Wow, a lot of people have attempted to address Scott's questions; before I read all the chatter let me tackle them directly.
Is there any degree of separation between body and spirit which would, in and of itself, be sufficient to result in the death of either body or spirit? (I suspect "no, whether separation results in death depends entirely on the method of separation.")
Yeah, you're right. It's a tricky area. There are, of course, monsters (in fictional accounts, which is what matters throughout) that kill by ripping your spirit out of your body, and if that action is designed to be a mortal attack, then if it is successful it ought to be a mortal attack, and the character ought to die. On the other hand, there are accounts of men walking the astral plane to other universes while their bodies lie in trances on Earth for weeks at a time, and this must also be possible.
If a spirit whose body is wholly inaccessible (as by temporal separation on the order of centuries) undergoes an effect which would ordinarily force it to return to its body, what results might you as referee consider probable (obviously depending on the effect, but in general)?
I'm assuming that "effect which would ordinarily force it to return to its body" is akin to "takes sufficient damage that it ceases to function outside the body". I suppose there could be other attacks that would have that effect, but they seem improbable. On that basis, I see only two possibilities: either the spirit is forced into the border supernatural and through that back to the body, or the body dies and the whole verses out to a place where it can be reunited. I might use a GE roll to determine which, third possiblity perhaps stranding the spirit on the border supernatural subject to such action as its natives might take. (Whether that's the middle or the bad extreme might depend on the character's affiliation.)
One of the reasons, I understand, that the spirit is presumed to be the undisownable property of the body is to avoid the scenario in which the verser somehow loses his body and verses out, never to see it again. While in general the Multiverser philosophy is "any problem is temporary; anything can be fixed," it also embraces the idea that the character is in some sense the player, and that this identity can somehow remain constant even in the face of the dramatic changes most characters undergo (thus the rule that ensures that the verser will always be able to eventually reclaim his original body, no matter what happens or how long it takes). However, if it is possible for a fantasy villain in Disney's Sleeping Beauty (for example) to trap the soul of a verser in a shard of glass and subsequently abscond with that soul to DC's Metroplolis via magic portal (a completely distinct and unrelated universe) without the death of the verser, I as referee have a problem: time.
In the event that the verser's body and soul are operating in separate and distinct timestreams, then - for lack of a better question - what do I do?
I wasn't around when Whisp turned himself into a statue. He got the Midas Touch, and touched himself, but it wasn't fatal and it wasn't considered damage (he was morphed into a golden statue of himself) so he had to be destroyed as a statue to verse out, and he had to find a way as a statue to convert himself back to human form. He eventually worked up a psionic morphing ability that enabled him to shape change into living creatures, and so in essence morphed into himself, but last I heard he still had not managed to lose the lovely golden hue of his skin, hair, eyes....
I have no problem with the notion that a player character whose spirit gets magic jarred has to play as that spirit in that jar until he finds a way to free himself from the jar and get back to his body. There are always ways to do it; you just have to be creative and patient.
My point is, the player's perceptions are all with the spirit, but the body is in another universe operating under time which has no relationship at all with the player's time. One or the other of the spirit or body will eventually (in their own time) verse out, yes, and at that point I can reunite them in another universe - but how on Earth can I possibly determine which verses out "first," and "when" that happens in the other's unrelated time stream?
Events which matter to the player character which are beyond his control are determined by a GE roll. You're tracking the actions of the spirit; you know the present state and location of the body, and the probability that something would kill it (euthanized by indigs, devoured by scavenger carnivores, buried in natural disaster). You also know that time is not connected. So what matters really is, does the player character prefer to stay in this world a longer time (because he might be able to free himself from the magic jar here) or move to a new world sooner (because he doesn't have a lot of options here), and the general effects roll against that tells you whether he verses out sooner or later.
"Later" might be covered by the simple narration that he's been stuck in this state for what seems like years, but suddenly he has the sense of the jar around him being torn apart and reassembled (the verse-out experience). Or it might be that the player stays for quite a significant length of play time, either because there is something he could do here or because you don't want to cue him that there isn't until he's tried a few things and he's not trying.
Or should it be possible for the spirit to be yanked out of its current universe due to the death of the body in the other universe, basically whenever I feel like it?
Well, yes, that's right, except that it's whenever you feel like it based on your perception of what the character would prefer and what the dice indicate.
I hope the side chatter isn't confusing the issue, but let me see what I can answer there, too.
Thus there is no similar or compatible body because the presence of scriff is needed to maintain a versers career.
Before I get to what Max said about this, let me clarify that this does not mean that the verser's spirit could not possess or animate a body that does not contain scriff. It's a common enough psionic skill, and can be done magically as well (although I tend to think that disembodied spirits have to use psionic skills primarily).
If that is the case then similar or compatible means that the body could be detected via scriff sense although this would be a problem if the body is not in the same universe but in the other related universe. An example of this is the verser past body.
Could a verser equipment be detected by other verser?
If it could be detected, then probably the equipment could be possessed.
If it could not be detected, then probably the spirit could only possess another verser.
A verser can detect another verser, but not another verser's equipment. I think that if the verser's spirit possesses the body of another verser, there's a reasonable issue to address there, but since there are too many variables it would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Could the verser have a scriff sense on the related universe level which enable the verser to detect which related universe contains scriff at that moment?
No. Scriff sense does not reach beyond the present sub-universe in the best of situations. You would have to be within that sub-universe, and closely related to the scriff source. Also, contrary to some of Eric's ideas, versers don't generally detect raw scriff or scriff used technologically or in other devices--only active scriff in creatures and the scriff connected at a molecular level to their own possessions.
In replacement theory, time probably does not work like a stream because the future happen instantly.
You're abusing metaphors again. Time is still like a stream in that people are carried along through it at a fixed rate, as if in a current from point to point. The entirety of the stream can exist simultaneously and it still be a stream.
My problem is: given that reality, how do I run the game when a verser's body is in one universe and his spirit in another universe with no connection - temporal, spatial, or otherwise - with the other?
I think I've answered this. The situation as defined means that the spirit and the body have no knowledge of anything happening to the other, so the events happening to the body happen outside the player's knowledge and thus dependent on GE rolls.
You can if you like think about what's being done to his body in his absence, and if any of that will survive a later verse-out. It gives an entirely new meaning to the idea of waking up with a tattoo.
--M. J. Young
