✦ Soulbound ✦

Every player carries a unique soul. Every death cracks it. Guard it — or gamble it all on rebirth.

What is Soulbound?

A full soul system for Paper servers. On first join, every player is bound to 1 of 15 unique soul crystals, each granting a passive buff or an active ability. Your soul is physical — it lives in your inventory, it cracks when you die, and if it fully shatters you become a Lost Soul with nothing but a desperate ghost power... unless you fight your way back.

💔 The Soul Loop

✦ Bound for life — your soul crystal (a custom echo shard) can't be dropped, traded, placed, or stored. It survives death and only works for its owner.

✦ Death has a price — every death cracks your soul: −0.5 heart of max HP per crack. After 8 cracks it goes dark: a Lost Soul — greyed out, no power, −4 hearts.

✦ Mending — souls naturally heal 1 stage every 20 minutes (never while Lost), or instantly with Soul Fragments: • Kill a soul-bearing player → 1 fragment • Boss drops — Wither & Ender Dragon 100%, Warden 50%, Elder Guardian 35%

✦ Rebirth — craft 8 fragments around a diamond into an Empty Soul, take it to a Soul Altar, and survive the cinematic ~20-second ritual (tightening soulfire rings, rising wisps, escalating chimes, lightning climax — walk away and it collapses). 60% success rerolls a brand-new soul at full integrity; failure shatters the Empty Soul. 5% of successful rituals grant the mythic Sovereign Soul.

✦ Ghost Form — Lost Souls aren't helpless: 2 seconds fully untouchable + invisible... then 2 hearts as payment (never lethal).

No altar yet? Fresh servers aren't soft-locked — fusion works anywhere until an admin registers the first altar. After that, the ritual demands the altar.

🔮 The 15 Souls

👻 Passives (always active):

• 🔥 Blaze — Fireborn: permanent Fire Resistance • 💨 Swift — Windstep: permanent Speed I • 🛡️ Ironclad — Bulwark: +2 hearts max HP • ☠️ Venom — Toxic Blades: your hits poison enemies • ❄️ Frost — Chilling Touch: your hits slow & freeze enemies

⚔️ Abilities (hold your soul + Sneak + Right-Click):

• 🐺 Spirit — Spirit Legion (60s): summon 2 spirit wolves (4 hearts) to fight beside you • ⚡ Storm — Thundercall (90s): lightning strikes all enemies within 8 blocks (max 5) • 🌑 Shadow — Veilstep (75s): invisibility + Speed II for 5s • ✨ Guardian — Aegis (90s): Absorption III + Resistance I for 10s • 💛 Radiant — Blessing (120s): heal 3 hearts + cleanse negative effects • ☄️ Inferno — Meteor Volley (45s): launch 3 blazing meteors • 🌍 Quake — Seismic Slam (75s): 3-heart slam, launches everything around you • 💨 Gale — Tempest Burst (60s): violent gust cone blasts enemies away • 🌀 Void — Voidlash (90s): blink up to 12 blocks, rending all in your path

💜 Sovereign Soul (mythic — only from rituals; 4 powers, Sneak + Left-Click to switch): 1️⃣ Soul Seekers (40s) — 3 homing bolts hunt your enemies 2️⃣ Dominion (60s) — drag every enemy within 10 blocks to you + Slow II 3️⃣ Soul Nova (75s) — devastating soulburst around you 4️⃣ Ascendance (120s) — 6s of Strength + Speed + Resistance + mending

👻 Lost Soul — Ghost Form (60s): 2s untouchable + invisible, costs 2 hearts.

Every cast comes with custom particles & sounds — spark-laced lightning, portal-trail blinks, shockwave rings, soulfire bursts, a wisp trail during Ghost Form.

🎮 Animated Ability HUD

One ability box at your crosshair (via the bundled resource pack): • Bright = ready — cast and it goes dark • The dim veil wipes downward frame-by-frame (12-frame sweep) as your cooldown recharges • Sovereign tracks the selected power; Lost Souls sweep with Ghost Form

🎨 Full Pixel-Art Resource Pack Included

soulbound-pack.zip ships with the plugin — 32×32 pixel-art crystals (15 soul runes on echo-shard crystals + Lost/Empty/Fragment + HUD glyphs + pack icon). No client mods needed.

Server setup (one-time):

# host soulbound-pack.zip anywhere with a direct link, then in server.properties:
resource-pack=<direct zip URL>
resource-pack-sha1=<output of: sha1sum soulbound-pack.zip>
resource-pack-prompt=§dAccept the pack for custom souls & HUD!

Without the pack everything still works — you just lose the custom look and HUD.

⌨️ Commands & Permissions

Players: /soul (alias /souls) — info, integrity bar, cooldowns, cast, cycle, help → soulbound.use (default: all)

Admins (soulbound.admin, default: op):

/souladmin give <player> <soul|random>     /souladmin fragments <player> <n>
/souladmin setintegrity <player> <0-8>     /souladmin emptysoul <player> <n>
/souladmin unlost <player>                 /souladmin altar build|add|remove|list
/souladmin reload

⚙️ Fully Configurable

Health-per-crack, regen rate, all cooldowns & power values, ghost damage, fragment drop chances, reroll/Sovereign odds, ritual duration, HUD rate, altar gating — all in config.yml (/souladmin reload).

✅ Requirements

• Paper 1.21.x — built & tested on 1.21.11, needs Java 21 • Custom item models need 1.21.4+ clients (older clients see vanilla items; mechanics unaffected)