LORE: Kemono & Their Souls
This is a post expanding the lore of Bound Partners, also known as Kemono. It will mostly reiterate information in this post, but with more detail.
First off, the term Kemono is derived from the fact that within Digimon Survive, Digimon are called Kemonogami (aka Beast Gods). I decided to just cut off the God part and use the Japanese word for “Beast” instead. Mostly noting this if anyone is curious where that term came from!
Anyway, Kemono specifically are the Partners by human Heroes chosen by Mew. Kemono are always at least a bit younger than their Hero, as their soul was created to resonate with their Hero’s.
Kemono naturally have weak and malleable souls. Upon meeting their respective Hero, a third of their soul is swapped with their Hero’s. A Hero can very rarely have two Kemono. In this case, the Kemono must have been born as twins (usually from the same egg - but not required), and the Kemono already have swapped a fourth of their soul with eachother. Once each meets their Hero, they swap another fourth with their Hero.
Once Heroes and Kemono meet, they will feel like they were incomplete before meeting. They are practically inseparable after. They can also sense each other’s location.
This in turn leads to them having the power of their Hero partner in addition to their own, along with gaining the powerful magic and abilities that would typically be granted to Heroes.
There’s many benefits to this system, including:
- Kemono, outside of very specific circumstances, are incapable of being corrupted unless their Hero is
- Kemono are incapable of dying unless their Hero does, and have increased natural healing
- Kemono are able to wield double the power, using the combined strength of both them and their Hero
There are, however, many downsides:
- If the Hero is corrupted, so is their Kemono
- If the Hero dies, so do their Kemono
- Heroes are relatively weak in battles themselves, as their Kemono wields all their power
- If the Hero rejects their Kemono, or vice versa, it will lead to corruption, since they are rejecting part of their soul. Once corrupted, they will go on to attack those around them, including each other. Note: Minor disagreements will not cause corruption - it must be long term strife.
- As an addendum to above - it is possible for the Kemono to become on the brink of corruption if their Hero is in a particularly poor emotional state. Within this almost corrupted state, the Kemono may start attacking whatever they deem as the cause of the Hero’s upset. This may include the Hero themself.
If you are reading this and thinking to yourself “huh this system is kinda fucked up!”, I will note that is… kinda intentional lol. Translating the idea of Digimon within this universe kinda does make apparent how the Digimon and Tamer dynamic can be a bit weird and flawed! They are both halves of the same soul, but one has more influence than the other.