Murder in D&D...

[ProfessorPain]

How about this nugget.

In a world where there is definite PROOF that:

1) The Gods exist.
2) The Afterlife exists.
3) There is an actual Heaven and Hell (or multiple variations of them).
4) It is not impossible to document the actual passage of a soul to one of those destinations.

Imagine what that does to the fear of death. How about the fear of actual, documented eternal damnation?

this has always interested me. If the gods are granting spells and performing miracles, it is a little difficult to doubt them (The old Ravenloft novel Mordenheim tried to bring scientific doubt into a world of magic, but it didn't really work well).

on the subject of ressurrection, there are a number of things to consider. Just because it is possible to ressurect someone, that doesn't mean people always do. I try to have some faiths that view it as defiling the body or soul. As some one pointed out (at least in 3E) raising the dead is very expensive. Most regular folks wouldn't be able to afford it. And this raises all kinds of issues for lawful good religions. If their faith is supported by donations, perhaps they do perform charitable resurrections. If they don't how do they justify not giving resusurections to people who need it? (some alignments may be able to be more pragmatic about this issue, but I think lawful good ones really can't-- especially when you are dealing with a God granted power. What is like when dad dies, and comes back the next day? Is he treated the same? Has he moved onto a more spiritual phase in his life?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I honestly am surprised that religious wars are not more rampant in D&D campaign settings for that reason.

You actually know that there are gods and a afterlife and hell if your devote enough and follow the path of that god closely enough you may even become a Exalted and live forever!

I am sure lots and lots of people would closely follow their god for that end. But of course what happens when that runs counter to someone else, BAM war!

 

[Jack7]

I think thats really what I was getting at with the post. Sometimes we see people talk about how magic would effect the world physicaly but I wonder how stuff like that would effect the psychology of the people.

And this raises all kinds of issues for lawful good religions. If their faith is supported by donations, perhaps they do perform charitable resurrections. If they don't how do they justify not giving resusurections to people who need it? (some alignments may be able to be more pragmatic about this issue, but I think lawful good ones really can't-- especially when you are dealing with a God granted power. What is like when dad dies, and comes back the next day? Is he treated the same? Has he moved onto a more spiritual phase in his life?

That would make an interesting character motivation... I became an adventurer to save up enough money to raise my brother whom I accidently killed when we were kids.

I honestly am surprised that religious wars are not more rampant in D&D campaign settings for that reason.

Scrib, et al, I can easily imagine a D&D world or setting where return from death could be accomplished effectively there would quickly develop a Black Market (no pun intended) revolving around Necromantic and resurrection issues.

A market fed from both the supply side and the demand side.

Someone ambitious, probably criminally ambitious, would develop a service that rather than demanding immediate pay would demand long term servitude, enslavement, or commitments for criminal service or remuneration in other ways.

I raise your dead son your daughter becomes my slave for ten years and you commit to help me assassinate my enemy.

All such issues would psychologically, socially, culturally, religiously, and legally affect how death and attempts to circumvent permanent death were viewed.

 

[Jack7]

By the way, I wanted to mention this example of how criminal work regarding murder and resurrection might cross pollinate each other.

A Guild of Assassins makes a deal with an evil sorcerer (I am using the term generically, not as a class matter) regarding death. They will carry out their normal business, or even carry out assassinations of the evil sorcerer's choice (probably the children of prominent or wealthy people) and then when the parent's or survivor's of the victims come to the evil sorcerer for resurrection help part of the fee includes a kickback to the Assassin's Guild.

If both parties kept their activities secret then both would have a steady stream of business and could make money from multiple revenue streams without putting themselves at any greater risk than normal (unless discovered of course). then they will have some really angry "former customers."

Such a "death and resurrection racket" would even make a good basis for a criminally oriented D&D adventure, because you would have to investigate the possible connections, find the connections and any supporting evidence (maybe even go "undercover by having a party member intentionally slain" as a targeting act to infiltrate the operation from the inside) and you would end up opposing an Assassin's Guild, the sorcerer or sorcerers working with them, and anyone in the supporting network. Such as a Death-Fencing Network. (Assassinate, strip corpses and homes of all assorted goods, fence stolen items elsewhere, then split that take along with resurrection revenues among fences and principles.)

You might even have high level, but secretive, political support (A Star Chamber, or Sub-Rosan political network) out to off or disgrace opponents, or drain them of money, funds, and support, in order to make them subservient to those that had them killed and raised.

Tie that in with possible attempts to wipe the memories (so as to make use of resurrected individuals as desired) of those "raised" (and 'Razed and Raised' would take on an entirely new meaning) and you'd have a multi-functional, extremely dangerous, lucrative set of criminal enterprises.

 

[Obryn]

And then I started thinking about the idea of murder, and how it would be seen in a D&D universe. Would it really be seen in the same way our world sees it?

Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series actually deals with this directly.

More or less, there are three kinds of assassinations.

The first is really just a dramatic equivalent of roughing someone up really bad. No precautions are taken to ensure they can't be raised. It's like a really severe kneecap-breaking.

The second, you do something like behead your victim. That prevents raising.

The third basically rips out their soul, too.

So yeah. It makes the world subtly different, and it's an interesting avenue to think down.

-O

 

[ProfessorPain]

Scrib, et al, I can easily imagine a D&D world or setting where return from death could be accomplished effectively there would quickly develop a Black Market (no pun intended) revolving around Necromantic and resurrection issues.

A market fed from both the supply side and the demand side.

Someone ambitious, probably criminally ambitious, would develop a service that rather than demanding immediate pay would demand long term servitude, enslavement, or commitments for criminal service or remuneration in other ways.

I raise your dead son your daughter becomes my slave for ten years and you commit to help me assassinate my enemy.

All such issues would psychologically, socially, culturally, religiously, and legally affect how death and attempts to circumvent permanent death were viewed.

This is an interesting idea, kind of an analogy to organ trafficking.

 

[Jack7]

You know, I hadn't thought of that PP, but that could be part of the racket as well if magic were involved.

You know, killing, and magically cloning. Maybe even putting magical clones in as replacements for the originals, while you retain the resurrected originals for your own use.

 

[Rechan]

With all this talk of precautions against raising murder victims, folks are forgetting other things. Like say, precautions against Speak with Dead. I would need to check if it's the case for 4e, but in 3e if the victim doesn't have a mouth (i.e. the jaw is missing/crushed) they cannot talk.

Someone ambitious, probably criminally ambitious, would develop a service that rather than demanding immediate pay would demand long term servitude, enslavement, or commitments for criminal service or remuneration in other ways.

I raise your dead son your daughter becomes my slave for ten years and you commit to help me assassinate my enemy.

Or something more legal: indentured servitude.

Honestly, I can think of something that's less expensive, but more risky, than raise dead. And in general, it's the default way you bring someone back from the dead in my campaign:

You go into the Shadowfell/Realm of the Dead, and you physically bring their soul back. This is an adventure in and of itself.

So you could easily have an adventuring company that functions like an extraction team, or possibly someone who has a racket going with a grim reaper or something equivalent.

You could also abuse it. Say, have someone who could capture a soul on its way to the Shadowfell, and ransom the soul to someone who plans on raising them.

 

[Jack7]

So you could easily have an adventuring company that functions like an extraction team,

Rechan, I don't know how easy that would be to pull off in any given milieu, but I gotta admit, I just downright like the idea of a "Soul Extraction Team."

And just look at the acronym.
It would be the SET Team.

 

[Rechan]

"Soul Extraction Team."

Mr T must be involved.