I've been toying with a story idea, Gamer related, inspired by the World of Prime series by MC Planck (or at least his free Dungeons and Dragons 3x supplements based on his books) and my pathfinder (dungeons and dragons 3.75) collection.
So in some other universe the Old Gods (in this case, it's not a reference to age but of origin, Old Gods were always gods, New Gods were mortals who leveled up until they achieved apotheosis) created life with, for want of a better term, an "alchemy gene."
The alchemy gene allows one to consume the residual soul energy left after the soul departs that resides in the corpse, so in this universe even carnivores and scavengers of animal intelligence can grow their souls, aka level, by assimilating enough of this soul energy.
Intelligent life figured out how to distill this residual soul energy, allowing this soul energy to be stolen, traded, given away, sold, and experimented with.
Intelligent life also figured out how to engineer specific paths of growth, aka classes, not just the stock fantasy classes but shapeshifters and luck manipulators and self duplicators and golem pilots and all sorts of things.
Species also became a thing that could be manipulated, one could make a sphinx or manticore by feeding a lion enough soul energy, a human could be turned into a giant or a werewolf or a vampire, or one could take an animal and give it sapience or mutate it into a humanoid.
In short, for this story, I'm taking the chassis of dungeons and dragons and making a post singularity transhuman setting where adventurers, in addition to their regular duties, bring in soul energy so that those unwilling to risk their lives can benefit as well.
Then during the magical equivalent of a transporter accident in Star Trek, a young adventurer from this setting finds himself in a setting with very different rules, I'm leaning on something comic book-y like the Young Justice cartoon or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Now the assumption I'm going with here is that while native life lacks the "alchemy gene" to naturally assimilate soul energy, the alchemically distilled and formulated to give a benefit, well, the natives can benefit from that just fine.
So the alchemical singularity comes with him, albeit slowly, because these settings lack the high CR monsters one can harvest regularly for large soul energy awards, and of course it would need to be done carefully.
After all, would you readily share the knowledge that would allow someone to gain superpowers by mass murder if that knowledge could get back to the likes of the Light or Hydra?
So does anything here sound like it doesn't make sense or be more interesting done differently?
