When Humans reach the correct internal ratio that makes them "immortal" they are considered stabilised, with the process often referred to as stabilisation.

The ability to reach the numerical threshold required to stably condition Phos and Skotos from Arkhé is theoretically available to everyone. However, due to the risks involved, few venture beyond their safe limits, choosing instead to continue serving society in other ways.

While the optimal ratio is roughly 65/35, with the dominant flow differing between factions, individual responses to energy manipulation vary. One person may balance the threshold with ease, while another, attempting to adjust from 64/36 to 66/34, could suffer illness or even death. Precision and control are paramount. Conditioning limits are biologically constrained, survival within those limits is governed by skill. Mastery allows a practitioner to operate closer to energetic collapse without crossing it, but does not remove the underlying risk.

Reports of people stabilising through death

In rare high-density Aether catastrophes, a pattern may fail to re-enter the Aetherstream upon death. Instead of stabilising into Phos or Skotos, the neural network overloads but rather than frying it happens to stabilise the ratio.

Such individuals recover once, cease ageing, and display heightened elemental sensitivity. However, lacking true understanding of separation of nurturing and consuming flows, their condition is unstable. Upon a second death, they inevitably crystallise or collapse entirely.

Prior to the invention of imitation cores, these cases were mistaken for divine ascension. In the modern era, they are regarded as accidental survivals — impressive but ultimately inferior to true Valkyr.

As a Valkyr approaches death, the Aether inside the body will begin to lose its imposed directionality, settling portions of energy into an equilibrium state and risking breakdown of biological gradients. This loss of structure is experienced as crystallisation.

When close enough to an imitation core, the core absorbs the remaining directed energy before full equilibrium is reached, coupling it to itself and guiding it to safety. In order to be whole again, the Valk must return to the site of death or seek out energy collectors to recover the leftover energy that didn't make it to the core due to delay between death and core activation.

When not assisted by an energy collector, a Valk may return to the place of death and use their Aetherbangle to re-impose structure on the residual energy in the area. This process converts the disordered remnants into a cleansed memory cube, which can be consumed to restore memories and clear the cognitive fog caused by partial energetic collapse.

When the brain is destroyed, the cognitive fog may be far more severe.

In Valkyr

In regions where the flow of Aether is on it's way to relax into equilibrium and thus intereferes with the speed Aether may travel at, a Valkyr’s remaining energy may disperse before reaching an imitation core, reducing chances of full reconstruction of the Valkyr.

When a Valk truly dies and their pattern cannot be transferred to a core to regenerate, their flesh breaks down and leaves crystals. These crystallised corpses preserve structural memory but not the full dynamic consciousness.

Unscrupulous individuals may shatter these remains to extract combat knowledge or special abilities for other Valkyr.

In Humans

Normally, a human’s consciousness decoheres into the Aetherstream upon death as their biological gradients collapse. However, extreme trauma or proximity to Yggdrasil can cause a local stabilisation of the residual pattern on the material plane, even though the body can no longer sustain active metabolism and is destroyed.

These lingering patterns act according to the last emotional state or neural drive encoded before the collapse. Valkyr or Humans can resolve these anomalies: either by providing the necessary environmental stimulus to close the pattern's "loop" or by using ritual channelling to force the remaining energy back into the Aetherstream.

Svartálfr often take some care, trying to extract all information possible from the remnant before honouring their goal, Valkyr and humans alike see them as honourable warriors that refused to die.

Arkos tend to use priests to cleanse remnants as quickly as possible, rarely helping the spirit achieve its goal unless it is particularly useful. Humans regard these spirits as bad omens. They name them Eidolons.

When a pattern finally dissipates, its information is integrated into the high-density domains of the God of Death or the God of Life. Arkhé from Yggdrasil flows through these domains, acting as the ground for the cycle of new life and data-reintegration. Rarely, a stalled pattern may anchor to organic matter, resulting in the undead state.

In Bul'ar

As beings encoded into the ground state, those carrying an Arkhé core became the energetic blueprint for what sustains Valkyrs today. They can still be destroyed if vital organs and the Arkhé core are simultaneously obliterated.

When a Bul’ar is defeated but the Arkhé core remains intact, the core re‑instantiates the energetic pattern, allowing the Bul’ar to return. This process does not involve an afterlife transition; it is a physical re‑emergence of a stable configuration.

Only when a Bul’ar fully dies—through the destruction of both body and core—does their pattern decohere from the material plane and pass into the domain of Apostle Zalmoxis.

Not every Bul'ar has a core, primarily Draconarius do.

Memory cubes

The Aetherbangle filters through residual energy left behind when a Valk dies, stabilising the Phos and Skotos fractions and stalling relaxation. Once processed, this energy manifests as an edible cube in the bearer’s hand.

There are specific legions composed of "Energy collectors" ; Valkyr that focus on getting the remnant energy back from people who spawned back at the imitation cores and are unable to retrieve their memories themselves. They may travel in big groups depending on destination.

When energy is not collected within the week limit, it relaxes into equilibrium and joins the Aetherstream towards Yggdrasil.

This energy is always in form of a memory, which can be consumed to obtain a skill.

In rare cases, a Valkyr may lose the skill maintaining their immortality. They revert to standard Human physiology, though their assimilated knowledge as a Valkyr may persist. Successful routing back to an imitation core can prevent permanent death.

Memory shards

When a Valkyr reaches finality, the remaining crystallised body may be shattered, allowing others to access residual memories. Strict regulations govern these shards, which may teach new skills or preserve combat knowledge for factional use.

Cultists and unscrupulous merchants often seek out these shards, hoping to profit from combat abilities or personal knowledge contained within. Both Human governments struggle to prevent illegal harvesting in the glittering graveyards.

Some illegal shards may carry more than combat memories — fragments of personal history or habits of the deceased Valk. The Inquisition has even experimented with creating convincing crystal cadavers to lure looters, to moderate effectiveness.

Factional practises:
✧ Svartálfr cleanses shards in flowing water and buries unusable remains in honourable graves, reflecting their reverence for the fallen. Distribution to Valkyrs is deliberate and measured, taking longer due to ritual care.
✧ Arkos tests shards for safety before distribution. The remainder is stored in a secure vault within the city of Logistēria ensuring rapid access for future operations.

Usage of memory shards for adapting combat skills
In order to use Memory Shards, the user WIP

Memory shard retrieval

Corpses left uncollected for more than a week fully crystallise. All memories contained within can then be extracted by shattering the body.

Legions assigned to retrieve these corpses sometimes face perilous conditions. Mission failures are common, leaving Bul'ar territories scattered with crystalised remains.

Relationship of the brain to the memories

When a Valkyr dies in conflict and requires a printer to reconstruct it accordingly , there is a far higher amount of remnant energy due to the delay of the imitation core being pinged and the energy + pattern being transferred towards it.

Because the infirmary printer relies on the last successful database sync to replicate the brain's physical architecture, any experiences, skills, or sensory data processed between that sync and the moment of brain death are not "written" into the new biological hardware. The physical terminal (the brain) is essentially an older version.

In standard deaths (heart failure, organ trauma), the brain remains intact long enough to help guide the pattern's transition. In a headshot scenario, the instant destruction of the governor causes the energy to scatter violently. A significant portion of the Valkyr's recent pattern becomes trapped at the site of death, unable to be captured by the core because it has lost its structural anchor.

Undead state primarily affects Humans, prior to the existence of the pantheons both on the Arkos and Svartálfr side, undead did not exist. This fuels some extremist beliefs among the Bul'ar.

Sensory & Behavioural Drivers

Undead are non-conscious. Their actions are dictated by a hierarchy of environmental and chemical triggers rather than intent.

✧Movement:
Purely reflexive. They react to heat, motion, and olfactory markers. Without external stimuli, they fall into behavioural loops—repetitive actions encoded in the brain’s Dopamine/Serotonin loops prior to death (e.g., a farmer continuing to mimic tilling a field).
✧Mimicry:
The infection—regardless if it's Botanical parasite or a disturbance—preserves the hardware, the eyes will track movement and the voice box may produce reflexive sounds.

The Chemical Priority Hierarchy

Undead prioritise targets based on signal intensity.

✧ Bul’ar (any gender)
Maximum pheromone intensity. Triggers both "Food" and "Reproductive" reflexes due to Bul’ar evolutionary dominance.
✧ Valkyr wearing Bul’ar leather
Combines human heat/motion with the residual chemical markers of Bul’ar skin.
✧ Human
Moderate signal. Triggers the Ghrelin (Food) reflex. Slight orientation toward compatible genders.
✧ Fresh corpses
weak baseline signals; only grabbed if wandering into it.

Neuro-Chemical Markers

The plant parasite utilizes the corpse’s residual endocrine system to modulate behaviour:

✧Adrenaline/Acetylcholine
Facilitates sudden bursts of motion and muscle contraction (The "Jump" reflex).
✧Ghrelin
Triggers the approach toward living tissue (The Feeding reflex).
✧Sex Hormones (T/E/P)
Orientation toward compatible scents. These triggers cause reflexive reproductive gestures without conscious intent.
✧Pheromones
Directs the body toward other Thallophytes to facilitate further spore spread.

Gender and Compatibility Weighting

Gender modulates attraction through evolutionary pheromone locks:

✧Bul’ar Dominance
Because Bul’ar pheromones were designed to subvert other species, undead are hyper-attuned to them.
✧Human/Valkyr Interaction
Gender is a secondary filter. It may cause an undead to orient itself toward a specific human in a crowd, but it is easily overridden by a stronger motion or heat source.

Thallophytes

These are human corpses reanimated by the nurturing energy of Phos, particularly in areas saturated with Arkos divine influence. Their conscious pattern has decohered, but the body is preserved and partially hijacked by parasitic plant growth.

The plant life acts as an auxiliary nervous system, amplifying residual chemical and sensory signals to create a state of Persistent Reflexive Animation.

Thallophytes emit spores that, when inhaled by living humans, cause cognitive flattening. This lowers threat detection and induces pattern-recognition glitches, leading living people to sometimes live alongside Thallophytes without realizing they are dead.

In Arkadia, where the god Phanes' has installed healing springs and fountains, the takeover is accelerated. Here the vegetation replaces the connective tissue in it's victim. These undead are more resilient and increases spore density around them — this affects entire villages where Humans cease to perceive the undead as a threat. These villages are a sitting duck for the plant to spread as the governments tend to ignore the issue provided it does not reach the major cities.

Draugr

While Arkadian undead are driven by a botanical parasite, in Myrkdal it is the air that breaks them down and twists them into something worse. The thick decay of Skotos mixing with the Aetherstream path towards Yggdrasil—which then relaxes the stream towards equilibrium to be cleansed and re-used— breaks down biological gradients in Humans allowing an opening for the Bul'ar apostle Vlad Dracul to corrupt any living being to power his army and expand territory.

Because their existence is tied to the energy flowing toward Yggdrasil, Draugr are often found migrating or facing toward the North. They are instinctively drawn to Aether-rich sources to stabilize their own decaying forms.

Out of all 3, Draugr at times resemble their original bodies the least.

Stri'goi

While naturally Bul'ar are invulnerable to the extreme decay required for zombification, Vlad Dracul's mastery of Void Aether has disturbed equilibriums and caused his soldiers to start to decay.

These soldiers are called Stri'goi and are utterly loyal to him;
✧Stri'goi viu
Living Stri'goi, often sorcerers who still maintain some semblance of their former vitality.
✧Stri'goi mort
The most dangerous variant, these are undead Stri'goi who rise from their graves. They often appear headless, as if people attempted to bury them without it.

As they require Vlad Dracul's to continue roaming Etherion, they are only found in his vicinity and are speculated to be only in Draugrholt, furthermore their whole existence may have been a jab at fellow Apostle Zalmoxis.