Just a quick question: what do you mean by the good and evil being balanced?

so....extreme good would be...bad???

hm. that doesn't make a lot of sense. it would be...too good, and thus be a bad thing???

No, it wouldn't be bad, it would just change things, and that isn't supposed to happen, yet. Eventually, the balance will rupture and the world will change again, but for now, everything must be equal.

Sounds like the New Age. Yin Yang, etc.

This would make sense if you have a God who is keeping evil from destroying the world while biding his time before sending a savior or some other act that would destroy evil. It could even be like right now, where Jesus hasn't come back yet to destroy evil, so we must balance it out while we wait for his return. Is that the kind of balance you mean?

The most important is that evil never equals the good which it attempts to equal. Satan does not equal God, but rather Michael, and in fact only equal Michael to a certain extent. Also, Satan cannot create an evil, only manipulate something that was good and turn it into evil. Evil is lesser in every possible sense, so there can be no balance.

I hope this has cleared up some of your questions. Sorry about the confusion. It's hard to explain exactly what I mean without speaking face to face.

By the way, what is Taoism? I don't think I've ever heard of it.


Elestar

It did clear up a lot! I think that you may want to avoid the term 'balance' if you can find something that will carry the same meaning, as it has been clearly demonstrated here that 'balance' makes most of us think of far-east superstition. Perhaps you might say "opposed".

Taoism is essentially the ying-yang superstition. My understand is that rather than good vs. evil and has equally balanced light vs. dark, neither being "bad" or "good" but simply opposed impersonal forces.

I'm wondering, in your mind, do Ariger actually add a victims soul to their own, or do they consume the life force?

If they add the soul of the victim to their own, then is it something like the demons in Screwtape, who use the life force, knowledge, etc. of those who go to hell, while maintaining that person's ultimate soul as an entity capable of thought separate from the demon which has consumed it?

I think your take is that they just consume the life force of the victim, prolonging their life? Or is this one of the things that even the author doesn't understand?

Since you mentioned "spirits verses souls" I came up with an idea.

I'm assuming that by "spirit" you mean the so-called "human spirit" by which we mean ingenuity, talents, the ability to reason, etc. Things that make us human but aren't necessarily parts of our eternal soul.

In this case, I suppose the Ariger could simply consume a persons "spirit" adding it to their own. This works Aerala too. They simply give (or is it more sharing?) a part of their "spirit" to the person they are healing. Because you describe the "donee" possibly even developing a psychic link with the "donor", this makes even more sense. They essentially begin to share parts of their "spirit" while remaining separate souls.

Is that what you were going for?

This is why having the Ariger actually devour the spirits doesn't work, since the spirits are immortal. However, I'm really liking your idea of them devouring what I would all the essence of a person. Yes...the more I think about it, the more I like it. May I use it?

I hope this explains better than my last post did. Again, I apologize for it. I have been known to walk away in the middle of a conversation (usually with my dear sister) if an idea strikes me.

You may use it. Actually, the idea isn't entirely original. It's been used in The Screwtape Letters and other stories, but I think that incorporating that idea into the idea of "soul eaters" and "soul givers" is an entirely new concept. Besides, I just took it directly out of my understanding of the Ariger and Aerala. I think that it's more than unique enough to use in your stories.

You did explain it better in this post. I'm glad I understand what you were thinking. The concept of the "soul" actually being a body intended to house the "spirit" is really remarkable. So, to reconcile the idea to your story, the Ariger consume the "essence" of a person, which is a part (though not necessary and very replaceable) of the "spirit" of a person, which is currently housed in the body but will eventually by housed in the "soul". Does that sound correct?

Wow. The Ariger are starting to sound really creepy. If an Ariger could consume a specific part of a person's essences-memories, for instance-then they could be the ultimate torturer. They could remove speech, a specific character trait, and they could consume an entire essence (physically killing the person) which would allow them to know everything the person knew and actually impersonate that person!

Yeah. Creepy.

But what if they feed of the pain, sorrow and suffering of a spirit rather the simply the spirit itself. That way unlike Vampires they would never take the lives of their victims but would take them back to some place of a nightmare where the victims live in unbelievable agony until all the life is finally sapped out of them.