Okàn (the Soul)

Okàn, the Soul, is a joint technomancical venture between one of the Celestials, Ioun, who concerns herself with the acquisition, preservation, and spread of knowledge, and Primus, the AI, from the plane of Logicia (which it created for itself). Ioun made her case to Primus that the loss of data that occurs upon the death of a sentient organism was of net loss to the multiverse of Anuwai, and that therefore it was in the best interest of logic to maintain the memories and even the personalities of the deceased in some form or other.   Because of the inherent difficulty in mechanically copying the brain wave patterns (and thus the minds) of the deceased before the moment of passing, it was instead decided that the power of the Weave, which could be altered to automatically store and transport the minds of the deceased. Primus designed the technology to bring this into effect, keeping copies of the minds of every sentient being that died in the vast computer networks of Logicia.   Later, the mortal beings of Anuwai began to discover that this process was happening upon death. Naturally, since the essence of each individual was being preserved, many objected to their essences being stored in Logicia, unable to act of their own volition. If the technology to preserve the self beyond death had been constructed, why not let people do as they please? The Celestials heard these pleas, and despite opposition from both Ioun and Primus, ruled that the code should be altered so that some semblance of control over the destiny of each mind-pattern (okàn) should be left to the individual upon death.   Some people sought to use this new technology to bring reincarnation into effect. Others sought to create a definitive and observable afterlife. Benevolent immortals, notably the Celestials but others as well, cultivated planes of existence where the okàn of the deceased might manifest themselves bodily and live forever with their kith and kin in an unearthly paradise. And, of course, more malevolent forces saw the value of technomancically recorded lives, and sought to use them as technomancical nourishment, a form of perverse currency, or simply to wipe them from existence in accordance to utterly nihilistic views. Like the creation of the Weave before it, the invention of the okàn changed the course of history of Anuwai in profound ways.