Shells
The shell is to lockettes what a ‘body’ is to an organic species. (Some subcultures of lockettes believe a shell is only the living lockette’s body, or, conversely, that the shell is only the body before manifestation or after death, but not while inhabited, but this is the definition this book will be using).
Shells are constructed across Maquette throughout the year, though the number of produced shells typically reaches its highest numbers shortly before the yearly Festival of Lights, which takes place near the end of March and the beginning of April. Shells must be produced at least partially by hand - for unknown reasons, saura does not seem to adhere to shells solely produced by a machine.
The shell can be made of nearly any material, so long as it is hollow within - plastic, clay, wood, rock, gemstone, cloth over a wire frame… There are numerous possibilities, and some shellmakers like to try new things every chance they get. They must have a hole for the saura to enter through - eyes, an opened mouth, or even a pre-carved keyhole, and the saura must be able to access every moving part of the shell in order to control it - there have been instances of lockettes with BJD shells who have had to have limbs removed because the shellmaker had forgotten to punch holes in the joints for the saura to flow through, and they had not created such holes in the process of inhabiting the shell.
A shell will not necessarily maintain the same appearance of its material once it has been inhabited, however - the saura that inhabits a shell can change many details of the shell. Shells have been observed growing breasts, genitalia, changing the ‘skin’ color and/or texture, carving additional keyholes into the shell, spontaneously fragmenting, growing facial features, and growing other features (such as wings, horns, or halos), in addition to the typical process of manifesting the typical traits of a lockette such as the ears, tail(s), collar, and charms.
Almost all shells require a specific physical configuration - a head atop a torso, two limbs attached to the sides of the torso, and two limbs attached to the bottom of the torso for a bipedal shape. While it is recommended to attach these components together in a humanoid manner, there are occasional lockettes who manifest in bodies with unusual limb arrangements, such as all limbs being feet.