Talk:Soul

I wanted to ask for some clarification on this topic and page. Firstly I'd like to establish if this even should be a page; from what I can tell, up until the latest version, this was a redirect to Attribute#Soul_attributes. I've searched the raws and loaded up some test games and I can't find any explicit reference to souls in terms of game mechanics or a category of attributes – it seems like "soul" might be wiki vernacular used to categorise certain attributes and as a widely understood concept to help explain the intricacies of necromancy. Nothing wrong with that, but should it be made clear when/if "soul" is being used descriptively and/or as wiki vernacular, particularly on a page dedicated to the term.

I think the page may have been created with the assumption that "soul" was a concrete game term rather than something more abstracted and used for ease of communication. I've found this page a bit confusing/misleading, and spent quite a while trying to find explicit examples on the wiki and in the game. If I can get confirmation one way or the other on the technical status of "soul" as a game term, I'll expand upon and refine the references and terminology used by the wiki and game accordingly. I didn't want to do any heavy editing working on an assumption that seems at odds with the tone and contents of this page. - Alpacalypse (talk) 15:28, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Examining a creature with DFHack's gui/gm-editor reveals that soul is indeed an internal game term - each unit has a list of souls that has one entry which is also the creature's current_soul. It has a name, race, gender, as well as the creature's skills, personality, preferences, and mental attributes. It's probably coded like this to accomodate any potential future additions to magic like soul swapping or possession, though that's just a guess. Right now it only serves as a data bundle for the creature's mentality. --DarklingArcher (talk) 16:56, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Using this DFHack command on a zombie reveals that indeed its souls and current_soul are gone. Regarding possession, there is actually a type of ghost that possesses people, though I haven't yet encountered them so I can't say if ghostly possession does change the creature's soul as well. --DarklingArcher (talk) 17:16, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Thanks that's very helpful info and verfification. I'll see about clarifying this succinctly where/if relevant. With that info, at the very least I reckon I'll put adding some technical details to this page on my to-do list; knowing when something is internally defined but not usually visible to the player is useful for those interested in modding or just curious about the inner workings of DF. Forgot DFHack could do this sort of thing, but now I know, I should hopefully be able to work it out for myself of edit calls for further investigation. –Alpacalypse (talk) 18:25, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

Verification

"Preferences" subcatory of "Personality" unused: Trying to prove a negative in a sense; conjecture on my part, but I've not seen anything appear here yet, either in fortress or adventure mode. Just didn't want to state something as fact, only from a relatively small sample size. –Alpacalypse (talk) 10:29, 9 October 2026 (UTC)