>a race of corporeal tulpas
>each of them is forged from rituals of intense and costly thoughtform-crafting
>tulpas can craft other tulpas, like some sort of asexual reproduction
>other races can craft tulpas, but at even greater cost
What would such a race of thoughtform-creatures be like?
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That’s one cramped mind
But these are corporeally manifested.
According to the one Tulpa I met, it means you'll get an entire race of furries.
Seriously, I've no idea if tulpas are real or he was just bullshitting me but either way if you could create an entirely new mind, in any form and with any personality you wanted, to be your lifelong companion, why would you chose an orange bat furry?
I mean, shit, my first thought was a dragon at the least.
Had an idea, somewhat similar to this, when reading through the Pathfinder rules (yeah, yeah, inb4 and all that shit, whatever) when a friend wanted to run a game that never actually got off the ground.
Basically, the idea went something kind of like this: Summoners are pretty much defined by their ability to create Eidolons - or in this instance, Tulpas. Tulpas, in turn, are defined by their ability to be, as it were, defined by their Summoner.
A Summoner puts a lot into their Tulpa, in order to craft it. Arcane power is just the start; a true Tulpa is more than just another summoned creature after all. Will, motive, drive - these fuel it, give it reason, give it ability to act and develop and grow.
Most Summoners are pretty satisfied there; some, however, go further with it. Emotions, desires, even memories are given to the Tulpa, increasing its power and its ability to sustain itself, to become more 'real'.
In the end, though, only one thing alone can sustain a Tulpa past the end of its Summoner's own life, and rare indeed is the Summoner willing to gift such a precious thing as that, even to their own creation.
Rare, but not impossible.
With this final gift, given freely as the Summoner's last act, the Tulpa is at last Unfettered. While not as strong as before - relying on the power of one instead of two is a limiter, after all - the newfound freedom is still one most would consider worth the price.
And with this newfound freedom, this newfound life, comes an equally new, exciting and terrifying possibility - the chance that they might, in turn, learn to create life of their own.
Like I said, it was an idea, and one that never got off the ground. Probably for the best, but eh.
Anyway. Back to feckin' off. Feel free to ignore my rambling.
Just hearing the term tulpa inherently pisses me off. My ex-girlfriend once had this friend I would tolerate who """had""" a tulpa.
Literally texted me weird fetishy shit and when I would respond with a "What the fuck?" she would say "Oh sorry that was my tulpa, I hope he didn't upset you." and GENUINELY expected me to just be like "Oh, alright."
Listen, tulpas in real life are not possible. Literally all it is is having an imaginary friend that you autistically insist is a legitimate being. The entire thing is frankly insulting to people that actually have schizophrenia, and it's a notion that is conjured up by literal irl chuunis that think this bullshit is mysterious and cool.
Anyway, now that my rant is over, it's a somewhat good idea for a fantasy race, but in practice it'll end up as Foster's Home For Imaginary friend except with sex slaves, or with armies of them and shit.
Early in their history they would be used as a slave class doing all the shit normal people don't want to do for convenience, and later on they would probably rebel like a self-replicating machine race capable of much more than humans and conquer the world.
I use to have a 'tulpa', although I am sure the 'real tulpas' out there would insist I only ever had an imaginary friend, disguise, alias, or some other bullshit term they come up with. It started as an alternate identity and personality online to have multiple perspectives on the various cliques within the online community I was a member of. Mostly to see who says what behind my back and each others.
Eventually the character grew to being what I felt to being VERY close to real. Had it's own likes, dislikes, everything. Had arguments with me that I felt were very real and actually hurtful. But at the end of the day, I was still the creator and the one primarily in charge, unlike these other people who insist their tulpas could never be controlled by them.
But I guess the point I am getting at is that I can see how people with a less mentally stable mind might create these 'tulpas' and it truly does evolve into a fully split personality that can control their actions. It is a bit scary how far that personality I created split from my own and how willing I was to say things through it that are far outside my own personality.
You literally just became immersed in roleplaying, full stop.
When my character gets shat on by an npc in an argument i get pissed off too if I care enough, doesn't mean I have a split personality. That shit is fake.
I understand that you think it's legit, and I get why you might think that, sure. But if an entire consciousness can literally just be some kneejerk roleplaying you've trained yourself to do, then your definition of consciousness is vastly broader than mine or any reasonable person.
I do feel what I did is a form of really immersive roleplaying. Hence why I put tulpa in quotations like I did. I feel that is how all these 'tulpas' start out, just a roleplaying that grew too deep. But I think you underestimate how far that can develop. To me it becomes similar to a Dr.Jekyl and Mr.Hyde, closer to the original, not the numerous revisionings where the Jekyl is unaware of his Hyde side. They know the Hyde is there once it is awakened, but they continue to take the 'medicine' to bring it out and become Hyde. And once going the personality becomes them, but they allow it to become them in the first place.
I always understood I was still in control at the end of the day and could put a stop to it, but it still scared me how far the personality just developed. Scares me even more what would happen if someone with mental problems does hat I did, they would not be able to comprehend they have full control at the end of the day. Many of them I ponder if they even want to have that control, they could be like Jekyl and have allowed the new personality to become their new true self that they can never part with.
the mind is a scary thing user
The brain is a weird thing. And a flexible one. Ultimately, what the brain believes is true may was well BE true, because while the objective reality outside may disagree, everything that happens outside the brain is EXTREMELY subjective by definition.
So while no there's not literally a second person in your head in clinical terms, if you believe there is hard enough it becomes, insofar as it effects you, true.
Exactly, I sometimes wonder if mental disorders can be 'manufactured' in that way. Still very real, but not naturally occured.
There is nothing wrong with tulpas but only autistics make tulpas
It would be a Digimon-styled setting.
People in the setting create subconscious-residing entities that represent some facet of their own persona. They're usually ephemeral when nascent but once manifested they gain a much more physical form by linking to an existing physical form.
It's not common for them to make more of themselves, rather the base spirits that take form via mortal minds at first will instinctively seek them out as part of their life cycle, but the stronger a given manifestation becomes, the more likely they are to gain more and more complex manifestations of their own, eventually starting to shed small fragments of their awareness to fly free and seek out an unbound host to give it form, awareness, substance and sustenance to grow and repeat the process.
The number of manifested tulpa folks that actually reach that level of presence is relatively small, but in metropolitan areas it's not uncommon for even commoners to have a small, alien looking pet or an outlandish seeming partner that often acts on their behalf or in sync with them. A kind of natural Shikigami.
In rural areas they aren't as common because there's simply fewer hosts to find, and fewer still that will help them reach their full potential as concepts or entities. This is further hampered by superstition of them with preconceptions of demonic pacts and vile outsiders possessing hapless victims which, without the accademic knowledge of psionics and the akashic link, is an easy mistake to make; this further reduces the number of successful host bondings, as does the risk that their core, base concept is one of malice or self-loathing which leads to harm of the host or those around them.
Manifestation's appearance and persona is up to the nature of their host. It's not too difficult to look at one and see it for what it is, as they're rarely subtle in their appearances, but there are a select few that manifest mundane forms like pets, people, or even objects.
So the world of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends?
Monsters. Monsters from the Id!
>tulpas in real life are not possible
Bullshit. You *can* self-induce schizophrenia.
It's not a good idea, but you can do it.
this actually sounds like a potentially interesting setting with the ability of these things just latching onto random people to try and grow.
>Manifestation's appearance and persona is up to the nature of their host.
Won't all of them be sexual fetishes?
>Listen, tulpas in real life are not possible.
DSM says they are.
en.wikipedia.org
Schizophrenia is something different.
reminder that, according to the frankly impossible lore, tulpa are independent thought forms, not alter egos. they exist within the mind until they are given form by the magic of believing in them enough.
unless i missed some critical change in the definition of this cryptid that's popped up since i researched them.
I'm pretty sure they haven't changed but your research has been inadequate. It sounds like you've got some minor/alternate stuff mixed in there. No particular origin myth like that has any real importance. It's about creating them. If someone uses the idea that they already existed in the mind, it's a rhetorical aid to the art of creating one, not a true philosophical point.
It's about the person's over all character, not just spur of the moment horny motives. An psionic symbiote that linked to someone whose whole Life was nothing but deviance and debauchery would probably be lewd, but it would by the exception, not the majority. Hobbies, interests, personal merits, religion, ideology, familiar sights and habits would all play into the melting pot of ideas for the blank-slate state of the creature to draw from. You might get a holy man going through a crisis of faith whose Manifestation took the form of one of his deity's messengers and proceeds to both guide him back to the faith and use it to manipulate him into a lifestyle that makes that part of his life a much bigger focus, which grants it more power. A common farm-hand might have a manifestation of a pet wolf or eagle, representing their imaginative interest in the world outside of their day-to-day which tries to egg the otherwise bland person into a life of exploration and adventure. An archivst whose life is all about knowledge and its recording could get a simple book that is always at hand and interacts through its text, but if their true desires are in the Fiction section rather than Encyclpedia, it could manifest as a character from one of their Waterdhavian Dime Novels.
Remember, the entity wants to make the concept they're based on more of a focus to the person, but they are best served by picking something that the host already Wants. Sex is a baseline drive but it's not the only one and it's not often going to be the best choice. They're going to appeal to the person that the host wants to be, and their idealized self. The host, in return, gets a manifestation with which to address their real desires, whether in the form of acceptance and encouragement or perhaps even with Rejection if their interests are not acceptable publicly or compatible philosophically with the host.
Add in superstitious risks of torches and pitchforks if your host seems to be possessed, and you'll see that appealing to base desires and instincts runs a Huge risk for a developing manifestation; the ones that do so and fail in their early stages never reproduce, so they'll be fewer and fewer. In urban areas where people with Tulpid-Symbiotes, it's Known what the manifestation means...and what it says about you. If your tulpa manifestation is a thing of deviancy and socially ill-viewed concepts, you're likely to see reasons to avoid following through on it, keeping it weaker and less viable. Even if it manages to wring you around into isolation to focus on it, then friends, family, and social servants might intercede as the Symbiotic-intended entity will have shifted to Parasite. A diseased manifestation of a diseased mind focused toward a general loss and risk to the majority.
Meanwhile, the adventurer is going out and living a little more at a time, and their animal companion tulpa is leveling up with their perception of their own growth and experience. The Priest with a divine agent manifestation has risen through the ranks with a clear sign of their piety, having long since crushed their uncertainty of their faith and resolved steadfastly to their doctrine. Even the nerd archivist has kept reading more of their stories, branching out into other tales, other stories, different authorial perspectives and the manifestation has grown more accurate, more complex as the character is elaborated.
This isn't to say there Can't be any sexy aspects or people who clearly make that enough of their life that a manifestation would reflect this. It would either require the host and manifestation being left to their own devices, which can be done for about as long as the host's intents and attention aren't disastrously diverted from keeping themselves alive (which is another early-death and evolutionary dead-end for the tulpa manifestation). The host/manifestation pair could Also try to set up a support structure to keep focusing lewd stuff on the host, but depending on how well they handle it, that can lead to either a healthy setup where a small but stable group helps facilitate each other's well being and interests, or in a cancerous setup in which the host/manifest pair afflicts their intents and interests on others in a predatory fashion, which again, results in reprisals and eventual failure in most cases; boogeyman scenario of sorts that is used as a warning for others.
The best case scenario that comes to mind would be a sort of Firefly Companion sort of host for whom sensuality is a part of their way of life, but not always a focus nor an obsession. Compassion as the main concept rather than sex itself. Healthy and balanced.
Though on the note of risky combos, a tulpa serial killer host basically just doubles up on the problem. That's basically the same risk and probability of them IRL though, so good for tabloids and maybe a side-story but not a high-risk over all when in the context of things like Workaholics with secretarial manifestations or Justice-Obsessed Watchmen with dragon-mentor manifestations guiding them to seek and destroy wrongdoers.
am i incorrect about them NOT being just an alter ego until they gain... idk what to call it, their own being?
genuinely asking here.
Whenever my group and I do deep immersion roleplaying I make sure we all have a cool down period to lock up the monsters and assert that the roles aren't real and we are the ones in charge.