So, I've been playing some Vodyani and what's been gnawling at my curiosity is how exactly do the Vodyani "reproduce", and why are the lore and gameplay contradicting each other? So, according to both the Vodyani Vision video and the story of Varb St. Zouieina, the "convert" must enter a pool of energy/essence and then their consciousness and life force are transferred to the Cloth and they are now truly Vodyani. But according to Holy Proliferation's blurb, they simply bathe the Cloth in essence when enough is gathered, implying that with enough essence the Vodyani can literally generate consciousness rather than transfer consciousness. So, which one is true? Indeed in the game no sacrifice or conversion of population is required to generate Vodyani, so I assume that somehow miraculously they can generate new life with essence, but I'm still confused. Wouldn't it make more sense if they had technology similar to Horatio's where they could turn a member of a minor faction into their own race, with the cost of essence?

I really love the game so far and the plethora of texts and quests in the game just lean so heavily on RPG, I'm really loving it and I'm surprised to see such a well fleshed-out world in a 4x game. I just have so many lore questions, but since I'm trying out the Vodyani now I'm a bit confused about how they actually generate/convert population.