Most people are born brimming with life. They are in effect 100% full of life. There are exceptions, birth defects, degenerative diseases and so on. Over time life recedes and the body breaks down. Death distends as life recedes. In effect, a middle age person is probably at 70% life (positive) energy and 30% death (negative) energy. The recession of life energy quickens as a person gets older. Eventually the negative energy extiguishes the life energy completely.

That is the natural order of things. But there are a few that can manipulate the ratio of positive and negative energy in their bodies. They can siphon life out of others to regain youth or heal a wound. The new life energy essentially forces death back. It is the inverse for the victim. Death gains ground and can eventually overtakes them if enough life is siphered.

When attempting to heal anothers wounds or ails the "soulcater" can either force life into the wounded or pull death out. However when pulling out death it is stored in the soulcaster, thus aging or wounding or causing someother degenerative effect until the soulcater can release it into another living being. Equally detrimental to a soulcaters health would be to give his own life energy to the wounded. The most common way to heal someone is to siphon the life energy out of a plant or animal or perhaps a criminal sentenced to die anyway and release that into the wounded.

Bottom line is, our bodies are like soul batteries. Except, we are always at 100% energy. You cannot store more than 100%. If the soulcaters ration is 50 points positive, 50 points negative, then he can sipher only 50 points of positive energy from a victim. And it begins to degrade immediatley at a pace determined by his true health. A soulcater that is 80 years old that has 8 points of positive energy left can siphon 92 points total out of a person or many people. He would regain his strength, a bit of his youth but may age at a rate of 1 year every half hour until he is right back at his true health.

Once a body dies (reaches 100% negative energy), the energy slowly fades until the body has no energy at all. The energy is captured and recycled by the earth. A tree's energy does the exact opposite of an animal. It continues to grow positive energy. An ancient tree may have the life energy equalled to a hundred men.

Back to dead bodies. When a body is empty it is called a husk. Life energy can be forced into these husks to animate them. They retain no memory of self and look to the soulcater to give them basic intructions. They are essentially mindless zombies. The more "whole" a dead body is, the longer the body will hold a life charge. The more recent the death the better.

Thanks for taking the time to read all of that. If you have any questions or note any inconsistencies please let me know. I really appreciate your help. Oh...and if you have seen anything like this before let me know also. As far as I know this is an original thought (as original as anything can be these days).

Scott

It's always bugged me when 'healers' seem to be able to heal as many people as they want as often as they want with no satisfactory (in my opinion) explanation as to where all the energy is coming from. I also like the fact that there seems to be a balance. Life energy can't just come from nowhere.

I haven't heard of this idea before but to be honest I'm fairly new to fantasy so I haven't read that much yet.

There's damage-after-death to consider, too. Autopsy, embalming, mummification...the body might seem intact at a casual glance, but really isn't. I guess these would be useless. (Might be a justification for performing the process, so that they can't be made to get up and walk around again.)

Bart Simpson: Hey, Grandpa, do you ever wonder if your dead buddies get up and walk around at night?

I do love your idea of the soal catcher. It is like the Sin Eaters I heard about, where people will eat a meal before the dead, and absorb their sins so they can go to heaven.
My biggest question is why they would do it. People want to live and don't want to shorten their life without some form a gain.

One thing in the story might be where a scandal is created where the soul catcher refuses to help someone very important, because he knows it will not do good. Other powerful people are demanding he give his life to this person to keep them alive.

A soul catcher might work beside a team of medical people, including surgens, and they work as a team to repair the injured. After the others have done their work to reduce the damage to the person, the soul catcher applies his powers to finish the job. Of course, he might use his powers to keep the injured above a given level during treatment.

Robert-your absolutely right. The embalmed corpses would be useless , as would decapitated or cremated bodies.

As far as destroying the husk once its animated, physical damage only speeds up the leaking life charge. Once its empty the corpse would simply drop to the ground.

I have heard input about the animation and the healing of others but what of the use of death energy. I was thinking that a soulcatcher (Not sure about the name and willing to take suggestions) can pull death out of the dying and healing them to boot, as well as, use it to damage or kill others. Or the SC could kill someone, siphon some of the negative energy from them and use that.

Also I was thinking that with time perhaps the SC can learn to direct the energies in a specific manner. Using life to stitch wounds or break fevers, death to give diseases or tear flesh.

Also, that 100% should differ in absolute quantity for different types of living creatures ("An ancient tree may have the life energy equalled to a hundred men.") and probably would differ slightly in between organisms of the same class/species. But I think that you mean that the total death/life energy of a living organism, and the percentage of life energy relative to that, would be determining factors of retaining additional energy.

In other words, a child growing up would be like a tree, simply increasing in life energy without accumulating much death energy. Then shortly after adolescence or puberty the total life energy stops growing and death energy begins to accumulate. For a time this actually makes the organism tougher and more resistant to injury, but the actual ability to heal isn't increasing and over time begins to decrease.

You pointed out a something that Im almost ashamed I didnt think of myself.

A child would be like a plant. Growing and with that growth comes additional life energy until adulthood. This is where life would begin to recede and death would fill in the gap. Originally I intended a baby to have the same ammount of life energy.... actually, more life energy than an adult since they would be at 100%.

I did also intend different organisms to have varying total ammounts of energy in them. For instance, a soulcaster could drain the life out of a cute little bunny rabbit to heal a flesh wound.

"For a time this actually makes the organism tougher and more resistant to injury, but the actual ability to heal isn't increasing and over time begins to decrease."

I dont understand what you mean about the ability to heal decreasing over time. The ability to heal would increase with time. The catch being that the life charge would have to be drained from an external source and forced into the wounded individual.

scott

Seriously, you could selectively injure/impair life functions like nerve or immune function to treat a lot of common ailments. What is a painkiller but a "killer" of vitally important nerve signals? What does an anti-histimine do other than disabling your body's natural defenses against intrusion? What is Botox but deadly poison?

I was also thinking about the possibility of telepathy by transferring energies. Very much like TCP/IP networking. The soulcaster loads information into miniscule "bits" of energy, alternating between positive and negative as to not harm himself or the recipient and sends them to the recipients brain. Likewise an "evil" soulcaster could rip the memories from a victims mind by not alternating between positive and negative energies.

Until now I intended most if not all the powers to require touch or an organic link of somekind, like a wooden staff or a vine. But perhaps blood itself could be a natural link. Therefore energy can be transfered from a greater distance.

As for your exapmple of the oldman giving his insensitivity to pain to another, I prefer the idea that any form of negative energy could be used for that act. I call these "surgical" uses of the Soulcasters ability. The idea is that the soulcaster can not only transfer the energy but also direct its use. Of course, this is learned over time, not inherent. For a soulcaster to use the energy in this way the he/she would have to know how the human body works. Perhaps a soulcaster with medical training would be able to direct any of his/her negative energy to perform the task but a soulcaster without would simply do as the elderly soulcaster did in your example, just do a one-for-one swap.

Below is a link to the first 13 that go along with this.