#ghost cores being baseball sized ish

[sellyourshadownotyoursoul]

Halfa reproduction

Dp world building idea

Human souls do not make for very powerful ghosts. The worlds they live in are simply too far removed from the realms to be exposed to the right amounts of Ectoplasm, their lifespans too short to build up any sort of ecto signature that might let them live on after death. More often than not they do not form ghosts at all. Their deaths are the equivalent of a tiny displacement of air. Even the most liminal of people do not become much more than blobs, only the very core of their identity imprinted unto the Ectoplasm that clings to them; the vague notion of humanity, sometimes a particularly strong emotion, very rarely accompanied by an instinct to accomplish some goal. A distant echo of what might have been an Obsession.

It's a good thing, in most respects, because otherwise the realms would be absolutely flooded with them. They breed young and breed quickly, their sapience causing their timelines to split and intermingle near-constantly, exponentially increasing their number with every minute decision. Their lack of ectoplasmic aptitude is counterbalanced by their emotional intensity, their ability to cooperate and the fact that their multitudes allow every single facet of a problem to be examined simultaneously. Indeed if they did regularly show up in the realms it would no doubt be absolute carnage.

Thankfully, as numerous as they are, the worlds they inhabit are incredibly rare.

Humans are exclusively the denizens of what has been dubbed ‘congenital realms’, they are creatures of the cosmos that exists inside the core of a very particular species of ghost.

A halfa. The rarest type of ghost in existence and one that, by all accounts, can only be formed from the body of a human.

It's a strange survival strategy, even amongst the denizens of the infinite realms, akin to cloning or asexual reproduction in contrast to the twining of cores that is typical in the creation of neverborn.

At any one point a halfa might be incubating any number of its kind, keeping them safe until they are strong enough to enter the realms on their own or even just to let them live out their entire existence inside the core of their parent. That might be a factor in the species’ low numbers; the fact that they do not always show their face in the realms at all.

Clockwork has, throughout the eons, met more halfas than perhaps anyone else. The very first being he met upon his death had been what some might consider an ancestor to the modern halfa. A cat-like creature in the way a shadow might resemble anything in the dark. Its body sleek and cloaked in shadow, it guided the newly born concept of time into its core and kept him warm amongst the primordial waters of what might have been the very first earth.

In the now, Clockwork has even molded his appearance from that of a human. He finds the form pleasing to the eye, and the hands are practical. The variety of human presentation is a joy to cycle through. The Fear that such a shape strikes into the core of a ghost is quite pleasing as well.

The thing about halfas, in contrast to the beings in their core, is that they do make terrifyingly powerful ghosts. They are ghosts who are not held back by their obsessions; they are able to mold themselves, able to evolve and change and grow. They are not beholden to a single obsession, nor are they chained to one once it is formed.

They do not start out that way of course, not at all, they start out clumsy and starving in what is typically a very ectoplasm-poor environment, the atmosphere of the realms filtered through their parent and broken down into the building blocks of their world. But if they manage to survive and break through to the realms? There is no ceiling to their ability.

Most denizens of the realms are stagnant, they are frozen at the point of their creation in temperament and power.

Halfas are not.

The last, and perhaps most crucial, fact that is known of halfas is that they cannot be Ended. A halfa has died once and will never die again. They are as infinite as the realms and even if their cores are smashed or melted or eaten and digested - they will reform. It might be in pieces and it might be with wounds that never heal, but their existence cannot be wiped out.

Even for a world of immortal beings, such a fate is difficult to comprehend.

Most halfas choose to sleep, once they have existed for sufficiently long. They find a place they deem safe, somewhere they will be undisturbed, and they retreat into their cores, never to return. There has been much speculation on what this behaviour means, on what actually happens, when a halfa goes to sleep.

Even Clockwork doesn't know, but he likes the idea that they are living alongside their fellow humans, perhaps as gods. Or perhaps they let themselves be born over and over again, to experience life in a million different ways. No one knows.

Clockwork is the keeper of a small handful of such sleeping cores. Each of them was once a dear friend, their contributions to the history of the realms a thing of legends and their impact on Clockwork himself no less impressive. He keeps them in his personal chambers at the very top of his haunt, made comfortable on silk pillows with emotionally charged items scattered artfully around them.

It is impossible to describe the horror that grips him when he finds one of them injured. A deep-seated nausea pulsating throughout his current form, exacerbated the longer he stares at the little trickle of ectoplasm that rolls down over the bright red fabric. The shell of the core has cracked, like an egg hatching, like something is trying to get out.