D&D General A weird idea for a setting where raise dead/resurrection is used for finite death sentance punishment

[Henadic Theologian]

Note how few documents, or even cultures, survive a thousand years. We'd have to question whether anyone is going to remember, or care, to raise you after a millennium. Or even a century.

It's a fantasy civilization that could exist of millions of years or at least thousands and it could be somekind of automated advanced contingency spell.

 

[Umbran]

We can think of variations...

Like, the city/country/culture has the God of the Dead as one of its patron deities. They are allowed to do a mass ressurection to raise an army once a generation (or century, or something). Those raised into the army have a geas - fight for those who raised them. If they do so and die, they go to paradise. If they do so and live, they get their lives back. If they desert, they go to The Bad Place when the Geas kills them....

 

[Ixal]

It's a fantasy civilization that could exist of millions of years or at least thousands and it could be somekind of automated advanced contingency spell.

When it is guaranteed and automated you are basically making some people commit crime.
Theft to escape a local disaster, serial murder to see the future.

 

[Oofta]

I don't see how this is punishment or going to work. I guess if there's a hell, but if there is why bring them back? Also, as others have pointed out, a soul doesn't have to come back if they don't want.

 

[Ancalagon]

Note how few documents, or even cultures, survive a thousand years. We'd have to question whether anyone is going to remember, or care, to raise you after a millennium. Or even a century.

This film featured a character in jail for 5000 years... in this world, they extended the life of serious prisoners

White Dwarf (film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I thought it was a mind blowing film when I saw it

 

[Alzrius]

This idea was used in a short story (I can't recall the name of it) in the Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of Shadow back in 2002. It mostly came up by way of inference; there was a judge who, in the story, was handing out a sentence of "death without possibility of resurrection," implying that lesser crimes would eventually allow for possible resurrection the way some prison sentences would eventually allow for parole.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

What would be the opinion by the rest of deities, would they allow? Even the infernal lords would rather those souls to go to their domains.

Other point is if in a fantasy world the ordinary mortals know there will be a punishment for the sinner and criminals in the afterlife, nobody will want to join to sinner cults knowing they are the loser horse in the race. How to tempt mortal souls when these know there are a trial in the afterlife?

What about the punishment is not to become an undead slave but a "construct-touched" like the borgs from Star Trek? It would be like forced works. Or polymorphic magic to become half-beast slaves.

 

[Umbran]

I don't see how this is punishment or going to work. I guess if there's a hell, but if there is why bring them back?

Because not bringing them back makes them morally worse than the criminals, such that they would go to The Bad Place themselves?

Or, try this...

An oracle has decreed that enemies will come, take the land, and destroy the civilization. Maybe this can come as a kind of "mutually assured destruction option" - the criminals are ritually sent to death, in such a manner that they will come back if the priesthood does not perform a ceremony once a year to keep them in their graves. If the priesthood of the reigning power falls, that throws a (pun totally intended) "dead man's switch", and the dead criminals rise and wreak havoc on the conquerors.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

What would be the opinion by the rest of deities, would they allow? Even the infernal lords would rather those souls to go to their domains.

Other point is if in a fantasy world the ordinary mortals know there will be a punishment for the sinner and criminals in the afterlife, nobody will want to join to sinner cults knowing they are the loser horse in the race. How to tempt mortal souls when these know there are a trial in the afterlife?

What about the punishment is not to become an undead slave but a "construct-touched" like the borgs from Star Trek? It would be like forced works. Or polymorphic magic to become half-beast slaves.

Gods of law and Justice would likely respect it as long as it was being truly just, I mean they eventually get the soul anyways so it just takes a bit longer, the Gods are Immortals, they have the time.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

When it is guaranteed and automated you are basically making some people commit crime.
Theft to escape a local disaster, serial murder to see the future.

The idea is that the experience of being dead is extremely unpleasant.