How can a soul be unable to resurrect from multiple locations?

Question

I am a warlock who has committed many evil and despicable deeds in his lifetime. Bad karma has blackened my soul, dooming me to an eternity of unspeakable suffering in hell. Luckily, there is a way to avoid this by cheating death by using what is called a phylactery. A phylactery was a sealed metal box on which arcane phrases were inscribed and operates similar to a horcrux. An individual uses these coffin-like boxes to resurrect themselves if they are ever killed unexpectedly.

A warlock can create as many of these boxes as needed, so if some goody two-shoes hero slays them, their soul travels to the closest phylactery in the area through a metaphysical link, such as a rune or sigil. They can come back as many times the number of boxes they created. The problem with this method is that the phylactery uses the person's soul as a power source in order to fuel the magic. Whenever a new one is created, the soul is divided in half. (Etc., Five boxes means the soul has been divided 5 times). These weakens the user's magical abilities, as the soul contains a person's Mana which is used for magic.

I have found a way around this method by using the souls of others to maintain the box rather than my own. Through a dark ritual, I can strip the soul from an individual and attach it to the box, using it as a power source for the magic. I can then take the burden off my soul and link it to the phylactery through the metaphysical link. My plan was to repeat this process as many times as possible, giving myself an unlimited number of lives and achieving as semi-immortality.

However, my plan is not viable. Even though my soul is fully intact, it can only link to a single phylactery at a time. This is despite the fact that it no longer needs to power the magic of the box. Why would this be the case?

Answer 1

Your soul goes into network with the soul of your victim powering the phylactery.

When you bind a soul to your phylactery, you essentially create a join or network with their soul. since their soul is specifically excluded from your phylactery, when you die YOU are resurrected, not your victim.

Now if you add additional souls in by having additional phylacteries, those souls are excluded only from the phylactery they are specifically bound to. That means that if they die (or are already dead, not sure which is the case), they will resurrect in one of your other phylacteries.

Having such a vampiric phylactery would even exclude you from having additional normal phylacteries - the imprisoned soul could do onto you as you are doing on to it, and use your own soul to power its resurrection!

Answer 2

The act of creating the box created the brief illusion that your magic was caught up by it, enough to enable one link. In reality, you created an imperfect phylactery for your victim.

If you died, the jump to the box would in fact start to restore the victim.

Answer 3

The Soul Does not Power the Phylactery. The Soul IS the Phylactery.

When you create a phylacetery you chop off half your soul and put it in a box and hide the box. Half your soul is in the box and half is in your body. The two halves are aware of each other. When you die, the half in your body goes wherever souls usually go. The half in the box realises it's best friend is missing and starts to grow. When it gets to full size it divides again and there's a new copy of you with half a soul, and half a soul in the box.

(You can create several phylacteries. The pieces are all aware of each other and they somehow decide between themselves who gets to grow.)

There is no room to incorporate someone else's soul into this process. If you chop half of someone else's soul and put it in the box, it just becomes a phylactery for them and not you.

If you want to power your magic with other people's souls I suggest first making the boxes and then, when you cast your spells, pull the mana from other people's soul rather than your own.

Answer 4

Because splitting your soul weakens it too much to take over from the soul you've used to power the phylactery.

A phylactery doesn't consume (part of) a soul when created, it instead stores it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to resurrect the caster, or call to what remains of the soul in the original body when it dies.

When you're creating one of your substitute phylacteries, you're placing a soul you've subdued inside the box (probably with some small part of your own soul to be able to find it again). Unfortunately, when you attempt to resurrect yourself, the substitute soul is going to fight you, as it wants to return to life as well. When you split your soul multiple times, you'll have weakened yourself, and will probably lose - possibly resulting in your substitute inheriting your power!

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This brings up a couple of interesting addendums.

1. A smart caster may try to get around resisting substitute souls by raising a group of devoted slaves to willingly sacrifice themselves. Unfortunately, the soul is largely reacting instinctively.
2. Since the only person who can split a soul (as opposed to extracting a whole one) is the caster themselves, it's not possible to create weaker substitute souls. A particularly devious caster may attempt to subvert another caster's phylacteries - however, this would need to be done during the original creation of the target phylactery, when a warlock would be especially cautious.