NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D_Sinclair" data-source="post: 1742506" data-attributes="member: 21823">Necromancy as an evil act probably dates back to the Victorian era, when they decided that just about anything and everything was filthy and evil and violated the tenet of "cleanliness is next to godliness". Frankenstein helped reinforce this concept, with a rotting husk built from the dead parts of criminals and lunatics being restored to life, and Dracula reinforced it in another way by presenting vampires with a sensual or sexual nature that went against the repressions of the time. Can't say I've read much involving undead prior to that. On top of that, you can add the fact that we don't know what happens when a person dies. That's why we do what we do with dead bodies, in a hope that the dead find "eternal peace" or "final rest".Games perpetuate this because undead-forming necromancy is almost always used out of selfish motivations, usually to create a free army of bodyguards or warriors to carry out some plan of conquest or domination. On top of that, since we equate the dead body at rest with the spiritual peace of the dead, creating undead is viewed as an unkind act that awakens those dead spirits. So in the end, creating undead is normally viewed as an evil act. One bright idea I've never seen any game explore is that very concept of disturbing the body disturbs the peace of the dead. Wouldn't it be nice if animating a cemetary worth of zombies and skeletons might result in the necromancer being harrassed by the ghosts of one or more of the individuals that were buried there?However, I can think of a situation where animating the dead wouldn't be considered evil. I see nothing wrong with a good priest being pragmatic and making the dead guy haul his own can back to the temple for a proper burial. It isn't right to abandon a fallen comrade in some forelorn dungeon, but there's no reason to have to haul his corpse around if there's magic available that will let the dead guy walk back to civilization under his own power...</blockquote>

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