VelvetViolet
Adventurer
(Scroll to the bottom for a one-paragraph conclusion.)
The nature of the soul is a vital point of argument in the game, such as why undead are evil. However, the core rules never conclusively define what the soul is. There are only scattered and vague references to how souls work. I will try my best to organize and present these rules in order to provide an explanation for how souls do and do not work according to the rules as written (RAW). All arguments are based solely on content in the PRD and other content produced by Paizo.
According to the glossary under the “dead” entry, the magic rules under “bringing back the dead,” and the entries for “outer planes” under the environment and planar adventures rules, when a creature is dead then its soul leaves it body and travels to the outer planes to become a petitioner (see “petitioner” entry in Bestiary 2) while retaining a vague existential tie to their former life. Aside from alignment, most petitioners retain little or no vestige of their former self, logically making them different individuals. A petitioner loses their memories of the outer planes if brought back to life, logically equivalent to committing suicide. If a petitioner is destroyed, then they can only be recreated by a wish or miracle. Souls and petitioners are composed of positive energy. Becoming undead is never mentioned as preventing souls from leaving the body and entering the outer planes.
The spell speak with dead allows the caster to communicate with a dead body. The caster is not actually speaking with the soul of the deceased (which has already moved on to the outer planes), but a remnant of that soul that retains the deceased’s memories and a vestige of their personality.
Spells like create soul gem, familiar melding, magic jar, marionette possession, parasitic soul, soul bind, soul transfer and trap the soul allow the caster to store souls inside vessels or transfer souls into new bodies. These spells equate the soul with the “life force.” The souls so moved retain their memories and personality. These spells cannot affect constructs due to being necromancy effects. Mindless undead do not have souls and cannot be affected by such spells. Intelligent undead do have souls (or, if incorporeal, are souls) and can be affected by such spells. The negative energy that powers undead is considered their “life force” and likewise their souls.
According to soul stealing-related spells, there is a distinction between petitioners and most other outsiders. Petitioners are “creatures whose substance is a physical incarnation of a soul” while most other outsiders are “creatures formed from souls and planar material.” Incorporeal undead or a soul trapped in a gem are “bodiless souls.” Incorporeal creatures and petitioners are both “vulnerable souls that aren’t bound to mortal flesh.”
Stealing the soul of a dead creature does not prevent it from animating as an undead (such as with animate dead, create undead, create greater undead, or environmental effects), meaning that undead creatures do not need the same soul they possessed in life and becoming undead does not seem to prevent the original soul from traveling to the afterlife. In fact, they logically cannot retain the same soul since the souls of living creatures are composed of positive energy and the souls of undead are composed of negative energy and there is no indication either of the two forms of energy can freely convert to the other. It is possible to steal the soul of a dead creature, animate it as an intelligent undead, kill and steal the soul of said undead creature, and thus possess two different souls of positive and negative energy that originate from the same body.
Undead uprisings (see the entry under disasters) can cause the souls of bodies long since turned to dust to return as ghosts and spectral undead even if their souls have long since passed on to the outer planes and become outsiders. Clearly, these undead are not the same souls that passed on and implies that either living or dead creatures have multiple souls or the souls of undead have a separate origin from the soul they had in life.
Spells like clone, raise dead, reincarnate, resurrection, true resurrection, miracle and wish can be used to bring back the dead. Any corpse that has been an undead creature at any point in time cannot be restored to life by raise dead or reincarnate regardless of whether the soul is ready and willing. Neither can resurrection or true resurrection restore said soul if their former body is currently walking around as an undead creature, even though these spells do not require the body intact or even at all. However, the clone spell will automatically return these individuals to life within their clone as soon as they die even if their original body is later animated as an undead.
The argument that undead creatures are “evil” because they keep their original souls in a state of torment is wrong (at least partly so, but not in the way you would think; see below for my conclusions). Undead do not have the same souls they possessed in life and in fact have entirely new souls composed of negative energy. Mindless undead do not have souls at all. Regardless, raise dead and similar spells (except clone) imply that undeath somehow prevents a soul from returning to life but, since undead creatures have no causal connection to the soul they had in life, there is no logical explanation for why this is. Becoming undead is not specifically mentioned as preventing revivification under the magic rules for “bringing back the dead” even though it is implied in the previously mentioned spell descriptions. As this restriction did not exist in 1e/2e D&D and was removed in 4e/5e D&D, I am going to assume it is an oversight.
Constructs cannot be brought back from the dead and do not appear to possess souls (with the exception of soulbound constructs); golems are technically animated by imprisoned elemental spirits but still considered not to have souls. Outsiders have no duality between body and soul, making them more difficult to bring back from the dead. Undead cannot be brought back from the dead, only returned to the life they had before they were undead.
Souls can be split without harming the donating soul, using smaller portions to create black soul shards and soulbound constructs. Soulbound constructs lose immunity to mind-affecting effects due to the presence of a soul. Constructs, despite apparently lacking souls, can be created using infusions of positive energy (such as that produced by a ravid) or by binding living elementals into inanimate matter. Ordinary corpses, technically being objects, can be animated in the same way to create flesh golems or animated objects that merely look like zombie or skeletons.
Negative and positive energy are morally neutral, yet spells that create undead are universally evil and all undead with the exception of ghosts are automatically evil. No explanation for this is given beyond vague statements that undead are somehow “unnatural,” which is logically fallacious as negative energy is natural and living creatures such as dhampir and sceaduinar are naturally powered by negative energy (i.e. their souls/life force are composed of negative energy). It is possible for undead to be powered by positive energy like living creatures (such as by using undeath inversion). Negative and positive energy do not appear to correlate with life or death, as both are equally capable of powering living and undead.
Since undead are not unnatural and do not have the souls they had in life, there must be some other reason for why the vast majority are inherently evil. There is a simple solution: undead are animated by fiends in a fashion not unlike how golems are animated by imprisoned elemental spirits. This would easily explain why most undead are inherently evil (like fiends), harmed by holy water (also like fiends), and exhibit a need to feed on the positive energy of living creatures (such as fiends) despite being animated by negative energy.
This does not explain the existence of non-evil ghosts. This can be explained by assuming that all creatures have two souls a la the Hun and Po of Taoist thought: one composed of positive energy that passes on to the outer planes after death, and one composed of negative energy that remains in the body after death and be subjected to speak with dead, overridden by a fiend to animate the corpse, or forced out of the corpse as an incorporeal undead creature. For reference, I will refer to the former as the "anima" and the latter as the "animus." A ghost, in contrast to other spectral undead, is animated through sheer willpower on the part of the animus rather than with the help of a fiend; spectral undead, in contrast, are the result of contagious fiendish possession and thus explains why ghosts generally cannot create spawn.
When a person dies and is split into their constituent souls, they effectively cease to exist as the same person. The anima becomes a petitioner and retains virtually none of its original memories or personality with rare (partial) exceptions, making it logically a different individual despite retaining its alignment (i.e. its conscience and karmic debt). The animus retains memories, personality, and alignment even if it otherwise lacks motivating drives. If the corpse is possessed by a fiend to create an undead creature, said fiend will either do nothing more than animate the body like a construct (in the case of mindless/soulless undead) or replace the anima for the purposes of necromancy effects (in the case of intelligent/ensouled undead).
The result of these metaphysics is perversely opposed to how people in both the game world and in real life normally view the nature of souls. An individual is defined by their memories, and without those memories they are not the same person. A petitioner may be a person’s anima, but it not them. If a person has split into both a petitioner (anima) and a ghost (animus) after death, which is in fact the default state of existence for ghosts, the ghost is an actually the closest thing to a continuation of that person since it retains their memories and personality. Putting a ghost to rest does not send them to peaceful rest in the afterlife because the petitioner is already doing that. By ending a ghost’s existence, you are actually consigning them to oblivion (at least until they are brought back to life or reanimated). In fact, all undead that retain their memories are direct continuations of the people they were in life and their petitioners are ironically nothing more than echoes of their former selves. The prejudice against undead, while justified, has actually resulted in the murder of numerous innocent people possessed by fiends against their will in addition to those who were already evil in life (who presumably don't care about the possession).
One could make a case that, a la Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, summoning the petitioner back to the material plane and forcing it back into its now undead body would cause the undead to regain their original alignment (and thus become the original person again) as the original anima overrides the fiend's control. This would not change the fact that they are still undead and the fiend animating them might still suffer a hunger for positive energy. It would, however, allow for non-evil undead characters who angst about having to feed on the living against their will until they can be resurrected. But I digress.
Death in the RAW, for all intents and purposes, is actually the end of a person’s existence. Their anima enters the outer planes to become a petitioner without actually continuing their former consciousness. Their animus remains with the corpse, devoid of any consciousness unless animated as undead. Clearly, the designers were not communicating when they were writing these rules because I find it very odd if this profoundly disturbing state of affairs in the RAW was their intention.
EDIT: I have recently read "The River of Souls" (TROS) essay in Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh. The essay directly contradicts the PRD as well as its own internal logic:
In summary, every person has two souls: the anima and animus. The anima is the conscience, karmic debt, and alignment. The animus is the bulk of the memories and personality. Upon death, the anima departs to the outer planes where it is judged and becomes a petitioner while the animus remains in the corpse and only rarely regains consciousness. Undead are generally created, deliberately or spontaneously, by calling forth a least fiend and forcing it to puppeteer the corpse and/or the animal. In the case of undead that create spawn, this possession is contagious. In the case of ghosts, the anima forces itself into a semblance of life through sheer willpower and thus retains its original alignment. In the case of liches, the anima and animus are placed into a phylactery during the transition and thus retained into undeath; liches are generally evil because the ritual used to create them is so terrible only evil (or truly desperate) individuals would attempt it. Hypothetically, any evil undead other than a ghost or lich could be changed back to their original alignment by summoning their anima and binding it back into the corpse. In which case the undead, if they regained their original alignment, would retain the fiend providing their animating force and would still need to feed on life force if they did before (which is a great source of angst, btw).
The nature of the soul is a vital point of argument in the game, such as why undead are evil. However, the core rules never conclusively define what the soul is. There are only scattered and vague references to how souls work. I will try my best to organize and present these rules in order to provide an explanation for how souls do and do not work according to the rules as written (RAW). All arguments are based solely on content in the PRD and other content produced by Paizo.
According to the glossary under the “dead” entry, the magic rules under “bringing back the dead,” and the entries for “outer planes” under the environment and planar adventures rules, when a creature is dead then its soul leaves it body and travels to the outer planes to become a petitioner (see “petitioner” entry in Bestiary 2) while retaining a vague existential tie to their former life. Aside from alignment, most petitioners retain little or no vestige of their former self, logically making them different individuals. A petitioner loses their memories of the outer planes if brought back to life, logically equivalent to committing suicide. If a petitioner is destroyed, then they can only be recreated by a wish or miracle. Souls and petitioners are composed of positive energy. Becoming undead is never mentioned as preventing souls from leaving the body and entering the outer planes.
The spell speak with dead allows the caster to communicate with a dead body. The caster is not actually speaking with the soul of the deceased (which has already moved on to the outer planes), but a remnant of that soul that retains the deceased’s memories and a vestige of their personality.
Spells like create soul gem, familiar melding, magic jar, marionette possession, parasitic soul, soul bind, soul transfer and trap the soul allow the caster to store souls inside vessels or transfer souls into new bodies. These spells equate the soul with the “life force.” The souls so moved retain their memories and personality. These spells cannot affect constructs due to being necromancy effects. Mindless undead do not have souls and cannot be affected by such spells. Intelligent undead do have souls (or, if incorporeal, are souls) and can be affected by such spells. The negative energy that powers undead is considered their “life force” and likewise their souls.
According to soul stealing-related spells, there is a distinction between petitioners and most other outsiders. Petitioners are “creatures whose substance is a physical incarnation of a soul” while most other outsiders are “creatures formed from souls and planar material.” Incorporeal undead or a soul trapped in a gem are “bodiless souls.” Incorporeal creatures and petitioners are both “vulnerable souls that aren’t bound to mortal flesh.”
Stealing the soul of a dead creature does not prevent it from animating as an undead (such as with animate dead, create undead, create greater undead, or environmental effects), meaning that undead creatures do not need the same soul they possessed in life and becoming undead does not seem to prevent the original soul from traveling to the afterlife. In fact, they logically cannot retain the same soul since the souls of living creatures are composed of positive energy and the souls of undead are composed of negative energy and there is no indication either of the two forms of energy can freely convert to the other. It is possible to steal the soul of a dead creature, animate it as an intelligent undead, kill and steal the soul of said undead creature, and thus possess two different souls of positive and negative energy that originate from the same body.
Undead uprisings (see the entry under disasters) can cause the souls of bodies long since turned to dust to return as ghosts and spectral undead even if their souls have long since passed on to the outer planes and become outsiders. Clearly, these undead are not the same souls that passed on and implies that either living or dead creatures have multiple souls or the souls of undead have a separate origin from the soul they had in life.
Spells like clone, raise dead, reincarnate, resurrection, true resurrection, miracle and wish can be used to bring back the dead. Any corpse that has been an undead creature at any point in time cannot be restored to life by raise dead or reincarnate regardless of whether the soul is ready and willing. Neither can resurrection or true resurrection restore said soul if their former body is currently walking around as an undead creature, even though these spells do not require the body intact or even at all. However, the clone spell will automatically return these individuals to life within their clone as soon as they die even if their original body is later animated as an undead.
The argument that undead creatures are “evil” because they keep their original souls in a state of torment is wrong (at least partly so, but not in the way you would think; see below for my conclusions). Undead do not have the same souls they possessed in life and in fact have entirely new souls composed of negative energy. Mindless undead do not have souls at all. Regardless, raise dead and similar spells (except clone) imply that undeath somehow prevents a soul from returning to life but, since undead creatures have no causal connection to the soul they had in life, there is no logical explanation for why this is. Becoming undead is not specifically mentioned as preventing revivification under the magic rules for “bringing back the dead” even though it is implied in the previously mentioned spell descriptions. As this restriction did not exist in 1e/2e D&D and was removed in 4e/5e D&D, I am going to assume it is an oversight.
Constructs cannot be brought back from the dead and do not appear to possess souls (with the exception of soulbound constructs); golems are technically animated by imprisoned elemental spirits but still considered not to have souls. Outsiders have no duality between body and soul, making them more difficult to bring back from the dead. Undead cannot be brought back from the dead, only returned to the life they had before they were undead.
Souls can be split without harming the donating soul, using smaller portions to create black soul shards and soulbound constructs. Soulbound constructs lose immunity to mind-affecting effects due to the presence of a soul. Constructs, despite apparently lacking souls, can be created using infusions of positive energy (such as that produced by a ravid) or by binding living elementals into inanimate matter. Ordinary corpses, technically being objects, can be animated in the same way to create flesh golems or animated objects that merely look like zombie or skeletons.
Negative and positive energy are morally neutral, yet spells that create undead are universally evil and all undead with the exception of ghosts are automatically evil. No explanation for this is given beyond vague statements that undead are somehow “unnatural,” which is logically fallacious as negative energy is natural and living creatures such as dhampir and sceaduinar are naturally powered by negative energy (i.e. their souls/life force are composed of negative energy). It is possible for undead to be powered by positive energy like living creatures (such as by using undeath inversion). Negative and positive energy do not appear to correlate with life or death, as both are equally capable of powering living and undead.
Since undead are not unnatural and do not have the souls they had in life, there must be some other reason for why the vast majority are inherently evil. There is a simple solution: undead are animated by fiends in a fashion not unlike how golems are animated by imprisoned elemental spirits. This would easily explain why most undead are inherently evil (like fiends), harmed by holy water (also like fiends), and exhibit a need to feed on the positive energy of living creatures (such as fiends) despite being animated by negative energy.
This does not explain the existence of non-evil ghosts. This can be explained by assuming that all creatures have two souls a la the Hun and Po of Taoist thought: one composed of positive energy that passes on to the outer planes after death, and one composed of negative energy that remains in the body after death and be subjected to speak with dead, overridden by a fiend to animate the corpse, or forced out of the corpse as an incorporeal undead creature. For reference, I will refer to the former as the "anima" and the latter as the "animus." A ghost, in contrast to other spectral undead, is animated through sheer willpower on the part of the animus rather than with the help of a fiend; spectral undead, in contrast, are the result of contagious fiendish possession and thus explains why ghosts generally cannot create spawn.
When a person dies and is split into their constituent souls, they effectively cease to exist as the same person. The anima becomes a petitioner and retains virtually none of its original memories or personality with rare (partial) exceptions, making it logically a different individual despite retaining its alignment (i.e. its conscience and karmic debt). The animus retains memories, personality, and alignment even if it otherwise lacks motivating drives. If the corpse is possessed by a fiend to create an undead creature, said fiend will either do nothing more than animate the body like a construct (in the case of mindless/soulless undead) or replace the anima for the purposes of necromancy effects (in the case of intelligent/ensouled undead).
The result of these metaphysics is perversely opposed to how people in both the game world and in real life normally view the nature of souls. An individual is defined by their memories, and without those memories they are not the same person. A petitioner may be a person’s anima, but it not them. If a person has split into both a petitioner (anima) and a ghost (animus) after death, which is in fact the default state of existence for ghosts, the ghost is an actually the closest thing to a continuation of that person since it retains their memories and personality. Putting a ghost to rest does not send them to peaceful rest in the afterlife because the petitioner is already doing that. By ending a ghost’s existence, you are actually consigning them to oblivion (at least until they are brought back to life or reanimated). In fact, all undead that retain their memories are direct continuations of the people they were in life and their petitioners are ironically nothing more than echoes of their former selves. The prejudice against undead, while justified, has actually resulted in the murder of numerous innocent people possessed by fiends against their will in addition to those who were already evil in life (who presumably don't care about the possession).
One could make a case that, a la Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, summoning the petitioner back to the material plane and forcing it back into its now undead body would cause the undead to regain their original alignment (and thus become the original person again) as the original anima overrides the fiend's control. This would not change the fact that they are still undead and the fiend animating them might still suffer a hunger for positive energy. It would, however, allow for non-evil undead characters who angst about having to feed on the living against their will until they can be resurrected. But I digress.
Death in the RAW, for all intents and purposes, is actually the end of a person’s existence. Their anima enters the outer planes to become a petitioner without actually continuing their former consciousness. Their animus remains with the corpse, devoid of any consciousness unless animated as undead. Clearly, the designers were not communicating when they were writing these rules because I find it very odd if this profoundly disturbing state of affairs in the RAW was their intention.
EDIT: I have recently read "The River of Souls" (TROS) essay in Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh. The essay directly contradicts the PRD as well as its own internal logic:
- TROS makes a distinction between souls and petitioners, stating that souls spend a variable period of time in Purgatory before becoming petitioners. The PRD implies this only vaguely at best and seems to assume that becoming a petitioner is both guaranteed and immediate after Purgatory is reached.
- The PRD states petitioners retain only fragments of their living memories and almost never any vestige of personality. TROS states that petitioners retain their memories for thousands of years.
- The PRD states that petitioners are returned to mortal life by raise dead and similar spells. TROS states that petitioners can never be returned to life, but that the god of death can see the future and sets souls aside if they are ever going to be raised. (Note: The god of death hates undead.)
- TROS states that undead retain their living souls, which contradicts the point above as the god of death had been previously stated to hate undead and logically would never hold souls back so they could one day be raised as undead if this was the case. However, TROS specifically mentions "spontaneous" undead (that is, not deliberately created by a necromancer's spell), which seems to imply that such undead only arise from souls that choose to remain behind and that souls that have entered Purgatory will never be raised in such a way. This create two problems
- If spontaneous undead only arise if the soul remains behind (ignoring mindless undead as being soulless), then that means the undead created by an undead uprising are the result of souls staying behind for indefinite periods of time including centuries and millennia after death. This seems like it would be considered a huge problem for the god of death because it means huge numbers of souls are remaining on the Material Plane after death, orders of magnitude more than those that are entering Purgatory. Yet this is handwaved in TROS as being inconsequential to the timescale of the multiverse and thus the god of death doesn't care one whiff, despite being stated to hate undead to the point of making it a metaphysical law that all undead are evil (or in the case of non-evil ghosts, doomed to become so).
- It is not explained where non-spontaneous undead get their souls from. If every create undead and similar spells summoned the original soul from Purgatory, that should be an annoyance for the god of death and he should be expected to bar it from occurring. Indeed, if all intelligent undead require their original souls, then by TROS's own internal logic the raising of undead should be impossible should the soul be unavailable (such as by becoming a petitioner). Only souls that could put up some kind of defense against the god of death, at least long enough to escape Purgatory, should be able to become undead and then only if they wanted to become undead badly enough to risk the wrath of the god of death.
In summary, every person has two souls: the anima and animus. The anima is the conscience, karmic debt, and alignment. The animus is the bulk of the memories and personality. Upon death, the anima departs to the outer planes where it is judged and becomes a petitioner while the animus remains in the corpse and only rarely regains consciousness. Undead are generally created, deliberately or spontaneously, by calling forth a least fiend and forcing it to puppeteer the corpse and/or the animal. In the case of undead that create spawn, this possession is contagious. In the case of ghosts, the anima forces itself into a semblance of life through sheer willpower and thus retains its original alignment. In the case of liches, the anima and animus are placed into a phylactery during the transition and thus retained into undeath; liches are generally evil because the ritual used to create them is so terrible only evil (or truly desperate) individuals would attempt it. Hypothetically, any evil undead other than a ghost or lich could be changed back to their original alignment by summoning their anima and binding it back into the corpse. In which case the undead, if they regained their original alignment, would retain the fiend providing their animating force and would still need to feed on life force if they did before (which is a great source of angst, btw).
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