well, I guess that nixxed my theory of how they reproduce. [5-9-07 #785]

[Fuyudenki]

it occurs to me that Albanion's revelation hasn't clued us in on any potential weaknesses of the Fae race.  Sure, they could mass-suicide themselves into extinction, but then, so could any race, and unlike more mortal race, the Fae get to decide exactly when and where they want to die.  It's slightly difficult to extinct a race when they can simply say "no, I'd rather not die right now."

[rabid_fox]

I do want to attend one of those auctions, though. I remember getting dragged by the arm out of an auction once cause I...uh...got compeditive.

[thegayhare]

This does leave me wondering what would have happened if Dark Pegasus had succeeded in sacrificing Mab's soul, though.  At a guess it would either have left the DMFA universe with one less Fae, or more likely whether it would have caused Mab to have been reborn with the Dark God's personality.  Assuming of course that the Dark God does exist and isn't a figment of DP's religious fervour.

Well one thought I had was that the 2.438,165 is the current total.  This isn't to say that this has always been the total.  Some souls could possibly have been destroyed between now and the begining of time.  This would probably be almost impossible to do simply because of the unique nature of the Fae's soul.  However while there is alot of power in a fae's soul I doubt anything like this would ever work and the risks of even trying this would be so high only the most desperate or power mad would even try.  With the nature of Fae as they are removing even one soul from circulation has to be the worste crime one can commit against the fae.  So anyone who tries would label themselves as public enemy number 1 to a race of creatures who can cause caticlysmic disasters when annoyed.   However Dark Pegasus could have belived that his dark god would protect from the wrath of the fae.

What I find interesting is how casually Albanion reveals this 'secret of the Fae' to Jyrras.   From what we've been told, this sort of info has never been known outside the Fae themselves, other beings or creatures don't know what happens when a fae 'dies' during a role, etc. 

They knew that such fae seem to come back, after a while, but weren't sure if it was always, maybe, or whatever.

Now we suddenly have a fae leader chattily giving the exact fae census, and details of the fae life and death cycle, to Jyrras.  And seems quite ready to answer other questions, too.

Well I think that it might be worth noting that when a fae chooses to die in a role and when they choose to Die  so there soul can be recycled might very well be two differnt circumstances.

[nikename2]

Dragons live for millions of years but don't seem to have this problem, though.

Thats because they will die eventually and they know it. Just because they live for so long doesn't mean their perception of time is the same that of a being who will live for 100 years or so. A Fae though can just say no to its own death, theres no comfort for them that there time will eventually come no matter how far off that time may be. They have to face the reality that the only way they can die is through themselves. They can ignore it for the time being, but eventually it will be the only thing left once in their mind they have seen everything else.

This probably means Dark Pegasus' plan was doomed to fail anyways, because Mab would just "say no" to her own death. Amber stated that a fae soul is nigh unstealable. So unless DP could somehow convince Mab to just die so he could transfer her soul into the Dark God it wouldn't have worked imo.

At any rate, the Fae don't quite seem to have limitless understanding.  Mab certainly hasn't been an obvious fountain of knowledge, and from what we've seen of them so far, they can be very forgetful.  Now, an endless life with a limited mind... that could become tortuous after a while.

I probably should have worded that differently. 
What I meant is that eventually a Fae would reach some level of understanding where theres nothing left, nothing new, not even your own creativity can suffice because you've reached your own limits of everything you know. Kind of like the old line "Now I've seen everything" then later the guy offs himself. I suppose the rate of which this happens is determined by personality.

Now certainly Mab is not exactly a fountain of knowledge, her last recycling happened somewhat recently since it appears she grew up with Dan in his childhood. This version of her is nowhere close to reaching the point where she would be driven to offing herself.

[127.0.0.2]

Most Fae are pretty self-aware of what they are, so religion tends to never have a play in regards to Fae.  They know that when they "die", they are gone for good...as they basically are giving up whatever they are in order to be recycled into a completly new personality.  So pretty much they don't have a heaven or hell or religious afterlife to look forward to, just oblivion in exchange for a new individual to be born.

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me. A "soul" is a very convenient word, but if all of their personality, unique traits and memories vanish into oblivion, what exactly is that part that "stays" then? Apart from the number. And how makes it the Fae to stay so calm about death? I'm not a Fae, but if a good friend of mine were to lose all of his memories irreversibly, at least I would freak out quite a bit...

I wonder how the number was decided on. Did all the Fae just magically show up in the beginning?

It's obviously the number of milliseconds Amber spent watching pidgeons during the creation of this strip

once you reach a point where you've done practically anything and everything, and have complete understanding of all, death would be the only thing left. Having limitless understanding, you would be driven to boredom, and potentially insanity.

Dragons live for millions of years but don't seem to have this problem, though.

Well, at least from a mathematical point of view, there is a big difference between "a few millions" and the eight-on-the-belly.
Or to pull up an IMO fitting quote about infinity:
"Imagine a planet the size of thousands of suns. Imagine another planet, on the other side of the universe. Every billion years, a little bird will start its journey from the second planet to the first. After it has managed to cross the lightyears between the planets, it will sharpen its beak on the surface of the planet and then fly back. When the planet has crumbled down to dust under the beak-sharpings, infinity has barely begun..."

...in any case, one quest Mab doesn't seem to have mastered yet in her who-knows-how-many decades of life is to make good brownies. So work is still to do...   

[nikename2]

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me. A "soul" is a very convenient word, but if all of their personality, unique traits and memories vanish into oblivion, what exactly is that part that "stays" then? Apart from the number. And how makes it the Fae to stay so calm about death? I'm not a Fae, but if a good friend of mine were to lose all of his memories irreversibly, at least I would freak out quite a bit...

Well I think the memories, the traits, personality, etc. are all bound to the particular body a said soul is in at the moment. The soul itself, is the energy itself, the part that binds it all together. In a soulless zombie, there's nothing to bind all of these traits together, all thats absolute is basic instinct, to eat and survive, which overwhelmingly overrides any other trait that might surface for a second or two.

Granted I'm not an expert on zombies and souls, its what I think the situation is.

[Alondro]

*Charles hmms* The fae bodies then become the undead race?   

[Zedd]

That or become the subtance for sugary sweets

[127.0.0.2]

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me. A "soul" is a very convenient word, but if all of their personality, unique traits and memories vanish into oblivion, what exactly is that part that "stays" then? Apart from the number. And how makes it the Fae to stay so calm about death? I'm not a Fae, but if a good friend of mine were to lose all of his memories irreversibly, at least I would freak out quite a bit...

Well I think the memories, the traits, personality, etc. are all bound to the particular body a said soul is in at the moment. The soul itself, is the energy itself, the part that binds it all together. In a soulless zombie, there's nothing to bind all of these traits together, all thats absolute is basic instinct, to eat and survive, which overwhelmingly overrides any other trait that might surface for a second or two.

Granted I'm not an expert on zombies and souls, its what I think the situation is.

Even then, what would make soul A different from soul B then, so to speak? Or more concrete, what would make the pieces of magic energy the souls "of Mab's parents" if everything that defined them was stripped from them at death?

[Tapewolf]

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me. A "soul" is a very convenient word, but if all of their personality, unique traits and memories vanish into oblivion, what exactly is that part that "stays" then?

What she's saying reminds me of P. F. Hamilton, actually.  In the Night's Dawn trilogy, souls are essentially an energy field which is encoded with the personality data and memories which are stored off-plane... it's just part of the way the universe works.  When something creates a rift, the souls of the long-dead pour through and begin possessing the living... but I digress.

If we assume that DMFA works in a similar way, it would basically mean that the Fae's soul is being erased so that the energy field can be re-encoded with another set of personality data.  Of course that's just a guess.  Precisely what Amber's conception of souls in DMFA is, only she knows - and at one point she said she wasn't telling (IIRC).

And how makes it the Fae to stay so calm about death? I'm not a Fae, but if a good friend of mine were to lose all of his memories irreversibly, at least I would freak out quite a bit...

I'd go with that.  Still, takes all sorts to make a universe...

Dragons live for millions of years but don't seem to have this problem, though.

Well, at least from a mathematical point of view, there is a big difference between "a few millions" and the eight-on-the-belly.

I could be wrong, but didn't the dragons get there before the Fae?
**EDIT**
(This is actually unclear.)

[Amber Williams]

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me.

It shouldn't.  In many ways its a very grim reality.  I guess in a sense its rather atheistic, though with the knowledge that even though you yourself will cease to exist, someone completly new will begin.

I should add though that ...Albanion has more than likely misused the word soul.  Much like how both the Demon and Angel race are lacking their religious ties, odds are soul was just a word that was the closest thing Jyrras could comprehend without another 2 pages of details.

[Ralanost]

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me.

It shouldn't.  In many ways its a very grim reality.  I guess in a sense its rather atheistic, though with the knowledge that even though you yourself will cease to exist, someone completly new will begin.

I should add though that ...Albanion has more than likely misused the word soul.  Much like how both the Demon and Angel race are lacking their religious ties, odds are soul was just a word that was the closest thing Jyrras could comprehend without another 2 pages of details.

But they need details to hypothesize for another few days till more updates!  Then more hypothesizing!    To a degree, I don't know how you can stand these boards sometimes amber.

Remember people, as far as what has been stated so far, only fae get to go to the fae plane, no others!  No interplanar auctioning of souls!  There has to be a quarantine or something....

[Gildedtongue]

So, I guess adventuring and most of life would be boring for the Fae Folk, with zero risk to life and limb, thus why Mab doesn't join Daniel on his quests.

Interesting to see an atheistic world.  That would explain the lack of cursing in Lost Lake and all, considering a culture has to hold something sacred to blaspheme.  "Frig" is more of a proximate to a word referring to copulation (Which I presume Mab uses simply culturally since it seems the asexual reproduction of Fae would render that activity purely optional [Of course, then one must think about Neni and Azlan, as Neni seems non-fae, and thus either A) any product would be Non-Fae unless Azlan wins a FaeSoul, or B) they end up childfree due to Azlan's asexual/nonsexual species]), and the other "dirty words" have all been associated with anatomy or waste products.  I could go through the entire archive to look for instances of Hell or Damn.  #43 has a bleep from Mab which could either be a "damn" or a reference to copulation.  Though the canon of the strips before the Journey to the Twink Territories is sketchy.

ah well.

[bill]

And then there's the F-bombs in Abel's. 

[The Lurking Dragon]

Err, yeah. Really. Speculation is all well and good, I suppose, but  sometimes you guys go so far out on tangents I'm baffled how you got there. Aaaanyway, I don't think Albanion is being devious or anything, my theory is he's being used as an indirect way of telling *us* what is going on. I'd also say that expecting all kinds of answers this early on in an arc is rather... hasty? I'm willing to wait and see. 

[Azlan]

I wonder if this recycling is 100% or is some fraction lost to magical entropy?

[superluser]

Having limitless understanding, you would be driven to boredom, and potentially insanity.

Lady Wortley Montague said, upon dying, ``It's all been very interesting.''  Winston Churchill, not to be outdone, reportedly said, ``I am bored with it all.''  I suppose these are two of the reasons which you might have to die.

This probably means Dark Pegasus' plan was doomed to fail anyways, because Mab would just "say no" to her own death.

Unless you could force her into some sort of checkmate where she would have to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

Every billion years, a little bird will start its journey from the second planet to the first.

I prefer the James Joyce version.  That one was a doozy.

I wonder if this recycling is 100% or is some fraction lost to magical entropy?

An interesting question.  If that were the case, that fraction would have to be recovered during the fae's life, or else the souls would get...smaller.  Or possibly less well-defined.

[Fuyudenki]

So, I guess adventuring and most of life would be boring for the Fae Folk, with zero risk to life and limb, thus why Mab doesn't join Daniel on his quests.

Interesting to see an atheistic world.  That would explain the lack of cursing in Lost Lake and all, considering a culture has to hold something sacred to blaspheme.  "Frig" is more of a proximate to a word referring to copulation (Which I presume Mab uses simply culturally since it seems the asexual reproduction of Fae would render that activity purely optional [Of course, then one must think about Neni and Azlan, as Neni seems non-fae, and thus either A) any product would be Non-Fae unless Azlan wins a FaeSoul, or B) they end up childfree due to Azlan's asexual/nonsexual species]), and the other "dirty words" have all been associated with anatomy or waste products.  I could go through the entire archive to look for instances of Hell or Damn.  #43 has a bleep from Mab which could either be a "damn" or a reference to copulation.  Though the canon of the strips before the Journey to the Twink Territories is sketchy.

ah well.

Amber didn't say that the land of Furrae has no dieties, simply that the Fae themselves are an embodiment of the pinnacle of Athiestic conceptualism.  Given that DMFA originally took place on Furcadia, and Furcadia does have a form of pantheon, I don't see that the land of Furrae can't have dieties.  Ultimately, it's Amber's decision whether the powers-that-be are omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, or if the highest powers around are just whatever Creatures and Beings happen to be nearby.

I do note, of course, that in the "cast" page, Amber and Fluffy are listed under the title, "Gods," so if nothing else, they've got a deranged artist and her pet...fluffball...

On the topic of Fae copulation, I suspect they do it just like the rest of us, but it doesn't "take" if they don't have a soul for the baby.

I wonder if this recycling is 100% or is some fraction lost to magical entropy?

Oh my, but that would suck if you couldn't replenish it somehow.

Granted I'm not an expert on zombies and souls, its what I think the situation is.

[superluser]

Amber didn't say that the land of Furrae has no dieties, simply that the Fae themselves are an embodiment of the pinnacle of Athiestic conceptualism.

Did she even say that?  The closest that she said was that it was ``rather atheistic.''  That doesn't necessarily exclude non-god religions, like Taoism or Confucianism or Shinto.

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t102/superluser/dontshakeamber.jpg

D'oh!  That was a throwaway gag.  If you enjoy it, feel free to use it, but I suspect that it will get old, fast.

[nikename2]

I find it kind of funny that theres a emote. I used to have an eightball once.....but it broke for reasons unknown.... 

As far as DP trying to force Mab into a situation where she would willingly die for the greater good, yeah I could see that possibly happening. Such as:

DP:Mab, let me use your soul, or all your friends die.
Mab:*hmmm* You better keep your word.
*Mab dies, Dark God is rezzed*
Dark God:Thank you DP. Now I'm going to kill everything because yeah, I'm evil and stuff. Later.

The point is that if you think it through no situation would the greater good be that Mab die, because DP can always go back on his word once the balls in his court. And yeah, Dark God, evil, stuff. I could see Mab playing the martyr though, just because its what any hero would do, die for the ones they loved.

[Fuyudenki]

wait, you're right, aren't you?  Right, then, the Fae lifecycle is rather Athiestic in nature, not the pinnacle of Athiestic conceptualization.

and I was just milking the "Never shake Amber" thing.  If I wasn't feeling lazy, I'd have grabbed the animated one.

Of course, I could always ressurect this monstrosity, if you'd prefer.

[Tsunari]

Amber didn't say that the land of Furrae has no dieties, simply that the Fae themselves are an embodiment of the pinnacle of Athiestic conceptualism.  Given that DMFA originally took place on Furcadia, and Furcadia does have a form of pantheon, I don't see that the land of Furrae can't have dieties.  Ultimately, it's Amber's decision whether the powers-that-be are omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, or if the highest powers around are just whatever Creatures and Beings happen to be nearby.

That makes me wonder what dream in Furcadia DMFA was based on originally. 

[Whitemagebishieboy]

I'm sorry but that doesn't sound satisfying for me. A "soul" is a very convenient word, but if all of their personality, unique traits and memories vanish into oblivion, what exactly is that part that "stays" then? Apart from the number. And how makes it the Fae to stay so calm about death? I'm not a Fae, but if a good friend of mine were to lose all of his memories irreversibly, at least I would freak out quite a bit...

I am not a state i am a process.
If i am ended, and a perfect duplicate is created it is not me.
If all the information is removed from me, but the process continues i am still me.

Personality and memory are just information, not self.

[bill]

I think this discussion is smarter than me.

[Zedd]

Its smarter than Yogi bear

[Fuyudenki]

That makes me wonder what dream in Furcadia DMFA was based on originally. 

Lost Lake, obviously.

My brother once held a spot for the uploader.

[Alondro]

*Charline yawns*  Well, it's obvious that we cubi are superior.  We realize how important we are and thus would never even dream of letting ourselves die!  Why, I can't imagine the world without me in it.  It would be cruel to allow other lifeforms to exist in a bland world without cubi like me... so I'll make sure to have a wormhole weapon ready in case I'm ever mortally wounded.   *when Charline does 'scorched earth', she does it thoroughly* 

[Fuyudenki]

Charlene sounds like the kind of person cubi I would rather have aimed at enemies than at myself.  I shall have to make a note of that.

[Brunhidden]

its been asked if enrophy happens when a fey dies, but what if it dosent? what if a fey just keeps increasing this 'soul' bit by bit every time its reborn? could someday the fey boast members ten times as powerful as any demon, angel, or cubi known?

however the thing that sticks in my mind is Mabb going "SOULS! GETCHER SOULS HERE! FRESH AND HOT FROM THE CORPSE! you there young woman, you look like you have a lot of sex..."

theres something so wrong about that.

it takes all the guesswork out of cooking souls

[thegayhare]

It's odd as soon as you said that I pictured Mab talking to a nice Fae couple

"Yes I'll let you have both right nowfor free but you have to do one thing... Ground them... Alot.  And I mean alot lot okay?"

"He He He that'll teach them not to give me that tricycle I wanted when I was 4"


Edit:

You know I just had a rather bizare thought...

Realy TGH you had a Strange thought...

Yeah I know weird isn't it. 

Anywayfor some reason my mind startedtrying to work out how Fae explain the facts of life to there young.

"Mommy Where Do baby Fae come from?"

"Aww My little man is growing up."

"Aww for petes sake Marge he's 43, stop babying him."

"Well son You see when two Fae love each other very much and want to have a family they check the local obituaries.  Then they have to talk to the children of the dead fae's so they can buy a soul to make a new baby.

"Wow Mommy thats kinda creepy"


Here is anouther thought I had... Do to the unique nature of Fae reproduction could a Sam sex fae couple have a baby?  Or even a single mom?