IN> Painted myself into a logical corner

[William Keith]

> My poor undead protagonist has to collect X number of souls to save 
> his own.  He does figure out that this is a losing proposition, but as 
> he signed a contract with a Balseraph he's simply trying to make the 
> best of it.  What I've run against as an adventure-writer is--where do 
> you keep a soul?  He's on a boat, but I don't see it housing that many 
> people, especially as they're not Damned properly speaking until 
> they're dead.
>
> Can you keep a soul in a bottle?  I will probably just keep contracts 
> in bottles, but I was wondering if there was something more creative.

The Liber Canticorum has a lost Song called the Song of Soul Binding, 
which rips the soul out of a mortal and binds it within an object as an 
artifact.  The Song is lost... but perhaps for your game it could have 
been kept around, or recently re-found.  Beth has mentioned Force 
Catchers, and living beings can also be more laboriously turned into 
living artifacts.  Ghosts, particularly, can be bound within Force 
Catchers or bound by Sorcerous ritual.

On the other hand, presumably what the Balseraph wants is either souls 
influenced to their Fate and then dead (killed if necessary, natural 
causes if the undead cares to wait), people turned into Undead, or 
people taking oath to become Hellsworn.  Of course, willingly causing 
mortals to do these means that even if your undead returns to life and 
lives his existence normally, upon dying he will probably plummet 
straight to Hell himself; these are very selfish, Hell-serving acts 
that will stain his soul deeply.

If he merely obtains control of contracts or souls physically, 
re-achieves mortal existence, and then tells the Balseraph, "well, now 
that I've got authority over these souls I release them again, ha-ha," 
that will probably be the least Fated thing he can do.

William