Undead: is the person's soul trapped?

[Ripzerai]

Here's the thing. Zombies and skeletons aren't 100 percent mindless. After all, they can take orders and follow commands. So that means they are able to interpret things told to them.

Libris Mortis seems to be saying that these creatures are animated by primitive spirits (energons?) from the Negative Energy Plane, rather than the souls who once resided in them. So they have souls of a sort.

 

[Sejs]

late to the party, just my two bits.

In theory you could find the corpse of the mortal who later became a larvae, then a dretch, and ultimately became Orcus. If you animate the corpse into a skeleton it's not going to rip Orcus screaming from his throne in Thanatos to be bound against his will to a mindless skeleton. The spell simply isn't that powerful, nor is the soul involved when we're talking about animated puppets and nothing really more.

The easy answer for that one is to say that no matter who Orcus was before he's no longer that person now. He's undergone fundamental personal transformation. Orcus the Man That Was was two parts, body and soul; Orcus the Demon Lord is a single unmingled whole of soul-made-flesh. The bones of his old form are now nothing more than the chrysalis from which he emerged.

So while having his old bones might give someone a degree of power in binding Orcus (because let's face it, it's actually a pretty dang cool idea), trying to animate them as undead is only going to net you a chime and a message saying that the number you have dialed is no longer in service or has traveled outside of the coverage area. If you believe you have reached this message in error, please check the number and dial again.

 

[William drake]

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?

Well, for a cleric or any other holy person, Id say that they'd think it was trapped, which by would make it more important to them. And depending on the game, wizards might think the same thing. Either way, where ever the soul is going, its not getting there untill the undead is laid to rest.

Wizards might have a more scientific view, and say that when its dead its dead, and reanimating it only turns the matter back on, not the power by which it was started with.

For the other side, it might be that No, the undead has no soul, its just that whoever has activated it, has turned on its mind enough so that it can be used. This would make it a reason for the church, who would see this as evil and a mortal sin and other such horriors. The wizards might still dislike it becasue, I mean, its undead...and prob a realm of magic that is looked down upon.

Or, it might be that only smart undead, those who are aware of themselves, might be the only ones who still have a soul, and some how it got trapped.

I would say, that all of the above may move into the game, so that life after death is kept as a mystery

 

[Mercule]

Now, the vampire (and the few creatures like them maybe the wrath), these guys are special, I say that some are the negative copies of the soul while others are the actual soul. At the moment of death by a vampire, a soul can decide to stay with the body or leave (most good souls leave), then if the soul leaves a negative copy is put in the body, these guys rarely go beyond the basic rank of vampire spawn.

Naw, the vampire's soul has to stay. How else can we experience emogoth angst?

Actually, whether it happens on camera or off, I do like the twist that the danger of becoming a vampire is that the hunger will pretty much absolutely damn you. That ain't a facsimile, it's the original owner and he's gone bad. In fact, that's the angle I like to pretty much all of my undead. If it doesn't involve the original soul (especially for intelligent undead), then I don't consider it undead so much as I do some sort of fiendish possession.

 

[GreatLemur]

That's a really cool idea. Have you put it into practice at all? How did it go?

Nah, not at all. It's just a vague idea I've toyed with.

 

[Necrohazard]

I have always thought that the lowly Animate Dead spell is considered evil because once you create one of the mindless zombies or skeletons, you open a small pin prick a “conduit” between the negative and material plane that over the years not only serves to animate the husk and bone but allows an imbalance of the positive and negative energies within that given material plane. And that could all depend on how much this has gone on and in what quantity. And although the negative plane itself is not evil, in and of itself .........I would venture to say that negative energy tends to draw more evil to it as a flame draws the moth, then ever does it draw beings or forces of good. So although it may seem harmless or at least less harmful to animate a simple corpse then lets say a powerful wizard changing himself into a lich and growing even more powerful through the years.......it may not be at all, it may just be a more subtle evil that tends to be overlooked more readily. If that being the case the necromancers or others who don’t see a problem in animating a few guards here or a work force for the greater good, could in fact be casing greater harm in the long run then they ever may have known withing there life time.

Anyways just a thought and one take of it all.