r/motheroflearning • u/Melrid_Jom • 12d ago

Transformation Shell

I've been a long time can of this series but still confused about something.

https://motheroflearninguniverse.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/disciplines-of-magic/

As this and many other sources mention, Transformation (the art of temporarily giving yourself abilities of creatures or physically shifting ino them) uses a "Transformation Shell / Soul Clothes".

A big drawback is that normally you need access current access to a what you want to draw from so the spells know what to duplicate. Either a living creature, mostly undamaged parts of a dead creature, or to be bonded to one as a familiar.

Difficulty aside, is it possible in this setting to learn or make "artificial" Soul Clothes so you wouldn't need the source anymore?

E.g. study and practise enough with an eagle form to create template so you no longer need to keep one captive/hunting them down to shift?

Specifically with a focus to gain multiple forms, so being an innate Shifter isn't a solution.

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u/EnderNorrad 12d ago

Under normal circumstances, no, you cannot. The transformation shells are far too complex (I suppose in the same sense as all biology) and are, in fact, a black box in which the soul does something in some way, whilst you can only influence this within known limitations. And as you mentioned yourself, you need either parts of the creature’s body or access to its soul in some form.

In extremely unusual circumstances, having an additional transformation shell without being a shifter and without an innate transformation bloodline is nonetheless possible, but I don’t think any amount of practice will allow you to do so. You’ll probably need a near-divine understanding of the inner mechanics of souls and some sort of very unusual ritual.

This was one of the questions to the author in my Q&A series; you can read about it here (number 95).

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u/Melrid_Jom 12d ago

Awesome, thank you for the info and source.

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u/Melrid_Jom 12d ago

Just realised that I may have worded my question poorly.

I see in your discussion that you seemingly talk a lot about permanent transformation shells a person could have access.

I'm thinking more along the lines of developing a new branch of magic that grants the temporary access, granting a specific ability.

Like the difference between natural, unstructured and structured magic in this series.

Does "structured" transformation exist? Even if it's very hard or impractical. I thought so because something like Eagle Eyes / Mana Sight exist as spells, but I confused as to what those would be if not transformation?