I have been wondering what to call a series of posts about the lore of Chronicles of Elyria luckily a sneak peak into next week’s Developer Journal has provided the solution. Welcome to the Akashic Records.

Jeromy ‘Caspian’ Walsh shared with us some of the first screenshots/concepts of the game. Quickly community member DerryFH had spotted some interesting details in one of the screenshots. Was that the map of Elyria? A place for magical teleportation?

Caspian soon came back to let us know that was partially correct and to share with us this snippet of lore:

It’s believed that when someone dies their soul returns to a great library called the Akashic Records. The library is filled with books and scrolls containing all of the deeds of every life a soul has lived. It’s in these chambers that a soul can read over their past lives and learn from their mistakes in preparation for their next life.

It’s also said that every soul is born with a purpose. That they choose the precise time and place in which to be born so they can learn the lessons needed to attain enlightenment.

With the studio being called Soulbound and the Soulborn engine dealing with the server-side work we knew souls were going to be important.This new information suggests that they may form a critical part of who we are in the game. While characters will indeed pass on, souls continue and go through many lives. Each life giving new information to the soul so it can reach enlightenment, whatever that is! Though it sounds intriguing.

The part that I can not get my head around though is the mentions of ‘time’. Now is this small scale so those born in the morning have different lessons to learn to night owls? Or are we looking at a far bigger scale? People born in completely different eras, different timelines. While this is fascinating idea will it split the community? Will be broken up into different servers/phases covering different time periods?

While getting part of the lore of this world gives us a lot of food for thought, as always it raises more questions that it answers. Hopefully next weeks Developer Journal focusing on Souls, Reincarnation, and Destiny will give us some answers on Monday.