User blog comment:DYBAD/Character Sheet/@comment-24955665-20160929032438/@comment-4867780-20160929093828

I understand your surprise, there are actually several reason to this unexpected turn :

First, to bring back the physical "taste" of Absorbing Replication, which was essentially lost along the way, due to the omnipresent utilitarism of non-material (non-everything, really ^ ^;) Selforge Essence that Lawrence is "made of".

A large part of AR's coolness and badassery relies of its viscerally physiological nature, something very tangible and alive in a flesh-and-blood sense, that can tank anything you throw at it and only grow stronger. Selforge Essence is extremely practical and versatile, and its imperceptible nature allows it to operate unnoticed without any disturbance, but it just lacks this irreplaceable "tough nut to crack" gutsy feeling.

The second reason is that with the countless pieces of SF operating virtually everything in Selforge City, Lawrence needed a "something special" to separate his avatars from the rest, so they may really feel like his own body, that would grant a solid physical foundation to his sense of individual humanity.

To achieve that, I came up with the idea of a three-dimensional "shadow" of permanently conscious Selforge Essence (soul), and completely bound to a personal vessel of physical matter (body). This way you end up with an artificial reconstruction of core concepts, with a soul and a body coexisting within the same space and experiencing life as a single being.

The third reason is that Lawrence needed a clear-cut practical limit to his natural abilities during his extraplanar adventure, and by completely anchoring his Selforge Essence in his physical form, the Materium manages to contain his powers to a purely physiological level.