appear that the Ssethric souls should still be coming from Kassegore, but many are going out to the Varn, a similar loss of returning souls to the dwarven problem, and going on for an even longer time. (though maybe not as 100% complete on this plane as the dwarven blockage is, since many Ssethrics still secretly worship Kassegore and Yig) Has there been a decline in their birth rate due to fewer souls as well? Maybe that will be answered in the up and coming book!