"Oh good."

"It would be rather awkward! Anyway, aside from that, and from the obvious case of my own method, there are also instances of human spirits made into god-avatars without a physical form at all. The leshy'a Kal'enedral, or spirit warriors, serve as avatars of the Star-Eyed and points of contact for Her people, and are supposedly made from the human spirits of living Swordsworn who served Her." 

"Are gods unable to come up with new souls or is it just cheaper or is it better somehow to use old ones?"

"I think they must be capable of creating new souls, but perhaps it is cheaper in some way to reuse existing ones, or maybe it is just difficult to destroy them so why not reuse them. Souls can be destroyed, I think, but it would be fairly extreme and I do not actually know of any methods of doing it accessible to mortals." 

"Or - hm, if they're using Heralds in particular for Companions, maybe they find it easier to predict things based on comparable past behavior? So they could use the Herald souls that acted how they liked best for Companions."

"That would make sense, yes. Interestingly, I am of the impression that the Groveborn Companions in particular are not reincarnated humans – Taver did not confirm this in so many words, but he seemed...more alien." 

"Huh. Did he seem similar in character to any other species? I haven't met many non-human people."

"Not notably? Nonhuman species vary in - personality, one might say, gryphons are on average much more aggressive than humans and hertasi are on average much more oriented toward support roles. Taver's mind was different in another way. He could pay attention to at least a dozen threads at once, judging by the number of conversations he was juggling, and I suspect he has deeper access to the Foresight mechanism, which would require a different mind layout. Mortals with extremely strong Foresight Gifts have been known to go mad from it." 

"Huh. Is he like a - mini-god? Part of a god like a Heartstone but differently?"

"That is a clever analogy, actually! I think he is less in the god-direction than a Heartstone is, or is a smaller piece, or whatever the comparison there is. But, yes, on the spectrum from mortal minds to gods, Taver is several steps toward god. Honestly, I think all Companions have a tiny such fragment, which allows them to interact directly with Valdemar's Web in a way humans could not. Taver's fragment is not tiny, though." 

"Huh. I wonder why they don't talk about it - Companions can definitely have conversations."

"It is not obvious to me that they would know where these parts of them come from or why they are that way. Also I am - not sure they can have conversations to exactly the same extent humans can? One of the complaints I remember overhearing from some Heralds in very early city-state Valdemar is that their Companions were irritatingly cryptic about how they knew things." 

"I mean, humans can do that too, my first guess without further information would be that they're under orders about that. And if they remember being humans presumably they could assess the differences since then?"

"True." 

"If this happened to me I'd be impaired by not being able to write afterwards but I think I'm unusual in that respect."

"Yes, you take advantage of the ability to write much more than most people. I wonder if Companions find that irritating, though. This is not a fact that has ever come up such that I could learn it; most of the Companion facts I know are hearsay since I have obviously never been Chosen by one and would not let them Choose me if they tried." 

"Do they directly mind control the Heralds as much as a lifebond would? I think my impression is it's - less than this but combined with very emphatic social structures."

"I am not sure. I think it is a somewhat less intense type of bond with less emotional backwash, but the Companion half of it seems likely to have at least indirect mind control from a god, whereas at least the people in a lifebond - like us - are both just humans." 

"Yeah, I'm thinking for the moment mostly about the degree to which Heralds can themselves be considered autonomous in principle but worried about the fallout if they deviate versus directly mind controlled."

"I am not very confident here, but I think less direct mind control? Vanyel seems surprisingly able to just think open-mindedly about various topics, which seems harder to pull off if Heralds were directly mind-controlled as opposed to wary of stepping out of line." 

"And his Companion isn't in the dream - or at least I didn't see one."

"I have not seen his Companion in the dream either, no." 

"Probably he talks to them afterward but it's at least a candlemark or two to think by himself, I guess."

"Perhaps that is why he is more able to listen and change his mind than I had expected. I began speaking to him because it seemed as though I might as well, if we were to be stuck in a dreamscape together every so often, but - I confess I did not actually expect it to go anywhere." 

"Are you still pretty sure you can't ally with them enough to use the place as a staging ground?"