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<blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 1744812" data-attributes="member: 19675">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.&nbsp; Rituals may be performed, but they are more to guide the spirit of the deceased than to venerate the body.As I recall, there is even a branch of one such faith (Nepalese Buddhism?) in which the bodies of the deceased are left on the mountainside for vultures to pick clean.(Anybody of the above faiths please correct me if I am wrong.&nbsp; No offense intended.)Aside from that, I thought of 2 other possible kinds of events that create undead that may or may not be evil:1) Undead created as a form of penance in their belief system: these creatures are being punished for past evils.&nbsp; If they are genuinely remorseful and wish do undo their evil or at least pay the price, one could hardly call them evil.&nbsp; Their sentence of undeath may even be shortened because of the genuineness of their desire to do penance.&nbsp; The unrepentant, in contrast, may NEVER be freed of this torment.2) Undead created because of a curse: A good person cursed to undeath in the last act by the evil spellcaster he has struck down is probably not evil.Also, I don't recall if anyone answered the question someone else implied earlier in this thread: why are the various spells and processes that create the undead evil while creating golems from human bodies (flesh, blood and bone golems have been printed in various D&amp;D sources) not evil?&nbsp; Both require human body parts, and creating those golems is presumably no more voluntary than the process of creating the undead.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dannyalcatraz, post: 1744812, member: 19675"] 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. As I recall, there is even a branch of one such faith (Nepalese Buddhism?) in which the bodies of the deceased are left on the mountainside for vultures to pick clean. (Anybody of the above faiths please correct me if I am wrong. No offense intended.) Aside from that, I thought of 2 other possible kinds of events that create undead that may or may not be evil: 1) Undead created as a form of penance in their belief system: these creatures are being punished for past evils. If they are genuinely remorseful and wish do undo their evil or at least pay the price, one could hardly call them evil. Their sentence of undeath may even be shortened because of the genuineness of their desire to do penance. The unrepentant, in contrast, may NEVER be freed of this torment. 2) Undead created because of a curse: A good person cursed to undeath in the last act by the evil spellcaster he has struck down is probably not evil. Also, I don't recall if anyone answered the question someone else implied earlier in this thread: why are the various spells and processes that create the undead evil while creating golems from human bodies (flesh, blood and bone golems have been printed in various D&D sources) not evil? Both require human body parts, and creating those golems is presumably no more voluntary than the process of creating the undead. [/QUOTE]

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