Erudites

You know better than anyone the gods are not always clear, never mind kind. The road from here is not always clear to me.

-Valkan Astera, Mendicant Oracle

This article (or section) contains potential spoilers for Entangling Vines.

The Erudites are a secret race of beings originating from the Pre-Baghari Culture, kept alive and in the World by a variety of magic known to Ars Magica practitioners as the Logotupos Animans. Their number is incredibly few - possibly fewer than 100 living members at any time - and they rarely, if ever, are to be found outside of the city of Baghar, which they rule in secret, and have done for most parts of history. By their very nature, the Erudites are well-educated and powerful spellcasters, capable of passing for members of any of the other races of Ahren.

Logotupos Animans

Creation of a Logtupos Relic

The Logotupos Animans is a form of magical life preservation, which captures the mental and spiritual essence of an individual (the spellcaster themselves, exclusively) in a physical object through a process involving the written word. This process is distinct from the processes of Lichdom in that resulting Logotupos Relic does not contain a fragment of the spellcaster's soul, but a complete copy of their soul, with all memories up until the moment of the object's creation intact. The magic required to this is procreative rather then negative, and imposes no morality upon either the original spellcaster nor the replicated self which lives on in the Logotupos Relic. This process is highly advanced magic, requiring a lifetime of study to reach the appropriate level of mastery, and years - or even decades - of work to create the necessary reagents, much less the Logotupos Relic itself. In the current ahrenic kalpa, it is quite possible that no civilization is old enough to have developed this ability independantly, and that the Erudites themselves are the only ones practicing this ability. An even more advanced form of magic - Palimpsestic Logomancy - can modify a Logotupos Relic. Most commonly, this ability is developed so that living spellcasters who have created their Logotupos Relic (or those who have reanimated from one) may "update" the relic with their newer memories and abilities.

This is an important detail: the Logotupos Relic is a snapshot of the things that make a person uniquely themselves, at the moment in time where the ritual creation of the Relic is complete. A being reanimated as a Logotupos Animans forms new memories and accumulates new experiences, but if they were to die, and be resurrected from the same Logotupos Relic, they would be restored back to that 'original' state rather than retaining the memories they had in their most recent life. This is the main reason Palimpsestic Logomancy was developed - to provide the reanimated Erudite with the ability to continue learning and growing through multiple reanimations.

Another term commonly used - especially by non-Eruidtes - to describe a Logotupos Relic is 'anchor book', since the relics most commonly took the form of books, collections of books, or other written material. However, any object capable of storing a sufficiently large amount of written and illustrated information can serve as a Logotupos Replic.

Reanimation of the Logotupos Animans

At any point after the creation of a Logotupos Relic - including while its creator is still alive - the soul preserved in the Relic can be given a physical form through a variety of means. The most common way in which this occurs is a process known as Logotypic Imprinting. A reader capable of reading and understanding the Relic, even at a very poor level, can engage in protracted study of the Relic. When such a study is performed to its completion, the mind, soul, and memories of the reader are supplanted by those of the being kept within the Relic. This process is often apparent to the reader, and at various points along the road between the start of reading and the fullness of Imprinting, both the mind of the Logotupos Animans and the mind of its reader are capable of interacting with one another. Since suppressing such a mind perforce or by trickery is unethical, many Logotupos Animans offer their readers the warning and choice. However, some use subterfuge and trickery to achieve the same end. Fortunately, again, such relics are exceedingly rare, and hard to come by.

When a creature has been the victim of Logotypic Imprinting (or a willing participant/sacrifice for the same), something of their soul, mind, and memories remain in the reanimated Erudite. The resulting creature *is* predominantly a resurrection (in mind and soul) of the Erudite who created the relic, in the body of the person who read them back into being. However, fragments of memories or even momentary consciousness of the original soul-mind of the host are possible. Some living Erudites report that there was no clear cut-dry line between one mind or the other in the first place, but that the process of Logotypic Imprinting slowly formed them into the "successor" of the original creator of the relic rather than coring the mind out of a living being and starting over from scratch.

Reportedly, it is somehow possible to create a living, soulless body with no mind or sense of self of its own, and through magical means impart the Logotypic Imprint onto this "blank tablet". Among the Erudites, such beings are known as a Tabula Rasa Animans and feelings on their appropriateness as hosts are mixed.

It is possible, but considered aberrant to most Erudites, to reanimate the same Relic into multiple physical bodies. When this happens each body has now obtained a unique sentience as its own copy of the original being; they are not connected as a "hive mind" or in any other way living a shared experience unless other magic is used to cause this. See The Parable of the Orb-Weaver.

Protection of the Logotupos Relic

In comparison to Lichdom, which involves the creation of a repository for a fragment of the soul, which itself can be any object (with surprisingly wide boundaries), the necessity for a Logotupos Relic to be a writing-bearing (and ideally somewhat mutable) object places limitations on its form. At the barest analysis, nothing about the creation of the Logotupos Relic makes the object especially difficult to destroy. However, as a rule, all such objects are created by wizards or other spellcasters who represent the apex of their craft in their epoch of life, and for reasons unrelated to their nature as Logotupos Relics, they can be very, very difficult to destroy anyway. This is desirable, as obviously the loss of the relic means the Erudite the relic represents can no longer reanimate.

Indeed, protecting the relic means walking a fine line between making the relic difficult to gain unauthorized access of it, making it difficult to destroy or alter, and still making it possible in the future for some unintended reader to gain access to it. More Erudites have been lost to history by making their Relics too difficult to retrieve than have survived through to the present age.

Of course, if the relic is destroyed, this is not exactly like a Lich losing their Phylactery. The Logotupos Animans created from the relic (if one is currently animated in the world) remains vital and in possession of the fullness of their powers, and may or may not be aware the relic was destroyed depending on how they were protecting it. They are also in the possession of the fullness of their abilities, which, by their very nature, means they can always create another one (with just as much labour required as creating the first). However, much like a Lich, destroying the Erudite without also destroying their Relic means that there is a chance, that eventually, in the fullness of history, they may return - though they may not even remember why you destroyed them in the first place.

Also, Erudites jealously guard their relics from one another, with deceptive replicas, elaborate puzzles, and their best magics. There are nefarious things they can do to one another with the power of Palipsestic Logomancy, as well.

It is rumored that many such relics are among the works preserved in the Archives of Baghar

Physical Attributes

Upon reanimation, the Erudite fully takes on the physical body of its host, meaning that their race is effectively replaced by that of the host in every respect. They still appear physically like the host creature, but may not behave the same - over the slow process of Logotypic Imprinting, they had plenty of time to get used to the new body, but their mannerisms will still be those of their original selves. This means that those closest to the host may notice the change, especially if the change happened relatively suddenly. Aging continues as normal, which in shorter-lived races like Orcs and humans may mean the Erudite has to reincarnate again very quickly.

However, this doesn't last indefinitely. Erudites have a Totemic Form which may be that of any race, or no race - in many, is form is actually that of an animal made humanoid, or even just the animal itself. Over time (many centuries) this form "eats into" the form of the host and eventually fully replaces it. Because this transformation is true to the soul of the Erudite, Erudites with the appropriate magics to do so will often accelerate this process. Even if they don't, many Erudites still take the creature they are eventually bound to become up as a personal icon. Too, others will continue to use magic to masquerade as more typical creatures for the area they are currently living in. Erudites refer to this process of transformation as the Second Becoming, with the First Becoming, of course, being their psychic imprinting in the first place.

Erudites who experience the Second Becoming and complete the transformation permanently (whether by age or magic), become immortal physically, at least in terms of the passage of time, though they can still contract diseases and die by violence. This is a second reason why many choose to accelerate their transformation, especially if they find the process of replacing a separate, sapient mind distasteful. (Many, even otherwise 'good' Erudites, instead consider the process of Imprinting to be a form of psychic merging, and don't think they've eliminated their host as much as merged with and thereby uplifted it)