Corporeal Immortality

Though never truly unkillable, life has a few different ways of obtaining what might be called immortality. The most common form, being eternal, refers to the body no longer requiring external energy and forgoing senescence.

Truer immortals, called dragons, are able to maintain consciousness as a detached soul and produce intense soulfire, allowing them to generate material bodies autonomously from ichor. However, they can be prevented from doing so via sealing methods.

Natural Eternal

Ouroboran

The beginning of all natural eternals is an Ouroboran state. This is achieved through maintaining delicate control over a high level of soulfire, such that one is continually regenerating their form while infusing such a density as to rapidly mutate their cells. Thus, the body’s genetic code fluctuates until a variety that can tolerate the improved density appears. Even better, eventually, one may appear that can use infused soulfire for energy. Given that genetic information can be stored in the soul and regeneration is constant, aging is slowed to a halt. Meanwhile, soulfire supplants consumption. Thus, eternity.

Unaided Natural Eternal

In the Nebvoltsi and Altakhu, there are a few cases of individuals becoming eternal without a special ritual. In this case, their uniquely high soulfire generation, even among eternals, resulted in an unintentional extended, slow Ouroboran that ultimately produced favorable soulfire-consuming variants naturally.

Induced Eternal

At the peak of the Hythean era, it’s believed nearly every firekeeper alive was artificially eternal, as records from the lower classes describe their lifespans stretching for grandcycles and undergoing a notable change after some ritual tradition. Records from the Hytheans, meanwhile, indicate a routine medical procedure performed during adulthood supplanted common genetic machinery using material from something called the Progenitrix.

Further investigation in recent years has led to the discovery of the exact process, which utilizes the genetic material of the Progenitrix, the first Hythean firekeeper to maintain an Ouroboran state for long enough to produce results, producing cells that naturally harvested soulfire to produce energy.

To undergo this process, one must be subject to the incredibly complex and soulfire-intensive Rite of Transcendence. This engram is what actually replaces all the relevant biological machinery with soulfire-powered substitutes, essentially being genetic engineering through firekeeping.

Because of the monogenetic nature of this kind of eternal, they all share common traits based on their gender (the first eternal was female, and if introduced to a male would induce an unwanted sex change. Luckily modification of the genome was successful in this regard.) Women gain brilliant marble hair, while men acquire three consecutive birthmarks under their left eye.

Consequences of Eternity

The process of becoming eternal also alters the genetic code, such that any children one has will be born partially or fully eternal, depending on the other parent. This may seem beneficial at first glance, but a child cannot possibly know themself and thus cannot produce ample soulfire, which means that any child not fully in control of their emotions runs the risk of starving parts of their body if not in an environment artificially filled with soulfire harmonic to theirs.

In addition, becoming eternal makes one exceptionally susceptible to disharmonic disorder, meaning that they cannot directly activate gimyndine themselves and find being near it rather uncomfortable. This makes them effectively unable to utilize gimyndine, forcing them to be wholly reliant on their own soulfire generation only.