Why does Undead=Evil

[dcollins]

Mr Gone, from what I learned in my comparative religion classes, many of the Eastern religions (Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism and others) do not consider the body sacred. Rituals may be performed, but they are more to guide the spirit of the deceased than to venerate the body.

Let's take Hinduism as an example (apologies to anyone if I misstep here unintentionally). The final rites there demand that the body be cremated and completely consumed.

Cremation is a ritual designed to do much more than dispose of the body; it is intended to release the soul from its earthly existence. "Hindus believe that cremation (compared to burial or outside disintegration) is most spiritually beneficial to the departed soul." This is based on the belief that the "astral body" will linger "as long as the physical body remains visible." If the body is not cremated, "the soul remains nearby for days or months".
http://mailerindia.com/hindu/veda/index.php?death

On a more personal note, at my last full-time job in Boston, I worked with a Hindu gentleman. On afternoons when I needed to clear my head, I often took a stroll at a very peaceful, beautiful nearby cemetary.

One day when he looked tired (and I suppose I wasn't thinking clearly), I suggested the same thing to him. He really looked rather stricken and said he couldn't ever walk through a cemetary.

So, to him, the very idea that dead bodies are even still around is pretty dreadful. The idea of using dead bodies like raw materials would be beyond unthinkable to someone of that faith.

 

[Scion]

Hmm negative energy is inimical to all (natural) life, snuffing it out and causing the loss of lifespan, health and soul through contact with it. As far as abstract force/energy can be evil, this very well fits the descriptor for "evil" as in "very detriminal". Unless of course one considers the extinguishing of (all) life something worthwhile and "good"

The same can be said for fire. Do you think that fire is evil?

It is used to hurt, to destroy, and to corrupt. It must be evil.

However, it is not. Nor is negative energy. Just because something is good at causing harm does not make it evil. A sword is not evil, yet it is used for killing.

Negative and positive energy are simply that, energies. They can be used for this or that, but they are very specialized. Two sides of a necissary coin to make the d&d universe run properly.

None of that makes negative energy or positive energy into any sort of good or evil in and of themselves. They can be 'used' for good or evil, but then either one can be used for either side, depending on the situation.

Remember, not everything that is not Evil is Good, and not everything that is not Good is Evil. There is neutral as well. Animals are neutral. Tools are neutral.

The forest fire that rages is not evil, it is not malign. It is killing and harming sure, but it is not evil. Whoever set it might be evil, but then they also might be good.

It employs negative energy, which is as close as you can come to a pure evil energy (without pulling out the BoVD), and it does so not simply for a momentary effect, but for an extended enslavement of other people's mortal shells, entirely at the caster's whim. Unless you consider enslavement or abuse of other people's property (their dead shells) an acceptable act.
The gem analogy doesn't fly, simply because it a focus, therefore it serves to concentrate and maintain the negative energy used to animate the corpse.

Once again, negative energy is not evil. It is simply energy. If you would like some pure evil energy you will likely need to channel one of the evil planes or pull out the BoVD. Negative energy is merely a tool.

Also, animate dead does have a duration of instantaneous, nor does it create a link to the negative plane, so it is fairly momentary. Undead tend to move around just fine in an antimagic field. All it does is put in enough energy to run the body. That is all. It could use positive energy to do the same thing, there would be no difference effectively.

Enslavement of what though? If you animate your chair have you enslaved it? If you have a grove of trees are they enslaved? If you mow your lawn have you just caused great pain to your pile of slaves in your front yard?

Skeletons and zombies have no int, so they dont think much. But, before they were undead it might have been 'their' whim to be turned into undead. Even if it was not however, what does it matter? The soul is not burdened in any way, it is still free to roam its eternal rest. How is it any different to animate a tree or animate a dead creature? Besides that, I doubt that property rights really come into play, do you own anything in the mortal realm once you are no longer part of it?

As for the gem, it is the part that is destroyed (component, not a focus) and it starts off as a black onyx.. and we all know black = Evil. So maybe that is where the evil comes from. Monetary greed is evil, gems represent this. Black is evil, the gem is black. The gem turns into a worthless burnt out shell, so obviously something was taken from it. It must be its incredible amount of stored Evil.

From that perspetive it makes the most sense that the gem itself is providing the evil.

Of course in the game perspective it is the 'spell' that is doing it. Gems dont detect as evil and negative energy does not either. Neither the gem nor negative energy are evil.

There are things that can be called evil

Can be called evil. Sure, I can call jaywalking evil as well but that does not make it so.

Most of the time these taboos come from things that would hurt the society, at least potentially. So they were told not to do them (law). Anyone who is doing this is breaking the law, hence the law/chaos axis. However, much of the time people have tried to equate law = Good and chaos = Evil.

Which is exactly what I said before. You are simply putting up people who have taken it to even further extremes. This merely reinforces my point.

Is killing someone evil or not? Depends on the circumstances, unless every paladin never lasts less than one session of d&d.

Criticism is not disrespect, especially from someone who makes decisions depending on the work criticised, or who has paid for a work of a certain standard. That's a basic human right of free speech and freedom of opinion, but even there, rules of conduct and propriety apply. An unwarranted or unasked for criticism is something else. But whoever performs in the public eye (often to be appreciated ) also exposes himself to public scrutiny, and hence criticism, be it positive or negative. That is _not_disrespect.

Dictionary.com:
Disrespect:
Lack of respect, esteem, or courteous regard.
To show a lack of respect for: disrespected her elders; disrespected the law.
Want of respect or reverence; disesteem; incivility; discourtesy.
Impatience of bearing the least affront or disrespect.
an expression of lack of respect
a disrespectful mental attitude
a manner that is generally disrespectful and contemptuous
have little or no respect for; hold in contempt

All in all I would have to say that you are wrong about your view on disrespect.

Disrepect can be as simple as my thinking of someone and not having respect for them. It can be openly showing no respect. If someone walks by a homeless person on the road and ignores them they are showing disrespect. If someone asks a question that another consideres uncourteous then disrespect has been shown. Challenging someone to a dual in front of their peers? disrespectful in some circles.

Also, freedom of speech is a pretty new concept as well. So you are saying that just about every ruler ever has been Evil?

Once again, even thinking about having a lack of respect to someone is disrespectful. At that point, and with the definition given before, everyone is evil.

In other words, the definition about disrespect being evil seems very wrong indeed. Otherwise, there are likely no good people.

And if you do not regard the issues of abuse, enslavement and employing anti-life negative energy which are involved as morally abhorrent (and yes, as stated above, there are moral absolutes, independent of any religious doctrines. Just consider that they occured in any stable human society independent of religious affiliation or geographical proximity... ), than I suspect you either have a great deal of growing up ahead of you, or are going to get into serious conflict with civilized society sooner or later, sorry to say. In a way, I honestly hope you are taking your stance just to be provocative.....

This is inflamatory and insulting. Please stay away from this sort of post in the future. I would prefer not to have to report such things, but another one like this and I will be forced to ;/

 

[ARandomGod]

Well, I guess I might be simple-minded, and ma always told me I had a terribly low IQ, but I always figured raising dead was evil because it's a perversion of the natural order, and a mockery of life itself. What once was the living vessel of an immortal soul becomes a grotesque puppet, powered by the energy of death itself. And within that cage of rotting flesh, the soul must lie in endless torment, ripped from the bliss of the afterlife and bound to a cage of filth and corruption.

Aww, you're not simple-minded, you're just differently abled...

And they're not perversions of nature, they're the embodyment of recycling!

Heh. Actually, a lot of people see it as evil, and if it's looked at in the way above, it IS evil to that person. If it's looked at differently, it might not be evil. As long as it's not actually harming or using a soul in any way, there isn't anything other than interpretation.

Yea, D&D doesn't say why the spell is evil, it just is.
Healing can, if looked at properly, be seen as a perversion of the natural order, a denial of life to later generations, a mockery of life itself powered by foul necromantic magics. And, even if they've attempted to disguise healing magic by calling it "conjuration", it's still by definition necromancy.

But, this leads us down an interesting path. If healing is not necromancy, and raise dead is... well, why not make a spell that does the exact same thing (animates a corpse) but is conjuration (or some other justification of non-evil) instead?

And Lo! It was done. Right in the very book that gave us the Vow of Poverty, and special "non-evil" poisons, which aren't poison, because poison is evil, but is something else that's exactly the same with no real (read: "good IMO")justification as to why the first was evil or why, really, this type of poison isn't...

My point? It's evil because "they" say.
Other things that are the exact same aren't because they don't want it to be.
If you think that's unreasonable, say it differently. Simple. So simple it's already been done.

Remember, though, you aren't evil. You're "differently aligned".

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Ridley, I have an excellent grasp of what I'm discussing.

You have scattered pieces of information, but you seem to have trouble keeping track of context. Nothing you have said is a coherent counterargument to the views I put forth regarding animating the corpses of the deceased into mindless zombies at the control or the necromancer. Was that not the original topic of the thread?

I would agree with you that D&D handles "ghosts" and similar beings very poorly -- shoehorning a number of very different beings into a few evil pigeonholes. Likewise mummies are treated as Hollywood villains with no reference to their intended purpose.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You have scattered pieces of information, but you seem to have trouble keeping track of context. Nothing you have said is a coherent counterargument to the views I put forth regarding animating the corpses of the deceased into mindless zombies at the control or the necromancer. Was that not the original topic of the thread?

No, that wasn't the original topic.

And I have no trouble at all with the context.

I didn't respond specifically to your claim about necromancers and zombies because the BIGGER context of the thread was (if clumsily expressed by the OP, Moff_Tarkin) why there is an assumption in D&D that the creation of undead is universally equated with evil.

As I have pointed out, that is not the case in the legends, mythology and popular fiction upon which D&D and similar FRPGs were based, and thus implied that a DM need not be constrained by the "Undead = Evil" equation. That equation entered the game presumably as a convenient game design shorthand or convention.

Others have pointed out that even official D&D products vary from this equation. Rarely, but it does happen.

But lets specifically examine your example of a necromancer raising mindless undead.

1) Nothing in the spells that create mindless undead indicate that the spirit or soul of the deceased is being bound to the corpse. Rather, the bodies are animated by negative energy. So the necromancer is not forcing anyone's spirit to be bound to their corpse. He is merely using one kind of magical energy- negative energy- to animate bodies.

2) Exposure to negative energy, as has been pointed out, may be inimicable to life, but so is exposure to fire, and both are neccessary for the natural order of the D&D universe. It is the game cosmology's version of entropy, in a sense. As such, negative energy is NOT intrinsically evil. It may be used for evil purposes, but so can anything.

3) A necromancer (be he priestly or arcane) raising mindless undead is not neccessarily evil.

He could be a TN or LN servant of Death (greater god) using the undead army to defeat heroes who would give humanity true immortality. Death, being a neccessary force of the universe, feels this would be a breach of the natural order, and thus is defending existence itself from this potentially devastating breach. The undead are the only force Death needs to or is likely to raise, for he has an "infinite" supply of them and they are his to command absolutely. Why bother with other outsiders when your army of the deceased outnumbers them?

Or, returning to my oft repeated example, they could be volunteers who are defending their temple, city, country, whatever. After all, the necromancers cannot make everyone who might volunteer thusly into sentient undead- they simply don't have the spellpower to do it, and not everyone would make the best sentient undead anyway. They may instead volunteer to be buried in a special cemetary designed expressly for those who volunteer their bodies for the purpose of being animated to defend their cities.

Far fetched? Every year, thousands of people donate their bodies to science today so that medicine can learn about exotic diseases, how bodies decay and the effects of certain chemicals or environments on human bodies for forensics, or even basic anatomy. They have NO PROBLEM having their bodies cut up, dissected, and even shipped to different parts of the country in the name of advancing the science of medicine because they think these are worthwhile and good goals to have.

Thus, I have no problem believing that similar-minded individuals could make the choice to be reanimated as undead defenders, even mindless ones, if it meant their goals were met. This is especially true if motivated by extreme emotions ("I really hate those invaders!"/"I really love my city!") or religion ("I will make any sacrifice my god demands of me.")

Closer to the edge of what I would consider evil would be that same necromancer raising the dead of his enemy (say, those killed in the last skirmish) to use against his enemy. While this is done presumably against the will of the deceased, they ARE invaders.

(Were that to become a common tactic, I'm sure its the kind of thing that would be outlawed by that world's equivalent of the Geneva Convention, since it ignores the burial rites and customs of the opposing force.)

BTW- Still no cogent answers about the distinctions between undead and golems constructed from body parts? Anyone?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed by author

 

[Shadowdweller]

1) Nothing in the spells that create mindless undead indicate that the spirit or soul of the deceased is being bound to the corpse. Rather, the bodies are animated by negative energy. So the necromancer is not forcing anyone's spirit to be bound to their corpse. He is merely using one kind of magical energy- negative energy- to animate bodies.

It does, however, say under the resurrection spells that you cannot raise someone whose corpse has been animated unless it is destroyed first. Which implies to -me- at least, that mindless undead DO in fact possess their former souls.

There's absolutely nothing in the rules to suggest it, but in my games I often houserule something like that animating dead burns a piece of the soul(s) so used (Most don't consume anything...so they have to get energy SOMEHOW, don't they?). Or at the very least that it involves imprisoning a conscious, intelligent entity for extremely long periods of time in a painful existence where one has less facility than an actual slave (i.e. the inability to control one's own body or mind).

 

[Raven Crowking]

removed

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

BTW- Still no cogent answers about the distinctions between undead and golems constructed from body parts? Anyone?

Looking at the golem entry, they are crafted and an unwilling elemental spirit is bound to the automaton.

By the RAW doing so is not an evil act, likewise the calling of elementals is not an evil spell. This implies that elemental spirits are not like mortal spirits and are so alien that they are outside alignment issues.

That's pretty satisfactory to me.

I would imagine that in the implied default campaign setting, flesh golems in particular would need to be hidden from sight otherwise rumours of necromancy would see mr wizard run out of town. Also graverobbing is still a crime so there'll be questions there.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed by author