#reaptide lore

How does reincarnation work?

Every human is born with a brain and heart, thoses are the receptacles of their soul.

When a person dies, if their heart and brain aren't directly damaged, the soul is expulsed from it's body, it is free to roam and search a new vessel with an undamaged heart and brain to reincarnate into.

The soul cannot reincarnate in their previous body without any chirurgical change of its receptacle organs.

Tensei ringo reference

The history of reincarnation

While there seem to be proof that there was a point in time where humans couldn't reincarnate, there is very little documentation on it's discovery, the events dating back to a time for wich writings are almost nonexistent.

There are a few tales and paintings suggesting something unknown appeared and gave humans the capacity to reincarnate, but the origin of the event is unknown, same goes for the way it managed to propagate through the entire human species.

Deincarnation

Once reincarnated, a soul's memories of death (deincarnation) are hazy and unclear, remaining as a feeling rather than an actual tangible event.

Every person who has experienced it has a similar way to describe it though, it's empty, cold, monotonous, some people manage to find comfort in it, but most prefer to come back to life.

The social and economic state of reincarnation in the current day

In most context, people consider a soul leaving it's body as a form of loosing someone, especially when the body is the one the soul was born with.

A reincarnated person rarely comes back to their past social circle, as a way to make a proper cut, but there are people who only see their bodies as an aestetic they can change through reincarnating, though they are generally very rich and can afford getting a body they like the appearance of without having to care for the dead person't previous life.

When it comes to the question of how people react to seeing a stranger reincarnate in their loved one's body, it's atleast a bit painful, it's really unsetteling to see someone you once knew be completely different, but it also depends how the reincarnated person goes about it.

Extract of It Wasn't Gabi (text from the bigass ressource drive)

In the case of Gabriel what specifically made Vic uncomfortable was that he would try to pretend being her brother, but some people who don't mind that or even prefer it (Roxanne would be an example of that), though thoses are more rare.

There's a general agreement that if someone sticks around the close ones of the person they reincarnated as, they kind of owe them something, they have to be grateful for it.

It's also very frequent for families to incinerate or bury the body of the dead person to avoid having someone reincarnated in it.

Trivia:

- i came up with reincarnation before i came up with reaps actually

- there used to be a much more complicated freaky magic stuff process but screw that lol

- i've talked about it a bunch before, but the first story i made this universe for was centered on reincarnation, REAPTIDE was originally meant to be it's reap-focused spinoff, while i'm not sure i'll ever make something of this original story, i still think of it as a part of the universe and it has thematic ties to the rest

- the HERMIT personality test i made a few weeks ago is meant to somewhat show the different ways people can go about reincarnation, go try it if you havent btw it's fun i swear

What are reaps?

Reaps are mammals that have both a terrestrial and a marine form (the terrestrial for being the more human-like one, and the marine form being the big scary monster one), the marine form can be unleashed when a reap get in a high state of stress or feels too drawn to the call of the sea, but they don't usually switch between forms often in their lifetimes and get use to either one or the other.

Note that the terrestrial form is harder to maintain outside of Great Britain, as, for some unknown reason, the call of the sea is much weaker there, human-like reaps are pretty uncommon outside of it, especially in other continents (basically the further from there you go the rarer they get).

Terrestrial form

As it's been said a good amount of times, the terrestrial form is very human-like, apart from the ears, the odd skin color and a particular liking for salted water, those reaps look and behave pretty much the same as humans.

Marine/wild form

A reap's wild form measures between 170 and 250 cm, they are very agressive and fast, the attack humans on sight, targeting the organs that don't allow for reincarnation if destroyed.

(Note that there is also an in-between form when a reap that's been in their terrestrial form for a long time turns wild, it consists of the marine form's head and the terrestrial form's body, but they do have a more animalistic stance)

The call of the sea

The call of the sea is a feeling a lot of reaps who leave amongst human experience, especially during adolescence, it's a feeling of not belonging in the human world and needing to go back to a reap's marine roots, it can be more intense depending on the individual and the place they're in.

Cultural ties with death

Reaps appeared closely after the discovery of reincarnation, existing first and foremost in their wild form, they were beleived to be a divine punishment or mother nature trying to balance itself from that discovery, due to that, reaps are considered to be very connected to death, even being reffered to a "reaper's messengers" in old texts.

Nowaday, even though they are less seen as apocalyptic creatures that came from god with the goal to kill every human, they are still seen as a bad omen in lots of countries, especially outside of western Europe.

The church of the child of truth

Despite most religion mentioning reaps in their texts and beleifs, none of them give them as much importance as the church of the child of truth.

The church of the child of truth follows the beleif that their messiahs, messengers of god called children of truth, are young reap girls sent by the church to god and given back with infinite knowlege that cannot be revealed, children of truth tend to die very fast and are then replaced by another kid sent by the church again.

As a result of this, the church has become a shelter for orphan reap girls, and later on every kind of children, reaplacing the entirety of the orphanage system in Great Britain.

Trivia i had no idea where to put:

- reaps are called fauches in french and kosiarze in polish (thank you @/himananakan for the suggestion), their name is generally a shortened version of "reaper" or a therm tied to death in every language

-they cannot breathe under water but can hold their breath for over an hour, wild reaps need to go back to the surface to get air back in their lungs every once in a while.

- the marine form design is supposed to look like a funky mix between a dragon, a seal and a shrimp

- in old iterations they were called monsters and could also come from swamps and rivers, they used to lay eggs, all of this was scrapped bc it was either too confusing or i just didn't like it anymore