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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9191862" data-attributes="member: 58172">Necromancy precisely blurs the boundaries between a living person and a dead corpse. That is the reason Necromancy is "unkosher".For example, the Speak with Dead spell interacts with the person in a living way and their memories of being alive.A way for D&D to explain Necromancy is to emphasize how a soul is complex. There are different levels of the soul. Part of the soul can be safely in the Astral Plane, while an other part of the soul rests in peace within the Shadowfell. An other part of the soul still clings to the remains of the body.Necromancy manipulates the part of the soul that connects residually to the corpse. The soul of the Astral Plane is aware of what the Necromancer is doing to the soul of the corpse, but is unharmed by it.Normally, the soul of the Shadowfell rests in peace, but can be Undead when resting less well. The influence of the soul is ethereal, and can exert influence within Material in a ghostly way.The D&D "soul" is a microcosm of the multiverse.• Astral (consciousness, thoughts)• Ethereal (spiritual influence, innate magic, but also ghostly influence after death)• Material (the life of the body, but still a residual presence of the corpse)It helps to distinguish between "Shadows", which are the disembodied souls of the ghosts within the ethereal, versus "Undeads", which are when the Shadows magically animate their own corpses that they connect to.Unlike the Astral soul that is a holistic person, the Shadow soul is an echo of a person. In some ways, a ghost is not all there, often fixating on specific memory and its unfinished task before being able to rest.</blockquote>

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