A thought on using souls

What if not only your enemy could take a part of your soul when you died, but you could bind a part of your own soul into objects the same as someone else's?  Say each player is able to split some number of "fragments" from their soul. 

They would have to bind a fragment to a resurrection stone (or whatever form it takes) in order to respawn at that location.  this ties into the idea of immortality.  You are immortal because you have bound a part of your soul to this location in the physical world.  Perhaps they could bind to multiple locations and they would spawn at the nearest one, or perhaps in the act of binding to one, any fragment bound elsewhere released and returned to the body of it's owner.  Of course, every character would be bound to the location in their safe zone upon creation, to avoid the possibility of final death.

If the number of fragments is finite, then that number includes the fragments that enemies could take from you upon death.  No one could take the last fragment, and no one could possess two fragments of the same character's soul except the character whose soul it is.  A player could choose to liberate a fragment of one of his realm-mates rather than take a fragment of the enemy he had just slain.  In that case, he would have to locate the realm-mate to return it, but the fragment would act as a compass to guide him to the owner.  In the act of returning the fragment, the character who liberated it would receive some additional reward (a set amount of XP or a bonus buff for some amount of time).  This way you increase interaction between players of the same realm.  The liberator could demand payment in return for the fragment, or they might do it out of charity and a sense of realm pride.  However, to avoid griefing, when a player logged out for more than X minutes any fragments of realm-mates they possessed would automatically be returned to the owner(s), and the XP reward would be lost.  Soul fragments of a realm-mate could not be bound to an item the way an enemy's or one's own could be, except for a respawn location.  In the case of binding to a respawn location, the owner would still have to accept the binding for it to take effect.  This way, if a character forgot to bind to a nearby location and his friend is able to recover his soul fragment from the enemy who slayed him, it would still be possible for him to respawn in the area.

As MJ has stated, players would be able to see who possessed a fragment that belonged to them through some visual queue, whether friend or foe in my system.  But in addition, there would be a visual queue that indicated characters who were in possession of more soul fragments than they had currently lost.  The queue might even become more obvious the more fragments of their enemies that they currently possessed, sort of a running +/- indicator.

And then there is the whole bonus to items from soul fragments idea that MJ has already mentioned.  In the case of this idea, using your own soul fragment would provide the weakest bonus available, and each character would only be able to possess one item that they infused with their own soul because any further fragmentation would cause their soul to force all fragments within a certain range to re-fuse with the character's body.

So, what do you think?  Any more ideas?  Let's get this show on the road!

Lawt