Soul Hunter

Soul Hunter has other uses. Please see Soul Hunter (disambiguation) for other meanings.

Soul Hunter
Lifespan	Unknown, possibly immortal. (4000 Earth Years is considered 'young')

"Only the special ones. Leaders, thinkers, poets, dreamers, blessed lunatics...we enshrine them."

– Soul Hunter

Soul Hunters are a sentient race that collects the souls of the dead in order to preserve them.

Background

The Soul Hunters are capable of sensing the time when a being is about to die and are drawn to this moment in order to capture the soul of the individual. These people are not ordinary people but special ones; the artists, poets and leaders of their race whose achievements are too important to lose.

Soul Hunters capture souls because they believed that once a person died, their existence ended; there was no heaven or great realm where all the souls of the deceased reside. To them, all that a person was and all they would ever become ended when the body died. As such, the Soul Hunter order believe that is their duty to preserve the souls of those important individuals. They deny themselves this gift and do not preserve their own souls.

The Minbari find this practice of capturing souls abhorrent. Due to their belief in reincarnation, the Minbari believe that removing souls from the cycle of reincarnation diminishes them as a race.

Soul Hunter abilities include sensing the passing of a being, putting people to sleep and even learning the language of another race quickly.

It was never really established how or when all this got started, nor is there any mention of a planet of origin.

Soul Hunters are an extremely long-lived species who live for thousands of years. They may even be immortal.

Government

The Soul Hunters may be ruled by the eldest of their order.

History

In the distant past, the Soul Hunters sensed the passing of not an individual but an entire species on the distant planet of Ralga. This was the greatest accomplishment of the Soul Hunters who sent dozens of their order to claim the souls of an entire species and placed it within a large spherical vessel where it was stored within a Whisper Gallery. They would not know though that the souls they collected were not dying but evolving and the act of capturing their souls would drive the species mad.

One of the most noted moments that involve the Soul Hunters was the beginning of the Earth-Minbari War when the Minbari leader Dukhat was killed when his ship met the Humans. Seeing the opportunity to preserve a powerful soul, a Soul Hunter attempted to take the soul of Dukhat but failed as the Minbari had a wall of their warriors protecting the Minbari leader. This was one of the very few moments of a Soul Hunters failure to accomplish his task and the act drove him mad.

References

• Soul Hunter (episode)
  
• The River of Souls