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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8569763" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Undead take one of two forms in D&D cosmology:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">New beings (whether sapient or not) "made" of negative energy, at least in essence (the physical body is less important than the energy which permits it to be animated). Creating a being made of negative energy--that is, a being for which its very existence requires that it attempt to negate the life-energy of ordinary living beings--is considered an innately evil act. You are, in a sense, not just destroying things, but producing a new being for which the only purpose IS to destroy other living things. Some cosmologies may paint this differently, or permit the possibility that negative-energy beings (such as undead) and positive-energy beings (such as basically all living things) can (at least theoretically) coexist, but such universes are rare.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Trapping the spirit of a previously-living being and bending it to your will as an undead (sapient or otherwise). This is obviously mind control and slavery, of a particularly vicious kind since you do it to dead bodies which can't fight back. As a result, any form of this, e.g. making a vampire, is automatically evil on its face.</li> </ol>Some of this arises from the fact that undeath is necessarily a violation of the natural order. Other aspects of it arise because, if creating undead were not so problematic, it would seem to be a great kindness to turn many people into undead--after all, undead usually cannot die unless actively slain, they can't get sick or grow old, and (at least in theory) they never tire or need food or rest. Even if you can only create non-sapient undead, it would seem to be an axiomatic good to turn all dead people into zombie-slaves for performing rote manual labor, obviating the need for such tasks and permitting a society where no person ever needs to fill a menial job.Finally, there's the simple "respecting a corpse" thing. Many religions have taboos against desecrating corpses or behaving inappropriately with dead bodies, even though dead bodies are (empirically speaking) simply objects. Given that D&D explicitly has souls and an afterlife and the possibility of resurrection, it is somewhat understandable that they would have even stronger taboos against disrespecting the dead in this way.</blockquote>

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