#fallen celica

The Witches and Idunn

While the soul itself has never been a major theme of FE, there are various examples of people lacking one, mainly Witches in Gaiden/Echoes and Idunn in Binding Blade. I don’t count undead creatures fitting the deal, because they’re mostly corpses reanimated by dark magic (or by parasitic insects for the Risen) and operate mainly on instincts and can follow only basic orders. People often mention their souls being trapped, but that seems more of a belief than anything concrete. But, in general, they all tend to share a lot of similarities:

They all have their souls taken by an external factor, either devoured by a god or being completely destroyed;

They lost almost every memory of their past life, and their personality along with them - some in particular retain fleeting memories and even feelings from their past lives (Celica, Hestia);

They can’t feel any emotions, because they would just get in the way of performing their tasks;

They have pretty much no free will of their own - they’re forced to obey their masters without hesitation, and this is one of the main reasons to turn a person soulless in the first place;

They are, biologically speaking, alive (proof being that Witches don’t count as Terrors);

They gained unfathomable power from giving up their soul, willingly or not - Witches gain incredible magic prowess and the ability to teleport, and Idunn can create literal dragons out of nowhere.

The main difference between the Witches and Idunn is how they’re treated in the story: The Witches’ condition is treated as irreversible, with various characters stating that only death can set them free, while it’s implied Idunn eventually regains some emotions and sense of self in Binding Blade’s secret ending.

Takumi (and Anankos’ other vessels)

“But wait, doesn’t the Takumi you face in Conquest lack a soul as well? Why haven’t you mentioned him?”

Well, it’s because when you look at him and how Anankos’ vessels (or whatever you want to call them) they are indeed soulless, but they function completely differently from the other examples. In fact, the complete opposite most of the time! Let’s just pick Fallen Takumi as an example:

His soul didn’t get destroyed or stolen - it moved on to the afterlife, where Corrin eventually meets him. So at most, Anankos possessed or reconstructed his body after his death, making him more similar to a Morph;

He retains all of his memories and emotions, or at least the negative ones - they are what gives him power;

He seems to retain free will, but in truth his emotions are easily manipulated by his master to do his bidding;

Beyond being stronger, Takumi didn’t gain any new powers beyond his new bow, Skadi, which is an Outrealm bow that creates a copy of him;

Fates doesn’t have undead as a game mechanic, so we don’t know if Anankos’ vessels are biologically alive or not, but I tend to believe the latter.

I talked about Takumi because we get to see a lot of him both alive, slowly getting possessed and ultimately becoming a Vessel, but the other named cases function very similarly (Mikoto’s attachment to her family becoming an obsession style “I’ll kill you so we can be together forever under Master Anankos”, Garon getting his well-intentioned extremism (implied) cranked up to absurd, laughably evil heights, Arete and Shirasagi as well)

At the end of the day, it’s very interesting to see that the soulless state means a completely different thing in Fates. Which is fair, because not every game takes place in the same world so they’re going to have different rules as well.

Morphs and Quintessence As a last case, I want to mention FE7′s Morphs, as they are a weird hybrid between soulless persons and resurrected bodies.

They are Nergal’s creations, made with the quintessence (AKA life force) he stole from other people he killed. However the game doesn’t state if Morphs are bodies reconstructed with the quintessence, or corpses imbued with it. But given the Final Chapter’s Morphs, being most bosses you faced through the whole journey, I’d be inclined to believe the latter;

They actually can have emotions, but they start with them only if Nergal believes they’re useful - this is the case with Ephidel and Sonia as they needed to infiltrate human organizations, but not with Limstella, since they serve as Nergal’s main harvester of quintessence. Limstella themselves state the emotions Morphs feel are but a construct, like the sorrow they feel upon dying. But it begs the question: Why would Nergal make it so his Morphs feel sad upon defeat? That doesn’t seem very useful, does it? Which means they can eventually form their own emotions, regardless if Nergal gave them the ability to feel it upon creation.

They don’t even have emotions or a conscience if Nergal doesn’t deem it necessary - such is the case with generic Morphs, the Deadlord-like Morphs of the final chapter, and the one and only Denning.

So... do Morphs count as Soulless? That depends, really. But I think Limstella is the one that fits the description most.

But it’s interesting to reflect upon quintessence and its relations with the soul: Are they correlated? Or heck, could they be the same thing under different labels?

Can a soul be restored?

Just a warning: we’re straying further from canon here and straight into headcanon territory, just bear with me.

Short answer? Yes, but actually no.

Long answer? Yes, given enough time and interactions with the outside world, which is a very slow but steady process that can’t get any faster.

I believe that, unlike revived bodies, soulless people can recover their soul because they actually retain a very small fragment of it, which can grow and recomplete itself over time (which is why Soulless people are so dependant on others). Why do they have it? Well, because they’d just be a corpse otherwise. To completely lack a soul is to be devoid of life, and they are of little use that way.

But the catch is that this new soul would be completely different from the old one. The Idunn regrowing her soul and with it a new personality sense of self would be a different person from the Idunn from before her soul got destroyed.

Even across versions of the same world, there aren’t two souls exactly alike, and you can’t just craft a replica of one. The old person, the old soul, that one is never coming back, and best case scenario it’s chilling in the afterlife. Or in Askr.

Celica is an exception, because she was a Witch for like an hour at most, still retained memories and a sense of self even if she couldn’t control her body anymore, and she got stabbed with Falchion, died and revived by Mila, a Divine Dragon who gave all her life force so she could come back to life.

All of this is what made her come back as herself, with her original soul restored, but it’s something that it’s basically impossible in every other case.

In every other case, to become soulless is to be basically reborn, and with time, care and company, they can become their own wonderful person.

Anyway, here’s why I love soulless characters and why I believe they hold limitless story potential,

and thanks for coming to my first major FEH Talk.