User:Icebreed/The Unbound
- This is the story-based description of the Unbound. For their official character rules, go here.
Earth is no stranger to warped souls. The undead, the immortal, the fused Namekian, and many other circumstances have shown the world's people that their fates could be far stranger. The newest addition to this mix has the propensity to cause confusion and insecurity in a society that revolves around identity. The Unbound are not brand new to the universe, but their kind has been extremely isolated and far removed from Earth's territory. They are living souls that have been mutated to reject true death. Like an immortal, they may never depart the realm of the living. Unlike them, however, an Unbound's body CAN die. When it does, the soul seeks a new home, very commonly not a newborn person as normal souls are predestined to take. Instead, they bully other souls into submission and commandeer their bodies. Over the course of a few months, slowly integrate the host's soul into their own being.
Reading this, it's easy to judge the Unbound as wicked, despicable things, and many who know about them believe this very way, since a life is essentially, permanently lost and denied an afterlife, if you look at the situation in one particular way. However, the Unbound do not (usually) choose to be the way they are, nor are they conscious of which body they choose to dominate. They do not have any control over whether the original soul is consumed, or how quickly it is consumed. Their demeanor is entirely independent of their spiritual existence, and can be saintly, monstrous, or anything in between.
Unbound on Earth
Almost all Unbound on Earth were formed (with only extremely rare exceptions) during the Undoing the Godslaying Sword saga, when Isaak Zell interrupted the natural process of the souls of the dead returning to the afterlife. He gathered a billion souls and passed them into the Kami's body before slaying him and using his powers to form the Godslaying Sword, Kusanagi. Though Zell was eventually defeated and his weapon undone by the power of the Dragonballs, some of the souls utilized were twisted by the dark power involved in the weapon's creation. These souls became Unbound.
Thusfar, the world has gone largely without noticing the advent of these beings. The reason for this was that after modification, the newly Unbound have been little more than restless souls. For the first few months following Kusanagi's destruction, most attempted to enter the afterlife, time and time again, only to be repelled. Eventually, these souls would forsake the pursuit and begin wandering the Earth. Some were able to garner enough strength to be seen by the eyes of the living, but these were usually cast aside as hallucinations of the superstitious, or dealt with with ineffectual exorcisms that only made the mortals feel better, while the Unbound soul simply no longer had the strength to manifest. Some were taken advantage of by dark magic and made into terrible abominations. Most would simply continue to wander on.
Now that considerable time has passed since their liberation, the souls are beginning to complete their transformation. They are beginning to feel the attraction to the bodies of the living, and cannot help but leap into the ones that seem somehow more favorable. They spearhead straight through the existing soul within, merging with it and enslaving it without even being conscious of the process. Their first conscious thought is that they are alive, despite their very last thought being death. Their next thoughts are rife with confusion, as one personality tries to understand why it has the thoughts, memories, and even the secondary personality of an entire other person. They are forced to try to come to some understanding of who they really are.
Then, one day, through violence, illness, or natural causes, death claims them again, and just when they had come to terms with their new life, they are thrust into another, consuming another personality, stealing another life, becoming a permanent impostor for yet another person, while the previous lives the Unbound lived still thrive in its mind. Such is the existence of an Unbound soul.
Other Sources
The Unbound are an anomaly far older than the battle atop Kami's Lookout, however. It has simply been a much, much rarer condition, and there is very little information on the occurrence on Earth because of it. The situation may have occurred one or two times ever before on that world, in ancient times. Such tales are usually regarded as myth.
Amongst all the incidents of Unbound creation in the universe, the most common cause is a deliberate desire to change one's own soul. One of the most popular paths to this end is seeking the status of a Lich, a magically powerful undead being that retains its living consciousness even as its body dies and becomes unliving, granting a form of immortality. Somewhere along the line, the ritual goes afowl and the spirit is permanently scarred into the form of an Unbound. While this achieves the immortality that a mage seeks without the unfeeling coldness of undeath, it is still considered unacceptable due to the unpredictability of what form it will take next and the burden of additional memories and personalities each time death visits.
Any process that alters a soul, deliberately or accidentally, willfully or by force of another, can turn a person's soul Unbound. Even in such circumstances, however, it is about as common a fate as winning the lottery twice in a row, hence the relatively low population of Unbound across the galaxy. Earth's situation provided a very specific situation that permitted a large number of Unbound to be created, which has not ever happened before in the history of the universe, anywhere. It isn't every day that a god is killed with a billion souls, shaped into a weapon, and wielded by a nihilist madman.
Culture
Unbound are generally too scarce and too far separated to form any sort of coherent social group, though on Earth this could shortly change. Some difficulty exists in forming such a group even in this prime environment, as many Unbound conceal themselves because of their inherent life-inside-a-life nature, and one cannot tell an Unbound simply by looking at them. The spiritually inclined amongst them, however, can hone their spiritual attunement to sense the presence of others of their kind (a trait that those who despise and hunt the Unbound also take advantage of), however, providing the catalyst for a society given proper motivation.
Even so, there is a certain common culture that all Unbound, especially new Unbound, adhere to, as they are natural reactions to the newness of merged life. First and foremost, a single personality -- usually the first personality an Unbound possessed -- takes dominance, and each personality it takes on afterward is reduced over time to become a simple compliment or accent in the dominant personality. A coldblooded killer who merges with an overly kindhearted and generous person will still be a coldblooded killer, but may be affected by moments of softness and charity with particular circumstances. The younger the life consumed by an Unbound, the less impact it has on their personality; those who happen to jump into very young children may not experience much personality change at all.
The name an Unbound chooses for its self is often simply the first name it had in life, due to the dominance of that personality. Some, however, retain the host's name when they wish to conceal themselves, as they know how to more or less mimic the host's original personality almost perfectly, and only use their original name when they are forced to reveal themselves. Others, particularly those who originally died as teenagers or young adults, take up fantastical names, often akin to superheroes or villains, perceiving their new consciousness as a form of super power to be embraced as an entirely new form of being. These Unbound frequently embrace the new traits of their host's and try to use all of the new skills and knowledge from as many of their current and previous hosts as they can. They are also prone to being discovered, as they either do a poor job of concealing themselves, or deliberately go out of their way to become famous.
Even if a society of Unbound forms, it is unlikely to become a public organization. The idea of their kind -- a soul that can jump into almost anyone and assume their identity permanently while being someone else -- could rock a nation like Cardinal to its core, and result in a police state. The default reaction to an Unbound is that of an intruder, an impostor; spare to those friends who have come to terms with the new form of being, a revealed Unbound is an untrusted and suspect being. They are persecuted but by those who believe they can discern them, and persecuted by those who revile their very nature. Given that many bodily released Unbound find power wielder bodies strangely attractive, even that highly independent community must find itself eventually compromised with mistrust. It becomes up to the Unbound itself whether it reinforces the stereotypes laid against it or works to remove them from the public eye.