Why are undead inherently evil?

[Jester David]

It's as simple as that. Corpse desecration is against the law in pretty much every nation in the world, and has been for thousands of years.

I'd like stats on that if you don't mind.

It's a taboo in the Abrahamic religions, from Christianity to Islam. It's also frowned upon in Hinduism and many African religions.
And desecrating corpses is against the Geneva Convention.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Who says you can't feel it?
And it still belongs to you, so using it without permission is theft.

Petitioners do not have any mental tie to their corpse. Nowhere are they stated to feel what their corpse feels. If they did, they would be in constant agony because corpses rot. Calling it theft is, again, like calling garbage rooting theft. They've essentially thrown their body away and have no need for it.

But, again, I don't think you can point to one single reason as THE reason undead are evil. It's the combination of disrespect for the dead, body theft, violation of the natural order, using the magic of anti-life, creating creatures that might create spawn. All before you get into the issue of corrupting souls, trapping souls, and the like.

Undead are not anymore "wrong" or "unnatural" than countless other things in D&D. It's not disrespecting the dead because the dead are currently enjoying the afterlife and have no need of their corpse, its not theft because the dead person doesn't own it (although you could say you're stealing from any surviving family if the corpse wasn't sold to you), it's no more a violation of nature than creating golems or resurrecting the dead or mind-raping people or using "afflictions" or artificially crossbreeding magical creatures or countless other magical things that would be considered morally wrong in the real world. Creating spawn isn't evil, otherwise yellow musk zombies (which are plants) would be considered evil.

The rules don't say one way or another.

However, given souls are a big deal in hell, it's likely mortal magic can't easily create one. And resurrection an expensive process, which would be cheaper if you could fabricate a new soul. This is logically backed up by the spells trap the soul, designed to prevent resurrection magic. It's an 8th-level spell and if someone could just create a new soul via the 6th-level spell create undead it would be silly to try and trap souls.
I think it's fair to say that mortal magic cannot create souls.

Creating a soul from scratch and calling a soul from the afterlife are two different things and are in no way equivalent. It's like saying that your three year old computer is identical to a new computer with a different OS installed. It would be pointless for hell to create souls from scratch, since those souls wouldn't be inscribed with a lifetime of evil deeds (although the extraplanar animals and humanoids native to hell apparently aren't considered sources of evil souls). That's assuming that the "souls" created by Create Undead are in any way similar to the souls of formerly living creatures, as opposed to being qualitatively different kinds of souls that aren't affected by resurrection spells.

Plus, souls contain the memories of the person in D&D. And intelligent undead retain the memories of their past life.
So it's a very safe bet that intelligent undead would have to have the same soul.

No, actually souls don't carry any memories. Petitioners have no memories of their former lives. Corpses without souls retain their memories (as stated by speak with dead). So if you placed a completely new soul in a corpse, it would logically have all the corpse's memories, but wouldn't actually be the same person (since the original soul is in the afterlife). True resurrection implicitly recreates the memories from nowhere if there's no corpse to use.

I was reading the test of the resurrection and true resurrection spells, and I noticed that the common assumption that being undead prevents resurrection is not actually supported by the text. If either of these spells are targeted on an undead, or the corpse of an undead, it becomes the living creature it once was (as stated by the undead type description, but not the spells), but it can't be used to resurrect a formerly undead corpse back as the undead creature it was before (as stated by the spells). In the case of true resurrection, there isn't any indication that the existence of an undead prevents the original person from being resurrected. This seems to be based on a misinterpretation of the text, which is actually stating the previous (it works on an "alive" undead creature or the corpse of an undead), to differentiate it from raise dead (which is nullified if a corpse was reanimated as undead at any point, regardless of current condition; although this isn't actually stated and you could easily interpret that destroying an undead makes the corpse available for raise dead). The wording of these spells is just poor and ambiguous, IMO.

 

[Mistwell]

Including the ones that suggest destroying corpses completely?

Or, and here's the big thing, in D&D any such belief is objectively wrong.
I'd like stats on that if you don't mind.
Only if you redefine "respect" to include things like torching the corpse and being done with it or various other methods of destruction, and there are a few who just leave it.

But, hey, Euro-centrism I guess.

Cremation is considered respect for the dead. Which is why the ashes are generally delivered to holy rivers, and urns kept on shelves.

But, I am not going to argue this with you. If you want to think corpse desecration is not against the law in almost all societies, more power to you.

 

[Jester David]

Undead are not anymore "wrong" or "unnatural" than countless other things in D&D. It's not disrespecting the dead because the dead are currently enjoying the afterlife and have no need of their corpse, its not theft because the dead person doesn't own it (although you could say you're stealing from any surviving family if the corpse wasn't sold to you), it's no more a violation of nature than creating golems or resurrecting the dead or mind-raping people or using "afflictions" or artificially crossbreeding magical creatures or countless other magical things that would be considered morally wrong in the real world. Creating spawn isn't evil, otherwise yellow musk zombies (which are plants) would be considered evil.

Out of curiosity, is there a particular reason you think creating undead shouldn't be evil as default?

Is there a reason you want it to be non-evil? You titled the thread "why are undead inherently evil?" but from your responses it seems like it should have been "I believe undead shouldn't be inherently evil", which is a very different topic.

Creating a soul from scratch and calling a soul from the afterlife are two different things and are in no way equivalent. It's like saying that your three year old computer is identical to a new computer with a different OS installed. It would be pointless for hell to create souls from scratch, since those souls wouldn't be inscribed with a lifetime of evil deeds (although the extraplanar animals and humanoids native to hell apparently aren't considered sources of evil souls).

But as you say below, petitioners don't retain their memories anyways, so a brand new soul would be equivalent to an old soul as far as Hell is concerned.

That's assuming that the "souls" created by Create Undead are in any way similar to the souls of formerly living creatures, as opposed to being qualitatively different kinds of souls that aren't affected by resurrection spells.

That doesn't really address my point about trapping the soul, or having mortal magic create souls. There's also nothing really supporting the idea that create undead or similar spells create a brand new soul.

No, actually souls don't carry any memories. Petitioners have no memories of their former lives. Corpses without souls retain their memories (as stated by speak with dead). So if you placed a completely new soul in a corpse, it would logically have all the corpse's memories, but wouldn't actually be the same person (since the original soul is in the afterlife). True resurrection implicitly recreates the memories from nowhere if there's no corpse to use.

True point with speak with dead although it does say there's no intelligence or ability to learn. But intelligence undead are, by definition, intelligent. And undead like ghouls retain the languages they spoke in life so they're not some blank tabula
rasa.
Petitioners are only one type of soul. And as ghosts retain their memories it seems believable souls possess the knowledge of the self. And all templated undead retain their abilities so they have to retain their memories.

 

[Mistwell]

And desecrating corpses is against the Geneva Convention.

Yup. "Rule 113. Each party to the conflict must take all possible measures to prevent the dead from being despoiled. Mutilation of dead bodies is prohibited."

 

[Cyclone_Joker]

And a 9th level caster can cast commune and ask Pelor "is it bad to do things to this corpe?" If he says "yeah bro, that's totally defiling and like rude" then that is also a fact.

Or they can cast Contact Other Plane and get a completely accurate, unbiased answer to "Is any harm done to the soul of the body if I animate it?" And Wizards are Int-focused, Clerics aren't. I'd side with Wizards in an argument any day of the week.

Knowing something for a fact and believing something without a doubt are functionally the same thing.

No they aren't.

They are not the same thing but they act like the same thing.

No, they really don't.

I don't know that the light is going out in the refrigerator when I close the door, I just believe it very strongly.

...Then you've got some problems.

I, on the other hand, do know that.

Just because an item does not have the "holy" special quality does not mean it's okay to mutilate. Things can be a sin even if they're mundane.

Cool. It's also not in a very handy list of evil deeds anywhere I can see in the BoVD, BoED, and the FCs.

Most gods have some mundane restrictions and dogma.

And? Your point?

(You were actually referring to some setting you were writing.)

Which had no relation to rules. It was an unimportant tangent. One that was not in your quote, or really apparently related to your post in any way.

Do you have a source that they're not?

/)_-

In all seriousness, most intelligent undead are typically written as being uniformly evil.

Well, that's just tough because they are pretty much uniformly evil, with the exception of ghosts. Then again, so is everyone not killing crap in Baator, so it doesn't matter much. Thanks, BoVD!

There are the typical exceptions, but that's standard of D&D, as it just needs those tortured good guy vampires, and liches, and drow.

You can't become a lich while Good, and I'd love to see you propose how a mad, Evil wizard becomes Good.

Vegetarians say yes.

And PETA is insane. Moving on,

And cows also aren't sentient creatures.

Well, that depends on where you want to draw the line. And an ancient, powerful vampire, when compared to a human, the difference might not be that big.

And they're seldom alive when you begin to eat them.

Well that just sucks for the human, because Vamps have to eat regardless.

That's what they believe yes. But they are EVIL so I think they might have some bias.

No, they have to eat people. I call that no more malicious than a wolf eating a sheep or me eating a cow.

Seen it in a few undead entries.

List 'em, then.

Ghosts are intelligent, so no.

So?

And I think we've given so big justifications over this thread, so I wouldn't say it's completely arbitrary.

Nope. Good and Evil are completely arbitrary. There's Mind Rape, which is an Evil spell. Then there's Sanctify the Wicked, which is Mind Rape, but Good. Poisons are Evil, but Ravages are poisons but Good.. BoED says ends don't matter period, and killing a genocidal warlord with a poisoned dagger is Evil, even if he was about to kill you and a billion other people. Hell, Evil doesn't even require any intention behind it according to BoVD.

Good and Evil are completely arbitrary.

It's a taboo in the Abrahamic religions, from Christianity to Islam. It's also frowned upon in Hinduism and many African religions.

And now those are the entire world?

And desecrating corpses is against the Geneva Convention.

Who ever said that it made sense?

Cremation is considered respect for the dead. Which is why the ashes are generally delivered to holy rivers, and urns kept on shelves.

... I think you're confusing "respect" and "convenience."

But, I am not going to argue this with you. If you want to think corpse desecration is not against the law in almost all societies, more power to you.

Sorry, brah, but that isn't how it works. You made the claim. You back it up.

 

[Stormonu]

This is getting silly, but I'll throw in my two cents.

Yes, gods and petitioners care about the desecration of corpses. A low-level necromancer may only be able to use the husk to abscond with the body and the petitioner might never know, but more powerful magic could possibly drag the individual out of the afterlife and back to the material world (creating things such as vampires or other other intelligent undead - possibly even thousands of years after the original individual has died).

In the game, some societies may burn or otherwise mutilate the corpse so this cannot occur (such as in Rokugan, where corpses are burned to prevent them being reanimated by maho or Shadowlands taint).

Some game societies may have rules and/or gods that allow the corpse to be reanimated and reused and it may even be ritualized in a way to a be a lawful and prudent thing to do (such as the Charonia do in Jakandor).

And while the Negative Material Plane is itself a neutral force, it is a force of hunger and devouring. Undead created by it, as one might see from myths and story are creatures driven by uncontrollable hunger and negative emotions inspired by that hunger. Liches tend to hunger for knowledge and/or power. Vampires crave the blood of the living. Ghouls crave flesh of the living, spectres and wraiths the very life breath of the living - and so forth. We even joke about it with zombies and "braaaains". (Though I've not seen stories of "skeletons" hunger - I guess they're the exception, famine spirits too far gone to consume anything). Necromancers who create this stuff then are essentially seen as the creators of unnatural famines - they are inflicting a sort of misery for their own aggrandizement.

 

[Tovec]

Raneth, for my money I don't think ALL undead should be universally evil. There are many, probably most, that should be but I think the undead themselves don't have to be. With that said, I agree with the existing lore that the SPELLS to create them should be evil/unspeakable. Being a lich should always be evil as it requires a twisted person to do it, and so on. Now to your points..

The soul has moved on. The body is literally nothing more than a lump of lifeless meat. <snip>

This argument boils down to "the soul isn't in there anymore, use the flesh" and it ignores a number of variables.

1. Whatever religious, societal or even what the soul/former person would want done with the body. If a corpse in our real world is dug up and mutilated for pretty much any reason, especially without the person signing an organ donour card then it is a pretty heinous and illegal act. It is equally wrong if it it not dug up, but done after death but that is beside the point.
2. It ignores the religious, societal, etc., concerns required for afterlife. The Egyptians believed that a bounty was required to buy a station in the afterlife. Vikings were given weapons for the afterlife. Why would this not apply when you know there is an afterlife compared to belief in one (as in real life)?
3. Consent - already covered a little - but you are basically using somebody's body without their consent. This is made worse when you can literally contact them. Just because they aren't using it doesn't mean they would like someone else to make it walk around and serve them in the most degrading ways possible. Especially with known symptoms of: hunger, kill/eat innocent people, have no will of its own, forced to obey the creator/master.

Reanimating corpses doesn't affect the soul and the various create undead spells cannot create undead with souls like liches or vampires. Creating a golem is arguably evil because you're enslaving an elemental spirit. Saying it's unnatural makes no sense because negative is natural. It's the classic appeal to nature fallacy.

Actually, unless I'm vastly mistaken, when you animate a corpse you do attach the soul to it. So much so that as long as they are walking around they cannot be resurrected without first destroying their undead self.

Also, Golems are a little different, as the elemental spirit is one form. You aren't cutting up a earth elemental and then fashioning the golem out of its body and using its spirit to make it walk around - though if you could and did that would be evil too.

 

[pemerton]

The soul has moved on. The body is literally nothing more than a lump of lifeless meat. It's no more "rude" to the former inhabitant than digging through their garbage bin.

If it's provable that the soul leaves the body, then once it leaves the body then the body is then a meaningless hunk of meat. Necromancy is a completely logical move.

These are highly contentious claims. And showing this doesn't require discussing real-world rites and beliefs pertaining to dead bodies. It can be done by pointing to real-world customs of inheritance.

Suppose that your great-aunt has a doll collection. And upon her death she leaves the collection to you. Do you sell it, or keep it? At least some people would regard as relevant to this decision the fact that the collection was something that was special to their great aunt. That is, they would regard the doll collection as being in a completely different category from the content of their late great-aunt's garbage bin, which clearly is something that she has rejected as meaningless to her.

In my own kitchen I have a tablespoon that I use only occasionally, when I am baking. The spoon originally belonged to my late grandmother. When I use it I think of her. It is not as meaningless, to me, as other cutlery that I simply bought at a shop.

None of this depends upon anyone thinking that a late family member's soul is living in their doll collection, or in their kitchenware.

If you were a petitioner, would you care that your corpse was being used as zombie labor? You have no need for it, you can't feel it, and you wouldn't even know unless someone told you. Why would you care if that body no longer has any kind of value to you?

What if you came back in another body and then reanimated your first corpse as a zombie? Would that be considered desecrating yourself?

These examples raise interesting questions about the extent to which value is under the voluntary control of individuals. Different moral systems answer this question differently (eg preference utilitarians say yes; eudaimonic utilitarians say no; orthodox deontoligists say no; Hobbesian deontologists say yes; etc).

But even suppose that it is permissible for me, reborn or reincarnated, to reanimate my body as a zombie, how would it follow that it is permissible for someone else to do that? On a Lockean theory, perhaps I can alienate my right to them (though the question of which rights are alienable is itself hotly debated) - but in the typical picture of D&D necromancy, they don't seek permission before animating corpses.

Is it wrong to eat a cow? No? Then is not an old and high-level vampire as far from a human as a human is from a cow? From its perspective, it's simply eating a herd animal, a lower creature that's alive to be food.

Assuming that eating cows is permissible (personally I'm a vegetarian), then that would not be because those who eat them disdain them, but becaues they have objective features (eg lack of personality) that render them liable to be killed and eaten. How does the fact that a vampire is old and powerful, and hence perhaps has disdain for ordinary peopel, tend to show that those people are liable to the same fate? I'm not seeing it.

If the argument is simply that permissibility of eating is warranted by disdain or lack of respect, I think that argument is obviously flawed, at least as far as most moral systems are concerned, and also (I think) within the D&D framework.

 

[Cyclone_Joker]

These are highly contentious claims. And showing this doesn't require discussing real-world rites and beliefs pertaining to dead bodies. It can be done by pointing to real-world customs of inheritance.

...No, they really don't matter. The soul has left the body, dead stop. Therefore, there is no harm inherent to animating a body. I honestly don't care about people being irrational, all I'm talking about is simple fact.

If anyone in the game objects to it on any grounds regarding souls or whatnot, or that it is inherently immoral(Not Evil, mind you, since I view that as completely meaningless), then they are wrong. Period.

Assuming that eating cows is permissible (personally I'm a vegetarian), then that would not be because those who eat them disdain them, but becaues they have objective features (eg lack of personality) that render them liable to be killed and eaten. How does the fact that a vampire is old and powerful, and hence perhaps has disdain for ordinary peopel, tend to show that those people are liable to the same fate? I'm not seeing it.

You're missing the whole argument. As I've said, the Good versus Evil is completely meaningless in this case, so I'm talking about wrong. Also, the lack of personality? That's arbitrary and a trait placed on them by human standards. You deem them to be lacking in personality and therefore they are. From a powerful being who's lived for centuries, might not a human come across as having those same traits that make it lesser?

Or, basically, see the Stargate SG-1 season 3 episode "Pretense."

If the argument is simply that permissibility of eating is warranted by disdain or lack of respect, I think that argument is obviously flawed, at least as far as most moral systems are concerned, and also (I think) within the D&D framework.

Wars have been fought for centuries under the argument that certain people are simply lesser for arbitrary, nonsensical reasons. In this case, there's a concrete, completely objective reason that the vampire is, in fact, inherently superior to the cattle.

Or, if that argument doesn't move you, the vampire has to eat. Would you fault a wolf for killing sheep?