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Souls
Across the infinite and much-varied multiverse, one of the few constants to be found between planes of existence is the existence of a thing called a soul. Souls are required for sentient life. As a homeworld drifts through the multiverse, it accumulates souls - or, more accurately, “proto-souls”1). These may be used by the custodians of the homeworld to foster more life, or kept aside for trade with beings from other universes, such as at Emporium. The more life a homeworld has, the more proto-souls it collects, leading to increased growth over time2). Additionally, once a soul has been incarnated into a living being, it becomes “marked”: forever altered by that universe’s metaphysical properties and rendered unsuitable for multiversal trade. In this way, it is neither ethically nor economically viable to harvest the souls of the already-living for financial gain.
On the other hand, the proto-souls are more like the potential for (sentient) life; a vital building block for Entities to bring more complex forms of life into their worlds. They are multiversally viable, and hence are valuable - either for the ability to nurture sentient life in its own right or for the investment opportunity offered by the increased accumulation rate of further proto-souls.
Souls as Currency
As previously stated, only proto-souls are viable for trade, but since that is a bit of a mouthful, everyone simply refers to them as “souls” in context3).
Emporium is a place frequented by beings immensely powerful in their homeworlds. Such Entities can often trivially obtain large numbers of souls simply by rummaging under the cushions of their metaphysical couches. Thus, anything less than a (sometimes literally) astronomical number of souls is considered pocket change. The loss or gain of such an amount of souls will usually not significantly impact a homeworld. Items such as snacks, trinkets and souvenirs4) may (within reason) be trivially obtained for a handful of souls.
SoulCoin
On the other hand, larger and more valuable items may cost a large number of souls indeed. For these - the items that Entities specifically come to Emporium for - a more manageable currency is required. While Emporium often trades with customers using a barter system, it is still sometimes useful to introduce an intermediary currency - for example, when paying employees or in recognition of services rendered.
To this end, Emporium has introduced SoulCoin, a form of an in-store credit. A single SoulCoin represents a very large quantity of souls, making the value of a single SoulCoin approximately on par with the more desirable items. So if one does happen to have an astronomical number of souls, these can be more conveniently exchanged for SoulCoin by visiting the Soul Traders’ kiosk in-store.