Where do new souls come from?

So.  When someone dies, if they choose Oblivion, their soul is gone.

Does Creation have a hard cap on the number of souls?  I recall that Autochthonia had problems in that regard, but I can't recall if that's just because they didn't have enough souls, or if Creation had a way of making new ones and Autochthonia didn't.

Basically, every time a soul chooses Oblivion, are they leaving Creation a little bit more empty, permanently?

Are there people wandering around Creation whose souls have never been in another person -- whose souls were freshly-minted for them personally, because there weren't enough free souls to go around otherwise?

Aquillion:

So.  When someone dies, if they choose Oblivion, their soul is gone.

Does Creation have a hard cap on the number of souls?  I recall that Autochthonia had problems in that regard, but I can't recall if that's just because they didn't have enough souls, or if Creation had a way of making new ones and Autochthonia didn't.

Autobot had a hardcap on souls stolen from Creation's Well of Souls, (which looks nothing like the Well of Souls from Raiders of the Lost Arc) plus those of the followers who went willingly (or were kidnapped, but in Communist Robot World we don't talk about that) when he went into Elsewhere.

Aquillion:

Basically, every time a soul chooses Oblivion, are they leaving Creation a little bit more empty, permanently?

The threat of oblivion is more real if this is the case, but logistically, it poses some problems. For one, unless it was accounted for in the plans of creation, the expansionist deliberative might have run into problems as they were producing and maintaining far more lives than originally dwelt in creation. This could be explained by solars shaping more souls out of the wyld, but I'd be hesitant to say they did that enough to account for the massive increase in population creation experienced in the first age. Regardless of that, Creation is probably far from running low on souls (if it indeed has a hard cap), even with the influence of the underworld and the void, since population is so dramatically reduced from the height of the first age. There's probably quite a bit of downtime in soul turnover right now.

Really, I'd tailor the answer to what you need. If Oblivion is a looming threat eating at the edges of creation with every single soul a vital piece in the war against the abyss, there should be a quickly draining limited pool to draw from. If that's not a problem, there doesn't really need to be and the loom might spin new souls out of the wyld as needed. Either way, I think this is one of those things the books leave blank so it can be tailored to fit the individual needs of a game without stepping on any canon toes.

Considering the Secret Origin of Soulsteel and the Secret Origin of Starmetal, do you really want a Secret Origin of Souls?

It'll turn out that Souls are born when you kill a Fae and rip him into shreds, then feed his shreds into the Well of Souls which is really a recycling facility that turns Wyld Bits into souls. And then everyone will want to know what effects you get on new souls from the different types and parts of fae you recycle. Do you get angry asshole souls by recycling the butts of fae aspected towards Fire? What about Mountain Folk, can you recycle them?

I dunno, that sounds like an entire sourcebook of material there.

Scrolls of Souls!

Whiskey Jack:

This could be explained by solars shaping more souls out of the wyld, but I'd be hesitant to say they did that enough to account for the massive increase in population

Tailor sounds good. But as far as I know, atleast currently, wyld shaped people dont reinvarnate, do they?

Well...when a mommy soul and a daddy soul love each other very much...

I always figured that souls are infinite, but slow to generate and based on Creation's scope giving it effective gravity.  This means that the Void could overwhelm the Well, given time and growth.  However, the larger Creation gets, the more 'gravity' it has, and the more souls it can draw in to support more people.

I figured that "soul creation" is written into Creation.  Hence if you destroy Creation, you destroy that big artifact that creates them too.  No bodies, no place for those souls to go, yanno?

Sacheverell:

I figured that "soul creation" is written into Creation.  Hence if you destroy Creation, you destroy that big artifact that creates them too.  No bodies, no place for those souls to go, yanno?

I agree with this, basically. I always figured the "well of souls" were an important part of creation, and that it sort of worked as a soul incubator.

Also, remember that during the Contagion, 90% of Creation's population was wiped out, right?  So, if creation is now, say, six million people (it's much, much more than that), then pre-Contagion it was 60 million.  So, there's about 54 million souls waiting for reincarnation.  Let's say 10% went to Oblivion.  48.6 million still in queue.  Let's say 20% of what's left decided to sit in the Underworld as ghosts.  38.9 million souls still in queue.  If everyone in the world died and was reborn, it would still take the world six Armageddons to cycle through all the souls still waiting. 

There may be a finite number of souls... but it's a really friggin' big finite number.  And I was lowballing.

Azurelight:

I agree with this, basically. I always figured the "well of souls" were an important part of creation, and that it sort of worked as a soul incubator.

You are correct. Creation has the capability to generate a theoretically infinite number of human souls. So long as Creation exists, so will souls. And - as Octopoid pointed out - there's still plenty of souls cycling through after the previous apocalypses, and more sitting around in the Underworld.

Neall:

You are correct. Creation has the capability to generate a theoretically infinite number of human souls. So long as Creation exists, so will souls. And - as Octopoid pointed out - there's still plenty of souls cycling through after the previous apocalypses, and more sitting around in the Underworld.

So, then... Is there any difference between identical twin brothers, one with a brand new soul out on its very first life, and the other with a soul that died a dozen times on altars of the Dragon Kings, eventually incarnated as Desus, then lived dozens of lives as peasants and three lives as Dynasts, one of whom became an Akuma but died at the hands of a particularly violent Green Sun Prince lover before being an infant that died after three days before its birthplace of Thorns was devastated by the Mask of Winters's invasion?

Or does Lethe so cleanse the soul that the two are identically blank?

Segev:

Or does Lethe so cleanse the soul that the two are identically blank?

One might occasionally have more deja vu than the other, or dream weirder dreams, but aside from that, no, probably functionally identical.

where does it say a soul can chose oblivion?