Broken Soul

Ghost, that is spirits or souls awaiting either their next cycle of mortal life on this realm or another, or awaiting their transition to their 'eternity' though we know that no such thing exists even for celestial beings, are not uncommon at least amongst the Dreamweave. In fact they are in their purest form, one of the energies of creation, that of Meanma, of Soul or Spirit. However when a soul experiences death within a mortal shell, they must go through a process of decay and rebirth of a sort a process tied not to just the raw energy, but to all the energies and associated manna that has.....clung.....to their form that they picked up as a necessity of living a life. A sort of....energy signature of their memories if you will. They will absorb and alter their essence from this, but also shed this....let us say crystalized substance, which will briefly become as Lobhadh before returning to its proper original state. This decay process is natural and required, for all Creation's energies are seemingly infinite, but in truth they are finite, the amount just so vast that we cannot comprehend its limits. Manna, the energies of creation, have a finite volume in reality. The Dreamweave though vast beyond comprehending, does indeed have limits.

However pure energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely changed. At least under the laws of reality as we understand them and that even applies to the Dreamweave. The rules around that shifting of 'states' are far looser within the Dreamweave, hence why it is known as Aether, or raw Creation. To our perception there are no rules. However most certainly though we may not comprehend them, some sort of rules and logic must exist.

What then of lost souls. What of those souls that have been tainted and twisted beyond belief, or even those that are no longer souls as we know it but have been changed. Perhaps even somehow made less? As if some part of them had been destroyed. Well unfortunately, such a thing that sounds as if a Nightmare beyond reality does in fact exist. Several types of them in fact. Some mostly follow the rules that we can fathom, or at least are comparably understandable on a philosophical level as entities. However among these eight sorts of Restless Dead, for they are no Voidling and yet they are not alive.....there is one that does breach even the fundamental rules we understand.

Broken Souls. Souls consumed by Fear itself, those the Lord of Nightmares, seemingly the Void itself has laid claim to. Spiritualists proclaim them abominations unto existence, even when all the other types they treat with a deep sorrow and mourning respect. To hear them tell why, unlike the others were what once was is simply...chained, repressed, bound as if cursed in a Broken Soul it is simply torn out. Rended asunder. Hollowed out and shredded, so that naught but terror, fear, and panic remains.

Broken Souls have a similar anatomy otherwise to other Lost Souls, including the heavy presence of Lobhadh, that is the manna of Decay holding them together, however they also uniquely have something wholly different. Within the Aether and to those with the Second Sight it is best described as connective stitching over their lightless husk of a form that radiates with colors beyond mortal description. Stitching of raw unreality, of Nightmare itself. These threaded stitchings hold back a core of nothing but raw Void. As such when these souls are 'vanquished' and destroyed if no magister capable of containing the sudden release is on hand, this can sometimes be merely the beginning of the horror. For that core of raw Void is a Seed of Phobia. It will rend open a tear, a hungering portal to Mount Terror itself, and begin letting the nightmares in. Thus without a Spiritualist or Druid (A magister of the Diamond or Emerald Order) of considerable power, or a Priestess of Talia in the highest of favors it is unwise to consider confronting such an entity.

However when on the Mortal Realm, not much is known about a true form within Material Space, only about what they look like in the Aether. This is because they read the fears and phobias of sapient entities as we might read a book, and seemingly seem unable to be blocked or hidden from if one is close to you. At first this might manifest simply within you, as sweaty palms, the belief you saw something move out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn, there is nothing present. Eventually however as that feeling matures, ebbs and flows, but also evolves, it will find more concrete horrors to confront you with and begin manifesting visibly, audibly and otherwise in ways associated to those deeper fears and traumas, seeking to drive more and more terror, more and more paranoia and fear out of you, to insure its own stability. This can and will eventually quite literally scare people to death their heart will simply stop, unable to handle the sheer stress of the fear.

Yet this interestingly makes them equally terrifying, yet also one of the least successful Lost Souls when it comes to collecting a mortal tally. Because of the length of time such a thing can take, risking discovery and confrontation. Though powerful entities, wielding the fears and phobias it can glean off its foes as psychic weapons, if being confronted it seems to panic and become much more heavy handed, therefore detectable and resistible when it tries to intrude into your subconscious and find those things it can use to assault you. The difficulties in dealing with them are in detecting them and in the aftermath of vanquishing them, not so much the direct confrontation between those two circumstances when compared to other types of Lost Souls.

Even more disturbing we know far too much about how this is accomplished. For the beings of Mount Terror take great glee in insuring that information becomes known and documented by cultists and apostates alike. Though perhaps not the most ideal sources, based on the professional opinions of the Diamond Collegiate, we would do well to heed what information has been gleaned from such heinous sources as fact.

They can be found anywhere and seemingly in any environment and amongst any people. Thankfully however Broken Souls are exceedingly rare upon the Material Realm. They are actually far more valuable on Mount Terror, for such broken bits of raw creation it is theorized are capable of skipping the hierarchal evolution process that Voidlings need to go through and with enough of such hollowed out entities Mount Terror can simply birth a new Nightmare right off. This is why some cults see the realm of Mount Terror as less one of the realms of the Void and more its 'heart', seeing this realm as the great power under which the other 'lesser' cults and Void Gods play. Perhaps there is truth to that, perhaps not, but it is a belief that exists amongst such foul individuals.

Though these entities are mortified presumably, by what they are, they equally cannot escape it. Because they are creatures of unreality, of but Fear and Phobia, and from Mount Terror, they cannot subsist long on the Material Realm without 'feeding' and to feed they need to well....imprint and reflect the deepest fears and traumas of mortals back unto them. That is how they will manifest when 'haunting'. For that rising fear, that acrid taste of terror in your throat, that is the only way they can subsist. Is to manifest that sort of energy into existence in sapient creatures close to them. Elsewise their own instability will split their 'stitching' and they will cease to be, though as previously discussed, this process sees a rift begin to form in reality, opening a tear in the Dreamweave directly into Mount Terror.

Like all Lost Souls they seem to have some sort of ability to sense and track sapient thought, that higher level of intellect that marks the line between beasts and humanoid. Interestingly these, unlike other types do not seem to differentiate or care when it comes to the sapient species. Where as others will show a pickiness for those species of Ascended Blood, Broken Souls do not discriminate it would seem. We have documented well a handful of incidents where a bestial warband or small greenskin tribe were discovered quite literally mostly wiped out, terrified and the dead all having been very clearly scared to death. Three incidents in total exist to support this and that makes up one third of all known incidents involving Broken Souls manifesting in the Material Realm that we are aware of, that is those whom came with casualties. It is a very real possibility that any remaining Scars upon Reality/World-Wounds were directly caused by such an entity at the time of their twisted becoming, however we do not have any documentation or evidence to confirm that as fact.