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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 3389813" data-attributes="member: 28553">Zombies and skeletons which contain souls never made a hell of a lot of sense to me, particularly since animate dead doesn't require fresh corpses, and I find it hard to imagine a 3rd-level cleric spell being able to drag the souls of the departed screaming out of Celestia itself to serve in mute bondage back on the Prime Material.Based on that assumption, I look at the creation of mindless undead as an act that's only "evil" according to majority social concensus.  ...And, arguably, it could be called a kind of theft, where the body is being "stolen" from is former occupant (who isn't using it any more, but still could be said to own it), or from the next of kin.  I think the creation of zombies to fight less ambiguous evils is a cool plot element, really.For that matter, I really dig the idea of a society for whom the reanimation and use (in labor, security, or war) of its recently-deceased is just accepted tradition.  When grandpa dies, you have a funeral to say goodbye to his soul, and his corpse gets animated as part of the ceremony to serve the community, and to be lovingly maintained by the family the same way a headstone or monument would be.EDIT:Ah, good points, particularly about reincarnate, since that spell doesn't physically affect the subject's original body.  That certainly suggests that undead of any kind affects the soul.  On the other hand, death effects also prevent creatures from being raised or reincarnated (but not resurrected), so maybe it's more a question of a negative energy taint screwing up the body's viability as a means of accessing the soul (wherever it is)?</blockquote>

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