Hey guys!

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.

Haha, this is an old post but I'd like to put my 2 cents into it. I think the Vods still need populations. One thing of note is that when leecher ships suck esseance from planets, they also reduce the food and population of said system. When a system is completly drained, it says they've "abducted" everyone. This implies they also take the physical bodies of the people. My take on this is that Esseance is needed to convert abducted people. Their conciousness is forcibley ripped from their bodies and then reprogrammed as they enter the Cloth. Of note is that Vods still need and use food despite being Robots like the Rifts. I think that food is actually used to feed the "host bodies" that will then be transfered into Cloths when avalible. This is mostly speculation though.