It comes with the Soul thing, I'm afraid. The only difference I can tell between a Soulless and an Elder is an Elder has a Soul - their soul is what differentiates them into the different Circles, I think. So it would be fair to assume, then, an Elder God COULD kill and absorb other Elder Gods. Doesn't mean they did or will. But they COULD.

Soulless consume because they have no soul. Where we have a soul, they have... more like an un-dying hunger.

Okay, that makes sense. But does that un-dying hunger mean they get stronger for devouring? I mean, just because an obese person may have this unsatiable desire to eat, doesn't mean I wouldn't get fat if I ate anyway. o.O

(Bad comparison, but yea.)

I think it's because they have something like a black hole instead of their soul - they want to fill the empty place by devouring, but it won't work. They devour even more, as much as they can, but they won't fill the empty place, just as you can't make a black hole significantly heavier by letting things fly into it. So the answer to "do they get stronger" question would be: no.

Soulless DO get stronger. My question is do Elder Gods.

Elder gods have Essence, Erion, and they get stronger as they have more of it. I thought that was pretty basic.

Sigh. I'm saying, if Fain went up to Lisaera, killed her, ate her, absorbed her essence. He would grow stronger, yes? Just like a Soulless would, and did, during the Elder Wars. That's aaaalll I'm asking - confirmation of something as simplistic as that. Elder Gods have Souls, which give them Circles. Soulless Gods do not, and thus have a ravinous hunger. Only serious difference. Everything else is detail and arbitrary.

If a comet passed through a nebula, would the rock in the centre glow green?

If an authority didn't know an answer, would they divert the question with irrelevant quasiphilosophical queries?

What I'm saying is that the original question is an irrelevant quasiphilosophical query.

If I wore the right tinted sunglasses.

But I'm cuuurious. I mean, if Soulless and Elders are the same thing, simply one has a soul, then wouldn't it be possible?

Who said they were the same thing?

It was heavily inferred it was a similiar process, one simply created beasts without souls. Nameless Son simply taught Dynara how to create a soul. I'll look in a second.

EDIT: No, I'm not going to quote Yrael - he couldn't even spell Magnora or Dynara's name - just called her Mynara. Soo. I'll browse the histories, but it seemed to me that it heavily suggested they were essentially the same thing - I mean, the only difference was soul or no soul. Something pretty arbitrary, like skin color, although black people/mediterraneans are more at risk from sickle cell. It's just a strange curiousity that's buggin' me, s'all.

So you're saying, a slice of bread and a sandwich are the same thing.

Flour and a cake? A shaped box of metal and a car?

The bread can still grow moldy.

EDIT: For the sake of clarification - the bread is still the same. The pieces of bread on the sandwich are just as prone to anything and have the same uses as two slices of bread without anything.

Edits are meean. But the sandwich analogy was closest among them, I think - I mean, from the way I've understood it heresofar. Gods have essence. Soulless Gods eat that essence, and grow stronger.

As far as a cake goes, wouldn't it be more apt to say, like, cake and cake with ice cream? They're both divine beings, one just has some extra thrown in, that the other was missing. That scoop of chocolate ice cream that makes the cake scream in delight as it's going down your throat.

No, the cake and ice cream is a less exact analogy. The method Dynara used to create life was altered by the son entirely, it's not just a case of "add one soul, stir thoroughly", she did it in a different way.

Alright, I guess. Seemed more like the former, but you'ld probably know better than I. Still not an exact answer, but I imagine you're not really sure, either.

I'm deliberately vague because this isn't the sort of thing you should find out on the forums, it should be your characters working to find it out.