Undead: is the person's soul trapped?

[Phaedrus]

If a person rises as a mindless undead, is his soul trapped, or does it go on to its eternal reward? Is there an official stance on this? How do you define it in your game?

I ask b/c if the soul is trapped then destroying undead becomes more urgent--I must destroy this zombie so the soul can travel on. If not, eh, no big deal. If yes, Necromancy becomes truly evil, instead of just distasteful.

I assume that in the case of intelligent undead the soul is definitely trapped. If so, what tremendous power wights & wraiths (et al.) have--they kill you then trap your soul as you rise to serve them.

Your thoughts?

 

[Shemeska]

Absolutely not.

Mindless undead have no soul, they're just a physical shell animated by negative energy, no different than an animated object (which uses positive energy as an animating force). Home campaigns may houserule this of course to make it different.

The problem that mindless undead cause is that if a dead man's friends want to snag his soul from the planes and bring him back, if he's willing to return, his undead corpse is acting as a placeholder that will prevent his soul from coming back (though making it an animated object, or mangling the corpse will logically do the same thing for conventional raise dead spells).

Intelligent undead have their souls still bound to them (wights, liches, revenants, etc), or are souls (ghosts, spectres, etc).

 

[EricNoah]

I love the idea of trapped souls in torment stuck inside intelligent or non-intelligent undead.

I think some cultures believe there are two souls in each person -- one is the anima which animates the body, and the other is more like the mind/spirit. I could see the anima being trapped inside a mindless undead. Maybe if both souls don't get released, the deceased can't enjoy the afterlife to the fullest?

 

[Old Drew Id]

In fact, this is a handy way to keep those recurring villains from, well, recurring. Turn the body into an undead and stow it away somewhere (preferably shielded from divination), and someone is going to have a really hard time bringing that guy back. Sort of a poor-man's "trap the soul" spell.

 

[Firedancer]

This is my view, you can make it what you like in your game. Not sure what the official line is, doesn't it depend on the setting your in?

Intelligent undead - yes, the soul, or part of is trapped. That's why they hate the living. They had that once too, but now they don't. The memories, the distancing from life warps and changes, making them the evil dead they are.

Mindless undead - no, the soul is not returned to the body. However, I play it that the soul is not free to enjoy its resting place if its remains are utilised, its sort of pulled part way back as the means to power the undead. Hence IMC raising undead is an evil act.

The animate dead spell is given [evil] descriptor and solely casting evil spells will eventually make you evil.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, this sounds like a campaign-specific call to me. Since zombies in the real world supposedly trap the person's mind inside them -- I know, I know, it's a very different thing -- it seems like it'd be a nice way to make D&D zombies a lot more horrific than they currently are.

 

[Roger]

If a person rises as a mindless undead, is his soul trapped, or does it go on to its eternal reward?

Consider:

• A creature who has been turned into an undead creature can't be raised by raise dead and cannot be the subject of reincarnate.
• Speak with dead does not affect a corpse that has been turned into an undead creature.

Stronger magic can apparently get the soul back, though.

In the main, I think the rules imply that the soul is at least trapped, if not worse, by the creation of undead.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[GreatLemur]

Zombies and skeletons which contain souls never made a hell of a lot of sense to me, particularly since animate dead doesn't require fresh corpses, and I find it hard to imagine a 3rd-level cleric spell being able to drag the souls of the departed screaming out of Celestia itself to serve in mute bondage back on the Prime Material.

Based on that assumption, I look at the creation of mindless undead as an act that's only "evil" according to majority social concensus. ...And, arguably, it could be called a kind of theft, where the body is being "stolen" from is former occupant (who isn't using it any more, but still could be said to own it), or from the next of kin. I think the creation of zombies to fight less ambiguous evils is a cool plot element, really.

For that matter, I really dig the idea of a society for whom the reanimation and use (in labor, security, or war) of its recently-deceased is just accepted tradition. When grandpa dies, you have a funeral to say goodbye to his soul, and his corpse gets animated as part of the ceremony to serve the community, and to be lovingly maintained by the family the same way a headstone or monument would be.

EDIT:

Consider:

• A creature who has been turned into an undead creature can't be raised by raise dead and cannot be the subject of reincarnate.
• Speak with dead does not affect a corpse that has been turned into an undead creature.

Ah, good points, particularly about reincarnate, since that spell doesn't physically affect the subject's original body. That certainly suggests that undead of any kind affects the soul. On the other hand, death effects also prevent creatures from being raised or reincarnated (but not resurrected), so maybe it's more a question of a negative energy taint screwing up the body's viability as a means of accessing the soul (wherever it is)?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Zombies and skeletons which contain souls never made a hell of a lot of sense to me, particularly since animate dead doesn't require fresh corpses, and I find it hard to imagine a 3rd-level cleric spell being able to drag the souls of the departed screaming out of Celestia itself to serve in mute bondage back on the Prime Material.

Based on that assumption, I look at the creation of mindless undead as an act that's only "evil" according to majority social concensus.

Well, and those [Evil] descriptors on the spells. I do think it's a pretty minor change to remove those for a given campaign, though.

 

[Phaedrus]

I thought of this question while reading War of Spider Queen, 3rd book, Condemnation, where the duergar has 2 ogre skeletons rowing his barge. I thought to myself what horror that would be if their souls were bound to such a life of endless drudgery.

I agree it's a campaign-specific question--I was just seeking the thoughts of others on the matter.

What about wights & wraiths? They have the power to raise you as spawn, presumably preventing you from moving on... that's a horrible fate and makes me think that a crusade to destroy all undead makes a lot of sense for a LG character. (next character idea coming into focus...)