Is necromancy evil or only as harmless as talking to your dead grandmother?

[ferratus]

I generally think anything that disturbs the dead is blasphemy in real life. Plus, I rather like sinister necromancers, and magic that is inherently evil to use. If it isn't, necromancers essentially become goths.

But I guess the main reason whether or not you'd find necromancy evil depends on whether the body is sacred, or an empty bit of rotting meat.

 

[jdrakeh]

Evil. Classically, even. Pacts with the dead, dealings with the Underworld, etc. I tend to run it the same way in my games — if you're dealing with the dead or the Realm of the Dead, you're up to no good.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Creating undead: Evil.

I can't agree that this is an absolute for me.

The person choosing to become free-willed undead- lets say for the noble purposes of becoming a deathless defender of his beloved home city and those who live within its walls (including his family)- but who lacks the power to make the transition himself will have to seek the services of someone who can help him.

Has the person who aids him in this endeavor committed an evil act? I'm not sure I can say that he has.

 

[Herobizkit]

Why not transfer his soul into a Golem, then? Or become an Intelligent item?

But Danny, I also qualified "become a free-willed undead" as a grey area in the very next line of my post.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why not transfer his soul into a Golem, then? Or become an Intelligent item?

Well, I can think of several reasons why someone might choose Undeath over becoming a Living Construct or an Intelligent Item:

1. The ability to transfer a soul into a Golem (or other contstruct) may not exist in this campaign world.
   *]The ability to transfer a soul into a Golem may require that the person die first, thus being functionally and morally indistinguishable from the ritual for making someone undead...while simultaneously having less expensive and time-consuming requirements for creating a construct body suitable for the transfer (which may be greater than the requirements for creating a normal construct).
2. The ability to transfer a soul into a construct may not be within the capabilities of anyone the person knows, trusts or has access to within a particular time constraint, if at all.
3. The capability may exist, but the magic to do so may rob the soul of free will, enslaving the construct-housed soul to the caster.
4. They may not have the raw materials on hand.
5. They may not have time (the ritual for transference into a construct may take more time than the necromantic ritual).
6. Any item, intelligent or not, requires the actions of another being, rendering the transferred soul again into a form of involuntarily servitude. He can't act of his own free will, he must have a "wielder."

But Danny, I also qualified "become a free-willed undead" as a grey area in the very next line of my post.

Right- I noticed, which is why I formulated the would-be undead's motives the way I did. It at least seems that he is being at least somewhat altruistic in that he is traveling this path for the sake of others.

(And yes, as a Roman Catholic, I've heard about the "Road to Hell" being paved with good intentions...)

Of course, other facts might put the lie to that, even with my formulation. If this would-be undead person was the BBEG, and the city he was attempting to protect is his own City of Demonskullbadness, he's probably going to get counted as being evil nonetheless.

 

[Desdichado]

I tend to play with a more sword & sorcery and/or dark fantasy vibe, and I put no alignment restrictions on PCs, or downplay or even completely house rule away alignment altogether.

So no, necromancy isn't necessarily evil... because I don't have evil in my games in the sense that a lot of D&Ders do.

That said, necromancy is gauche, socially unacceptable and gross. I've never really gotten into the paradigm that there are "good" necromancers out there, or even average Joe's who necromance as their day job or whatever. Pretty much anyone who's messing with the power of magic is suspect, corrupted, power-hungry, or insane to begin with, and necromancers are just more overtly so.

I did, however, think the concept of Hallowfaust (or Hollowfaust; which was it, anyway?) was a very intriguing one, and that had neutral or even good necromancers. I thought the concept of the Undying---positive energy infused undead---from Eberron was substantially less so.

 

[Umbran]

The person choosing to become free-willed undead- lets say for the noble purposes of becoming a deathless defender of his beloved home city and those who live within its walls (including his family)- but who lacks the power to make the transition himself will have to seek the services of someone who can help him.

Has the person who aids him in this endeavor committed an evil act? I'm not sure I can say that he has.

Well, in part it'll depend upon your rule set.

Do your rules (innately or through house rules) have free willed undead with an alignment other than "always evil"? If so, he might be okay. If not, then however noble the purpose the result isn't so snazzy.

Which, I think, makes for a great plot. The person may not have known, or may have thought they could hold the evil at bay. But forever is a long, long time to slide down that slope. And immortality without the bonds of life may bring a perspective other than human. Certain acts, taken through the long view, may not look so bad (rationalization being easy when you have forever to make the ends justify the means), when really, they're still just evil.

 

[Mephistopheles]

In a fantasy world, one in which the elements of religion are matters of fact as much as (or more than) faith, it could be said that a necromantic act that kidnaps a soul from wherever it has gone after the death of its body and enslaves it in some way is an evil act - it would be interesting, however, to parallel that against the perception of slavery of the living in that same setting to see if any contradiction emerges.

As for speaking with a soul that has moved on, whether that is an evil act would depend on the specifics of the method. Is the soul given the option to ignore the summons or is it compelled to respond? Is the process harmless for the soul, unpleasant, or even torturous? Again, parallels could be drawn against what would be considered evil in interacting with or interrogating a living subject as a baseline for how similar treatment of the soul of a deceased subject should be considered.

When it comes to reanimation of the body that has no impact on the soul that has moved on - and by reanimation I mean that while the body is active it is still dead and decomposing, such as a zombie - then it's harder to see why this is an evil act: the soul has moved on and has no further use for the body which would, in time, be reabsorbed by the environment. The same could be said for one who chooses to stay with his or her body rather than let it die and move on: he or she is choosing to prolong one stage of existence, perhaps indefinitely, rather than moving on to the next. Such acts may be considered distasteful by the living, but are they evil acts?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Well, in part it'll depend upon your rule set.

Do your rules (innately or through house rules) have free willed undead with an alignment other than "always evil"? If so, he might be okay. If not, then however noble the purpose the result isn't so snazzy.

Mine do, largely due to RW stories of good ghosts, faiths like Voudoun that recognize both sides of the issue, and those traditions that, like the Egyptians, believed that they could create immortal guardians of the dead from the spirits of the living (willing or not).

Which, I think, makes for a great plot. The person may not have known, or may have thought they could hold the evil at bay. But forever is a long, long time to slide down that slope. And immortality without the bonds of life may bring a perspective other than human. Certain acts, taken through the long view, may not look so bad (rationalization being easy when you have forever to make the ends justify the means), when really, they're still just evil.

There's that Road to Hell again!

But yeah- it is a good plotline. I've explored themes like this in my games (and my fiction)...and sometimes I've flipped it on its head.

One of my more memorable BBEG wasn't E. He was a powerful lich-lord, supposedly conforming in every way to the stereotypical Undead Lord of Evil, complete with undead armies, summoned demons and the like. At the campaign's start, his army stood on the brink of conquering the last bastions of goodness & light in the world.

Only the big reveal was that, over the countless centuries, he had lost interest in the details of his realm's conquests. Thus, he began to delegate more and more of the decisions to his trusted underlings while he spent more time researching magics of increasing power.

Ultimately, he was interested only in the new magics, and let all other things slide...including the conquest of the world and the magics that sustained his unlife. As those magics eroded without renewal, he became senile and somewhat childlike. In alignment terms, he was TN, and his former Viceroy had simply followed his last set of orders, becoming the defacto ruler of the land and the true driving force behind the Dark Empire.

 

[Chainsaw]

Not inherently evil, inherently cool - give me my undead hordes! Muahah!