The reaping art is a terrifying and powerful art created by altering the exorcism art with potential, increasing the abilities of the user to manipulate their opponent's souls. Practitioners of this art, collectively known as reapers, are able to harvest the souls of their opponents, transferring them into an inanimate object called a reaping relic to be used almost as an energy item. Reapers are few and far between, as the reaping art is one of the rarest in the world; not only is the art extremely difficult to learn and develop, but many of the techniques created in this art negatively affect the practitioner. All of the techniques of this art require large quantities of both time and energy, but when done correctly provides the practitioner with an object of potentially great power, as the power of the person who's soul was transferred directly correlates to the power of the object.
The art was developed by Imrong Tota roughly 600 years ago, and is based around the use of a reaping ritual to harvest the soul of a victim and transfer it into a reaping relic. These relics can then be used or altered in different ways depending on the need and experience of the practitioner. The reaping rituals are the "techniques" of this art. Tota also deduced that due to the nature of the art, there were only a finite number of rituals that could be done as there were only a finite number of ways to manipulate a soul in this manner. He theorized the mechanisms by which many of the rituals would work, and took the liberty of naming each of the reaping rituals himself. He named the reaping rituals after creatures from Ojaran folk legend, and many of the rituals have some aspect that reminded him of the story.
Reaping Rituals[]
Below is a list of the known reaping rituals.
Corcrus Ritual[]
The corcrus was a beast in ojaran folk legend that was known to only eat the hearts of its victims. This ritual allows the practitioner to create a reaping relic encapsulating the soul of the ritual subject. These relics resemble a beating anatomical heart and fully capture the energy techniques of the subject. Other aspects of the subject's soul tends to bleed into these reaping items, and when fashioned into cores some of the machina made from those cores even retained some of their some semblance of the original personality.
Hajera Ritual[]
The hajera was a creature in ojaran folk legend that was said to have the ability to blend into any environment, even matching the texture of it's skin. This ritual allows the practitioner to create reaping relics based on the arts present within the subject's soul. For souls with multiple arts typically the art that the soul is most attuned with, often the art that was most frequently used by the subject, is retained in the mask. However, skilled reapers are able to isolate different arts and separate them into multiple masks.
Temptan Ritual[]
The temptan was a creature in ojaran folk legend that resembled a large desert crane with needles for toes that was said to suck out the life of those lost in the desert at dusk. The temptan ritual is an extremely delicate and complex reaping ritual, and is likely the only one that doesn't require the death of the ritual subject. The ritual allows the practitioner to extract the affinities of the ritual subject, forming syringe-like reaping relics.
Mezzar Ritual[]
Mezzar was an ancient Ojarak who was transformed into an elephantine monster by the gods as punishment for his extreme greed. This ritual is considered to be the most powerful of the reaping rituals, as it allows you to amalgamate multiple souls into a single reaping relic. Reapers that can perfect this ritual are capable of creating relics with new abilities not present in any of the souls used to make them.
Practitioners[]
Below is a list of known reapers:
- Loaloa Winnenloga
- Lagane Sumeca
- Imrong Tota
- Imroc Tota
- Rafus Greeves