This is my undead bloodline (but now very much alive) sorcerer Harmose. You can read his full backstory by clicking on his avatar.
However here is the key piece of information in his backstory.
Even more traumatically, the villains responsible animated the child as undead, forcing his body to do horrible things while his spirit watched on.
What I'm wondering is... Are there any undead creatures for which the mechanics meets the fluff of this description? Are there any souled undead? Is there a way via Pathfinder's mechanics for Harmose's backstory to actually have happened?
Hmm
While Pathfinder metaphysics aren't specific, there is some implied information: One of the reasons given that Pharasma despises undead is because it keeps the souls of the dead from her realm, so from that description it would seem that pretty much all undead in Pathfinder have a soul bound to them, or are the soul in some form or another. Perhaps in the case on unintelligent undead, skeletons and zombies, the soul is free (or only a tiny fragment remains), but certainly most intelligent undead have a "soul" in some form or another, even if that is a soul in bondage and unable to properly control it's actions.
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While Pathfinder metaphysics aren't specific, there is some implied information: One of the reasons given that Pharasma despises undead is because it keeps the souls of the dead from her realm, so from that description it would seem that pretty much all undead in Pathfinder have a soul bound to them, or are the soul in some form or another. Perhaps in the case on unintelligent undead, skeletons and zombies, the soul is free (or only a tiny fragment remains), but certainly most intelligent undead have a "soul" in some form or another, even if that is a soul in bondage and unable to properly control it's actions.
Ooh, I love this! So I can just pick any intelligent undead for this? Do you have some suggestions?
Speak with your DM. House rules is what makes each gaming group unique; and provides a lot of the fun. Speaking as an experienced DM I would have you write up a reason your undead character still has a soul and build from there. I wish you well.
Harmose is not undead... but he used to be.
We're playing Mummy's Mask and I took both Undead Sorcerer Bloodline and Resurrected trait -- putting a resurrection in my back story.
Since this was a traumatic and pivotal event in his childhood, I'm thinking of having the character have a minor freakout the first time someone raises undead around him. I'd like to have my details worked out, if possible.
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Ooh, I love this! So I can just pick any intelligent undead for this? Do you have some suggestions?
Were there any particular "horrible things" Harmose was forced to do as an undead? That might affect choice of undead to animate him as.
Your description suggests for corporeal undead that can be created using Create Undead. Attic Whisperer is an interesting choice for an undead child. Ghouls and Wights would also work.
Your backstory indicates he's still deeply troubled by his experience as an undead. In developing this, consider exactly how much awareness or control your character has as an undead. "Forcing his body to do horrible things while his spirit watched on" suggests total awareness, and control over his thoughts but not his body. My take on intelligent or souled undead is a little different - namely that while they have control over their body their thoughts are corrupted, and they may not be completely self aware. The soul isn't a passenger in an undead body, since the soul is the source of the intelligence the undead possesses. However, the soul or consciousness is typically altered in ways the original person would find horrific, which may include hunger for blood or flesh of humanoids, fragmented memories of their life, delusions, paranoia, dampened empathy or inflamed rage. This adds an extra layer of pathos in how Harmose understands his undead dark side. For example, does he feel guilty because he feels on some level he wanted to do those horrible things, or enjoyed doing them?
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I love the flavor of the Attic Whisperer, but Harmose was a beloved son of a noble family, not a neglected child. So it was probably more of a wight or a ghoul.
I'm going to rule out ghoul because we're playing Mummy's Mask, and Harmose had to roll for information on ghouls just today and knew nothing about them. :)
Yes, I do think that there is deep-seated guilt over what he did as an undead, and horror at how much pleasure it had given him when he was a monster. His determination to live, and to adhere strongly to his own code of conduct, are all in reaction to these past events.
Thank you. This was very thoughtful, and exceedingly helpful. I will look at wights, and perhaps write them into Harmose's backstory.
Hmm
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Here's a spreadsheet on Causation for Undeath. It may provide some help.
EDIT: It's an older sheet I had made up; just added the source books for most of the undead, but I'll need to add in all the Bestiary 4 monsters still.
Do you want there to be? Are you the GM?
If the answer to both of this questions is yes, then there are.
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I'm not the GM.
I just want something that might fit a horrific backstory for a human sorcerer who got resurrected after being undead for three terrible months as a child. There's a scar that he's covering up in his psyche, and I want to detail it because the back story gives an edge to his personality that I find interesting.
Hmm
I just finished adding in Bestiary 4 undead as well as a few others. I saw a few pop in while I was editing, so I hope the link was eventually able to work for you.
Suggestions from my sheet:
Beheaded - The dastardly villains took the child's head off and animated it. He may still bear a scar on his neck from an incomplete reattachment.
Ectoplasmic undead - perhaps the villains were undead themselves, spectres who attempted to use their create spawn ability on a helpless child.
Festrog - killed by a massive release of negative energy - such as a powerful cleric using channel negative energy - and then mutilated by the villains afterward, this would work well with your story.
Mummified undead or mummy - because Osirion, though why they would do it to a child is certainly a puzzling question.
Necrocraft - Perhaps the villains wanted to construct a smaller necrocraft capable of fitting through tunnels. Your character could even have a bond with the other victims, presuming any of them were raised as well.
Shredskin - this would be a particularly terrifying memory…
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I love the flavor of the Attic Whisperer, but Harmose was a beloved son of a noble family, not a neglected child. So it was probably more of a wight or a ghoul.
Natural Attic Whisperers, yes, since significant trauma is necessary to power the spontaneous creation of undead. But Create Undead substitutes poerful necromantic magic for natural trauma. Creating an Attic Whisperer requires the additional spells Crushing Despair and Fear, so it seems appropriate that the process involves convincing the dead child that it has been utterly abandoned (whether or not this is actually the case).
Beheaded - The dastardly villains took the child's head off and animated it. He may still bear a scar on his neck from an incomplete reattachment.
Mummified undead or mummy - because Osirion, though why they would do it to a child is certainly a puzzling question.
I also like these ideas.
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The rules on undeath and souls are inconsistent.
Pharasma's dogma suggests that undead are essentially souls who's corpses have become their cages.
That idea begins to break down when you consider that a single body can become quite a few different kinds of undead.
Let's brainstorm. With a little prep-work, a truly inspired (and disturbing) necromancer could use a haunt to kill a very evil person. Then they could skin the corpse, de-bone it, cut off it its head and hands, remove its brain
Because it was an evil creature killed by a haunt it would become a Geist. (intelligent)
The bones could be used to make a Skeletal Champion. (intelligent)
Cast Restore Corpse on the pile of meat and make a Zombie Lord. (intelligent)
The hands become Crawling Hands (unintelligent)
The head becomes a Beheaded (unintelligent)
The brain becomes a Brain In A Jar (intelligent) (technically not Golarion cannon, but a Brain Cylinder is, which serves much the same purpose)
So, out of that one corpse, we've created 7 different undead and four of them are intelligent. The other three could be Awakened easily enough.
Each one of the intelligent undead (and any that get awakened) are assumed to have a warped version of the mind, memories and personality of the original living creature. According to Pharasma's doctrine, that's because the creature's soul is stuck in the corpse (or, in the case of the Geist and other incorporeal undead, that the soul is the undead.)
So which one has the soul? Which one is the real version of the original? Does the soul split? Does it form a sort of reflection or copy of the original creature's personality (like Simulacrum)?
Could you only make one undead per body? (the rules do not support this idea in any way, but I've heard people make that claim)
Lets look at another scenario
Our friendly neighborhood necromancer is a virtuoso artist. He's a painter and a sculptor.
He gets ahold of some Marvelous Pigments and he paints himself a dead body. It becomes a real dead body. He then uses that dead body to make all the undead I listed above, except for the Giest.
This is a painting of the corpse of a person who never existed which has been made real by magic. There is no feasible scenario in which this corpse ever had a soul.
What personality do the undead created have? What are its mental stats? Maybe the paint-corpse just can't be used to make intelligent undead? (again, there are no rules for this)
That same necromancer casts Fabricate on a block of stone. He makes an absurdly high Craft: Sculpture check and makes an amazing statue of a handsome man. Then he casts Stone to Flesh. According to the spell he now has a handsome human corpse, even though yesterday it was a hunk of rock.
Both of these scenarios are mechanically viable. Nothing in the rules prevents them.
Here's the real brain-clincher-
Lets assume that the paint-corpse or the statue-corpse can be animated into an intelligent undead. Said undead is essentially a blank slate. Like an amnesiac, or someone who's memory had been erased. It has never known another existence. If it is one of the undead without any particular built in cravings or hostilities (like a ghost or a lich) is it still automatically evil?
The necromancer then casts Resurrection on this never-alive undead made from a rock. It is now a living, breathing, functioning normal person in spite of never having been alive before.
Does this person have a soul?
There are no real answers to these questions. The mechanics don't support any answer perfectly. Making a choice one way or another invalidates or complicates other parts of undead lore.
Every GM has to decide for themselves how it works.
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By the way, OP, if you really want to have your character's "big reveal" be surprising and different, use the stuff I posted.
Imagine if your character was once a painting or a statue created by a necromancer who "always wanted a child." So they made a corpse out of nothing, animated it, and tried to create a relationship with it. That would be your character's first memories. Being undead meant no capacity for positive emotions. Being without memory and emotions meant no ability to form connections to people. Your character could still think and still learn, but not feel love, gratitude, or any of the things your created wanted.
The necromancer, being disappointed and heartbroken, resurrected their little Pinocchio. Suddenly your character could (slowly) recognize the horror of their situation, and they ran.
So now, this character has the lingering curse of undeath, a blank slate for a memory, unfamiliar emotional responses that make them feel out of control and uncomfortable, and a crazed necromancer out to find you that wants nothing more than to take you home and be a family. To top it all off, your character might not have a soul, which means when they die, they cease to exist. No afterlife. No nothing. That notion would make the idea of becoming undead again awfully tempting...
That right there is high-octane story fuel.
I'm not sure that Pharasma disliking undead based on 'souls not passing on' makes sense to me. If I animate an old battlefield, does that mean that the souls are sucked back in from where they were previously? What about when there's a killed party member that is restored via True res or clone (or alike other 'new body' effect) after they've had their original body animated? Having the complete soul bound in the undead just starts to weird things out a little when you look at it for too long.
Unless you want to get into Curse of the Azure bonds 'Cutting an infinite thing in half just gives you 2 infinite things.' which I'm not up on my theoretical maths, let alone how it applies to the meta-physics of souls....
Anyways.... I was playing an anti-undead cleric at one point and the below were his views. Dunno exactly how much they fit with the actual lore of Golarian, but feel free to plunder whatever works.
To '5 minutes or less' version is when you died, the soul moved on, but an imprint of your mind was left behind on the body. It has access to all the things you knew, but your soul was responsible for the 'good' feelings and things like a conscience. Animating the body empowered it with negative energy to give it enough of a power source to replace the life that was missing, but it didn't restore that soul (he actually categorised undead as a Negative Energy Elemental). At any rate, because of that in his world view, there was no such thing as a 'good' undead (even the intelligent ones) because they were incapable of being good by their very nature. At best, some of the newer ones were confused about why they had acted in particular ways when they were still alive, and may continue to act like that for a time out of habit, but that will always change and change rapidly. Because the mind is missing and doesn't go on to it's eternal reward it also explained why (at least in our world) no-one ever could really remember much about what the afterlife is really like (the soul being feelings and emotions rather than memory).
I liked it because it played well with the concepts around even though deep down you 'knew' something was right or wrong (based on your soul) you could justify doing wrong things (your mind running interference), especially around concepts like 'the greater good'. Your soul is actually screaming not to do something that it's wrong, but in your mind (different functional area) it was justified. For what it's worth, that cleric also hated books and reading because they just added more clutter to your brain.
If you picked up that theory, ANY sentient undead could be what your after. The more hate and rage filled the better. Become a shadow, Eat all your friends and turn them into shadows (because now they will not age and grow old). Get Ressed and your soul re-attached and have a "DUDE!!!! WTF?!?" moment as you start to look at your memories through the lens of "I am no longer a soulless abomination".
How you want to feel about it from there is up to your PC. If you were a controlled undead, you know someone was pulling your strings, but how much did you resist their commands? If you were free willed, that could raise some questions internally about what your chars 'True' nature is and how you'd end up if you ever decided to go off the rails.
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Painlord, I thought you came up with an amazing backstory for a conflicted undead sorcerer. It's so creepy I could see it being the seed of a YA novel. With retold fairy tales being hot, and Pinocchio being public domain, I think you should go for it!
However, it's not going to be Harmose's backstory. He does have a real-world family from which he is somewhat estranged at the present moment.
Ekaterina, lots of good ideas there.
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Everyone, I should also say that part of the reason that I want to get this right is that there is a cleric necromancer in my group whose full intention is to raise a bunch of undead pets to follow her around.
Since I had already put the "I was once undead" into my backstory, it occurred to me that this could be a great pivotal moment for both our characters if played right.
Our characters have been getting along great. Part of this is because my character does not know she's a necromancer. The other player is one that thinks on her feet and rises to challenges. I think would enjoy the curveball of having my character completely, totally freak out the first time she raises dead.
I am thinking of curling up in a fetal ball, clutching my rabbit (tattoed sorc -- with a bunny familiar because I am such a non-scary undead sorcerer) and muttering, "No, no, no, no!" as I rock back and forth. But if I do this... I want to do it right with a solidly thought-out backstory.
Harmose would eventually work things out with her (I'm not out to nerf her character concept by any means) but I thought it would give us an interesting moment to have to roleplay through.
Hmm
Doomed hero: that post hurt a bit.
Hurt?
I think I would not allow a never been alive thing to become an intelligent undead.
That's a fine house rule. I'm curious as to why you'd rule that way though. I don't mean mechanically. I mean metaphysically within the game world. Do you think intelligent undead are intelligent because they have a soul trapped in them? Or a "reflection" of one?
If that is the case how would you account for multiple intelligent undead being made from the same corpse?
Also created life would not have souls.
I'm inclined to agree. I'm just not sure what mechanical effect "no soul" would have.
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For those who aren't familiar with that particular mythos; there are a number of myths/religions (arguably most of them, if you're counting all the ancient now-dead ones) where the soul was not a single discrete thing, and would include many different parts and urges, from one's connection to the gods to one's physical drives.
Indeed so, the ancient Egyptians believed there were seven discrete parts to the soul:
Khat - the physical bodyKa - the spiritual "body double" of a person, their astral form
Ba - the personality and memory (what we think of as "ourselves")
Sekhem - the life-force or animating force
Akhu - the intellect or thought
Sahu - the higher self, the truly immortal fragment (the nearest to the thing we think about when we talk about the "soul")
Khaibit - the shadow, the dark half, the base instinct (also what we think of as the soul, but our "id" side of that part of us)
Certain undead could be aspects of different parts of the soul. Those without the Akhu are much less intelligent; those that are spectral incorporate the Ka; those that are unintelligent could just use a fraction of the sekhem to animate them; those that have no memory of the past life lack the Ba, and so on.
Want to get really weird?
Go to a basilisk lair and collect a bunch of statues that used to be people. Cast Rock to Mud on them. Mix the mud around a bit. Cast Mud to Rock. Cast Use fabricate to make a statue out of the rock. Use Stone to Flesh to make a single corpse out of the statue. Animate the corpse.
What have you made?
Doomed hero: that post hurt a bit.
Hurt?
I think I would not allow a never been alive thing to become an intelligent undead.That's a fine house rule. I'm curious as to why you'd rule that way though. I don't mean mechanically. I mean metaphysically within the game world. Do you think intelligent undead are intelligent because they have a soul trapped in them? Or a "reflection" of one?
If that is the case how would you account for multiple intelligent undead being made from the same corpse?
You can't use Animate Dead like that.... read the spell...
Skeletons: A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.
Zombies: A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse. The corpse must be that of a creature with a physical anatomy.
Then create undead lets you create more powerful undead, but still requires the same rules.
A much more potent spell than animate dead, this evil spell allows you to infuse a dead body with negative energy to create more powerful sorts of undead: ghouls, ghasts, mummies, and mohrgs.
A statue that stone to flesh was used on is not a corpse. It's a hunk of flesh that used to be stone. If it was never alive in the first place, it can't be dead.
As for the multiple undead from the same corpse thing, that wouldn't work either because note that the spell(s) require one intact corpse as a target PLUS the severed hand (though I'd say you just need to cut the hand off the corpse you are using.) So, you use said intact corpse to make a crawling hand, that corpse is then destroyed, like all material components.
Want to get really weird?
Go to a basilisk lair and collect a bunch of statues that used to be people. Cast Rock to Mud on them. Mix the mud around a bit. Cast Mud to Rock. Cast Use fabricate to make a statue out of the rock. Use Stone to Flesh to make a single corpse out of the statue. Animate the corpse.
What a great concept for an insane medusa-caster experiment.
What have you made?
I'm not sure yet, but I'll try to remember to post it once I'm done writing it :)
-TimD
Want to get really weird?
Go to a basilisk lair and collect a bunch of statues that used to be people. Cast Rock to Mud on them. Mix the mud around a bit. Cast Mud to Rock. Cast Use fabricate to make a statue out of the rock. Use Stone to Flesh to make a single corpse out of the statue. Animate the corpse.
What have you made?
Uh, no you could not do that. At best you could make it a flesh golem, but after mixing it all up, you no longer have an intact corpse as the rules require.
You can't use Animate Dead like that.... read the spell...
Animate Dead wrote:Skeletons: A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.
Zombies: A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse. The corpse must be that of a creature with a physical anatomy.
Then create undead lets you create more powerful undead, but still requires the same rules.
Create Undead requires only a corpse, it never says how much of it. Why would you need a complete corpse to create an incorporal undead or a crawling hand?
I think I would not allow a never been alive thing to become an intelligent undead. Also created life would not have souls.
Golarion has Androids, which are created, but have souls. An Android can even have multiple souls over the years.
It might be different in home-games, but that´s how goes in Golarion.
Doomed Hero wrote:Want to get really weird?
Go to a basilisk lair and collect a bunch of statues that used to be people. Cast Rock to Mud on them. Mix the mud around a bit. Cast Mud to Rock. Cast Use fabricate to make a statue out of the rock. Use Stone to Flesh to make a single corpse out of the statue. Animate the corpse.
What have you made?
Uh, no you could not do that. At best you could make it a flesh golem, but after mixing it all up, you no longer have an intact corpse as the rules require.
One word: Necrocraft
Doomed hero: that post hurt a bit.
Hurt?
I think I would not allow a never been alive thing to become an intelligent undead.That's a fine house rule. I'm curious as to why you'd rule that way though. I don't mean mechanically. I mean metaphysically within the game world. Do you think intelligent undead are intelligent because they have a soul trapped in them? Or a "reflection" of one?
If that is the case how would you account for multiple intelligent undead being made from the same corpse?
You can't use Animate Dead like that.... read the spell...
Read Restore Corpse.
Uh, no you could not do that. At best you could make it a flesh golem, but after mixing it all up, you no longer have an intact corpse as the rules require.Want to get really weird?
Go to a basilisk lair and collect a bunch of statues that used to be people. Cast Rock to Mud on them. Mix the mud around a bit. Cast Mud to Rock. Cast Use fabricate to make a statue out of the rock. Use Stone to Flesh to make a single corpse out of the statue. Animate the corpse.
What have you made?
You sculpt the intact corpse out of stone and cast Stone to Flesh on it. Then you have a single corpse made out of flesh that used to be many corpses.
A statue that stone to flesh was used on is not a corpse. It's a hunk of flesh that used to be stone. If it was never alive in the first place, it can't be dead.
What do you think a corpse is?
If you kill an unused Clone it is a corpse.
Androids can become undead.
If you paint a corpse with Marvelous Pigments, it is a real corpse.
If you Wish a corpse into existence, it is a real corpse.
Why would the Stone to Flesh trick be any different?
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Anyways.... I was playing an anti-undead cleric at one point and the below were his views. Dunno exactly how much they fit with the actual lore of Golarian, but feel free to plunder whatever works.
To '5 minutes or less' version is when you died, the soul moved on, but an imprint of your mind was left behind on the body. It has access to all the things you knew, but your soul was responsible for the 'good' feelings and things like a conscience. Animating the body empowered it with negative energy to give it enough of a power source to replace the life that was missing, but it didn't restore that soul (he actually categorised undead as a Negative Energy Elemental)...
Fine idea, but indeed doesn't fit the usual interpretation:
Undead creatures are powered by negative energy. Only sentient undead creatures have, or are, souls.
While this doesn't logically imply that all sentient undead have souls, the intent seems to be that Magic Jar can reliably affect sentient undead since they (reliably) have souls.
Uh, no you could not do that. At best you could make it a flesh golem, but after mixing it all up, you no longer have an intact corpse as the rules require.One word: Necrocraft
Is unintelligent and therefore has no soul.
Create Undead requires only a corpse, it never says how much of it.
If I tell you that I need an egg for my recipe, and you hand me an eggshell, can I complete my recipe? Unless otherwise noted, "an X" implies "a complete X."
Why would the Stone to Flesh trick be any different?
Because Stone to Flesh specifies "an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue." Flesh by definition does not include bones (hence the expression "flesh and bone"), which means the mass of flesh created by stone to flesh is not a complete corpse any more than a meatloaf is. (A de-petrified creature is instead returned to its "normal state" which may include bones.)
Similarly, Restore Corpse regrows flesh on bones ("...providing it with sufficient flesh that it can be animated as a zombie rather than a skeleton") rather than growing bones on flesh.
Other methods such as Marvelous Pigments might work, and as far as I know, there's nothing in RAW preventing you from using the corpse of a creature that has spawned an incorporeal undead in order to create an intelligent corporeal undead. So it is possible to have multiple souled undead generated from one person. However, I don't think that contradicts Pharasmin doctrine or the line in Magic Jar. A split soul is perfectly conceivable, either damaging the soul (making such a creation even worse than typical necromancy) or via the "half an infinite thing is infinite" logic. Alternatively, any undead created using a soul-less body may steal a soul not belonging to the body (similar to using an elemental spirit to power a construct).
Or the vast majority of sentient undead could have souls and the odd one created under the above unusual circumstances could have no soul, whatever the effect of that might be. This would make Pharasmin Doctrine and the line in Magic Jar generalizations rather than universal but still overall valid.
Why would the Stone to Flesh trick be any different?Because Stone to Flesh specifies "an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue." Flesh by definition does not include bones (hence the expression "flesh and bone"), which means the mass of flesh created by stone to flesh is not a complete corpse any more than a meatloaf is.
You sure about that? The text seems to differ.
The spell also can convert a mass of stone into a fleshy substance. Such flesh is inert and lacking a vital life force unless a life force or magical energy is available. For example, this spell would turn an animated stone statue into an animated flesh statue, but an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue.
Heck, if you wanted to, you could make a statue, animate it, transmute it to flesh to make it fully alive, kill it, and then make it undead. Then you could petrify it and animate it again. Then turn it back into flesh.
At that point you'd have a completely alive creature with the mind of an undead.
Just another thought to Stone to Flesh: The spell turns stone to inanimate Flesh. But what is flesh? Most people simply think of meat, but the organs are also fleshy. So is the marrow. If you think about it, every part of the body is made of flesh per definition.
Undeads and souls are a tricky issue:
Most unintelligent undead like zombies and skeleton it's to assume they do not have a soul.
Liches keep their soul in a phylactery, while Vampires do seem to keep their soul in their body.
Other intelligent undead like Skeletal Champions, Zombie Lords and especially Ghouls instead seem to have an identity, but it may be not the same soul they possessed as living. While they keep some skills from before death the personality and memories may stray enough for him to be a new identity, though it seems to differ on a by case basis. Ghouls may even have entire cities of them with their own society.
@OP: well, there's The Chosen. he's got loads of souls, but they're a bit dark.
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Just another thought to Stone to Flesh: The spell turns stone to inanimate Flesh. But what is flesh? Most people simply think of meat, but the organs are also fleshy. So is the marrow. If you think about it, every part of the body is made of flesh per definition.
Define Flesh: the soft substance consisting of muscle and fat that is found between the skin and bones of an animal or a human.
The reason that people think of meat when they say "flesh" is that the primary, literal definition of flesh refers specifically to the meat. Referring to soft organs as "fleshy" simply means they are flesh-like.
The only time that flesh may indicate the body as a whole is when it is used poetically, eg "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" and when reading rules it is correct to use the literal rather than poetic meaning.
Why would the Stone to Flesh trick be any different?Because Stone to Flesh specifies "an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue." Flesh by definition does not include bones (hence the expression "flesh and bone"), which means the mass of flesh created by stone to flesh is not a complete corpse any more than a meatloaf is.You sure about that? The text seems to differ.
The spell also can convert a mass of stone into a fleshy substance. Such flesh is inert and lacking a vital life force unless a life force or magical energy is available. For example, this spell would turn an animated stone statue into an animated flesh statue, but an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue.
Yes, I'm sure about that and I've bolded the matching text.
Heck, if you wanted to, you could make a statue, animate it, transmute it to flesh to make it fully alive, kill it, and then make it undead. Then you could petrify it and animate it again. Then turn it back into flesh.
At that point you'd have a completely alive creature with the mind of an undead.
Transmuting an animate stone statue to flesh doesn't make it fully alive, it makes it an animated flesh statue (as italicized in quote above). If you petrify it and then use stone to flesh again, it returns to normal - an animated flesh statue, or a destroyed flesh statue if you destroyed it before petrifying. To get a complete corpse out of stone to flesh you need to start with a corpse. Maybe petrified bones become fossils inside stone flesh and the magic treats them differently than a solid mass of stone.
A GM might allow you to create a proper corpse using a statue and Stone to Flesh - heck, I'd allow it myself because it makes a good story - but the RAW does not give that result.
Weirdo, I feel bad for your players. Under your interpretation, if they get turned to stone, the spell designed to bring them back to normal brings them back with no bones, brain or organs...
Also makes me wonder about their gear, which traditionally is also turned to stone by things like medusa and basilisks. Does Stone to Flesh turn all their gear into weird flappy meat?
Or just maybe, are the intentions of the spell a little more liberal than you are trying to make them?
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Weirdo, I feel bad for your players. Under your interpretation, if they get turned to stone, the spell designed to bring them back to normal brings them back with no bones, brain or organs...
Also makes me wonder about their gear, which traditionally is also turned to stone by things like medusa and basilisks. Does Stone to Flesh turn all their gear into weird flappy meat?
That's not what I'm saying, read more carefully:
(A de-petrified creature is instead returned to its "normal state" which may include bones.)
Stone to Flesh can target either a petrified creature or a mass of stone. It has different uses depending on which you target. The intent of the spell is made clear in these two uses.
This spell restores a petrified creature to its normal state, restoring life and goods. The creature must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to survive the process. Any petrified creature, regardless of size, can be restored.
If a living creature is turned to stone, Stone To Flesh can revert them and their stuff to normal, including bones, leather, metal, whatever was the normal state prior to petrification (an ooze doesn't get bones, and a steel sword doesn't become adamantine).
The spell also can convert a mass of stone into a fleshy substance. Such flesh is inert and lacking a vital life force unless a life force or magical energy is available. For example, this spell would turn an animated stone statue into an animated flesh statue, but an ordinary statue would become a mass of inert flesh in the shape of the statue. You can affect an object that fits within a cylinder from 1 foot to 3 feet in diameter and up to 10 feet long or a cylinder of up to those dimensions in a larger mass of stone.
If you are casting this spell on something that is not a petrified creature - such as a statue, animate or inanimate - then you get flesh. Not bone, not leather, not soft organs, and certainly not an organized corpse. A mass of fleshy substance.
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Hey Everyone --
I have decided on the undead for the backstory of Harmose. Although there were a lot of flavorful options presented, I wound up going with a basic wight.
I liked that the wight spawn have intelligence but no free will... And I thought that the wight powers were creepy and understandable.
I can just imagine Harmose saying in anguish, "You don't understand. I drained people of their life force, and relished it. It gave me waves of pleasure to separate someone's soul from their body. I thrilled to chasing down the sick and vulnerable. And then I got my own soul back... and I could remember with horror how much I enjoyed murdering the helpless."
Yeah, that will be an epic reveal.
For those who aren't familiar with that particular mythos; there are a number of myths/religions (arguably most of them, if you're counting all the ancient now-dead ones) where the soul was not a single discrete thing, and would include many different parts and urges, from one's connection to the gods to one's physical drives.Indeed so, the ancient Egyptians believed there were seven discrete parts to the soul:
Khat - the physical body
Ka - the spiritual "body double" of a person, their astral form
Ba - the personality and memory (what we think of as "ourselves")
Sekhem - the life-force or animating force
Akhu - the intellect or thought
Sahu - the higher self, the truly immortal fragment (the nearest to the thing we think about when we talk about the "soul")
Khaibit - the shadow, the dark half, the base instinct (also what we think of as the soul, but our "id" side of that part of us)Certain undead could be aspects of different parts of the soul. Those without the Akhu are much less intelligent; those that are spectral incorporate the Ka; those that are unintelligent could just use a fraction of the sekhem to animate them; those that have no memory of the past life lack the Ba, and so on.
So... This question is to Dabbler and whomever else is reading. What parts of the seven part soul would a wight lack?
You're all awesome, sick and twisted people. Thank you for your assistance and ideas so far.
Hmm
If you are casting this spell on something that is not a petrified creature - such as a statue, animate or inanimate - then you get flesh. Not bone, not leather, not soft organs, and certainly not an organized corpse. A mass of fleshy substance.
If you become petrified, and then I sculpt an exact copy of you, you're telling me the spell can tell the difference?
Wouldn't it make more sense just to allow the Stone to Flesh spell to turn statues of living things into living things? That's what the text of the spell implies to me. Statues become alive. Chunks of raw stone become meat. A statue is hardly a chunk of raw stone.
The idea that an animated statue just become a weird sort of animated flesh golem instead of a living thing is extremely arbitrary and needlessly limiting.
The notion of statues coming to life has president in stories like Pygmalion. Why would it be necessary to give the spell the ability to tell the difference between rock that used to be alive and rock is just rock? That seems extremely unnecessary to me (especially considering that Marvelous Pigments can make bodies just fine and is a lower-level effect).
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Hey Everyone --
…I wound up going with a basic wight.
I liked that the wight spawn have intelligence but no free will... And I thought that the wight powers were creepy and understandable.…
So... This question is to Dabbler and whomever else is reading. What parts of the seven part soul would a wight lack?…Indeed so, the ancient Egyptians believed there were seven discrete parts to the soul:
Khat - the physical body
Ka - the spiritual "body double" of a person, their astral form
Ba - the personality and memory (what we think of as "ourselves")
Sekhem - the life-force or animating force
Akhu - the intellect or thought
Sahu - the higher self, the truly immortal fragment (the nearest to the thing we think about when we talk about the "soul")
Khaibit - the shadow, the dark half, the base instinct (also what we think of as the soul, but our "id" side of that part of us)Certain undead could be aspects of different parts of the soul. Those without the Akhu are much less intelligent; those that are spectral incorporate the Ka; those that are unintelligent could just use a fraction of the sekhem to animate them; those that have no memory of the past lack the Ba, and so on.
Well, obviously it would have the khat. I can't see a wight having an astral form, even if such a thing is possible, so I'd say the ka was gone. Based on your story, Harmose's ba was present, though subdued (a chained observer). Sekhem was gone, replaced by a negative life-force. Wights are just as intelligent as normal humans, so that's your akhu. Sahu would certainly not have been present, while your khaibit basically took the reigns.
TL;DR your ka, sekhem, and sahu were lacking, your ba was basically along for the ride and your khaibit was in control.
Additionally, my source has a slightly different listing of soul portions in 9 parts-
Khat - the physical body, representing the mortal part of the soul
Ka - the vital spark, representing the astral form. Ghosts are ka personified.
Ba - the personality and psyche, and literally the power
Khaibit - the soul's shadow. No further information.
Akhu - the immortal part of the soul. Only formed when ka and ba have reunited in the heavens. Effectively the ka and ba are reborn as an outsider.
Sahu - the incorruptible spirit. Like the Akhu, this portion forms after judgement has been passed, and seems to be another portion of the soul reborn as an outsider.
Sekhem - the personification of life force, which lives in the heavens with the Akhu.
Ib - the heart, and the source of thought, intention, morality, and will.
Ren - the true name, representative of the individual. A vital guide on the journey to the afterlife, but also the most vulnerable portion of the soul, as its destruction would undo all other portions.
Going by my listing, your wight form would lack akhu, sahu, and sekhem entirely. Your khat, ib, and possibly khaibit would be corrupted, while your ka and ba would be bound, unable to effect change. At least your ren stayed safe, or at least was restored with the resurrection.
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Well, obviously it would have the khat. I can't see a wight having an astral form, even if such a thing is possible, so I'd say the ka was gone. Based on your story, Harmose's ba was present, though subdued (a chained observer). Sekhem was gone, replaced by a negative life-force. Wights are just as intelligent as normal humans, so that's your akhu. Sahu would certainly not have been present, while your khaibit basically took the reigns.
TL;DR your ka, sekhem, and sahu were lacking, your ba was basically along for the ride and your khaibit was in control.
Partly agree.
Yes, wights should have Khat (body), Akhu (thought), and Khaibit (desires).
Agree Sekhem (positive energy life force) replaced with negative energy version.
Disagree Ka and Sahu are both gone, since they seem the most likely portions to be targeted by Magic Jar (which should work on sentient undead such as wights). Not clear enough on distinction between the two to determine which should remain. Both of them appear to be some form of "spirit body" with the Ka remaining with the physical body while the Sahu resides in heaven?
Ba runs into a minor discrepancy between your backstory and the write-up from Undead Revisited, which suggests that only wights that arise from evil persons typically maintain any significant portion of their memories and personalities. However, if you want Harmose to be more "present" during the experience, it's certainly reasonable to say he was unusual in that he retained the Ba as an animated wight.
The Ab or heart, the moral entity, deserves special consideration. If you agree with Ecaterina Ducaird and think undead should be evil because they lack a conscience, the Ab should be missing. However, there is an alternative point of view that only creatures capable of moral thought can be evil (or good) which would mean that undead would incorporate the Ab and some other deficit would account for their evil bent.
Another thing to consider is where the parts of the soul that aren't incorporated into the undead go, and how that relates to the role of undead in the world. If for example the Sehu, Ba, and Ab can go and have a perfectly normal afterlife separated from the other parts of the soul, certain types of undead would be a lot less bad.
EDIT: missed the last two lines:
Going by my listing, your wight form would lack akhu, sahu, and sekhem entirely. Your khat, ib, and possibly khaibit would be corrupted, while your ka and ba would be bound, unable to effect change. At least your ren stayed safe, or at least was restored with the resurrection.
This works well. Having parts "corrupted" or "bound" resolves some of the issues I was having above with the binary present/absent.
Lacking the sekhem does seem to indicate a comatose spirit form on the afterlife's doorstep, but that's a wonderfully creepy image.
If you become petrified, and then I sculpt an exact copy of you, you're telling me the spell can tell the difference?
Yup. Cuz it's magic.
I agree with you that it's reasonable to be able to create a complete body using stone to flesh - if you succeed at a sufficiently high craft check to create a masterfully realistic statue. I would allow it in game, because it's interesting and not overly powerful. But these things are not the same thing as it being the RAW result of casting Stone to Flesh on a statue.
Know the rules. Then break them.
(especially considering that Marvelous Pigments can make bodies just fine and is a lower-level effect).
Magical items are weird. The spell it's based on, Major Creation, can't strictly speaking make a body because you have to succeed at a Craft check to make a complex item - and a corpse is as complex as it gets - but no Craft (corpse) skill exists.
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Weirdo and Thanis, you are both awesome.
The more I'm thinking about it, the more that I'm wondering if Harmose's tattooed rabbit familiar (which showed up shortly after he was brought back by the god Horus) isn't one of the parts of Harmose's soul, personified but not fully integrated.
I'm not sure which one would be appropriate, but my mind is reeling from the cool factor inherent in this idea.
Hmm
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If you want it to be an actual part of the soul, I'd go with the ka. The ka has a body of sorts but seems a little more separable from the identity than the sahu. The astral form seems a good basis for a familiar.
I like the "carrying case" idea, though.
The repeated mention of life force implies strongly that the tissue can be flesh, skin, soft organs, bones, or any number of other messy materials (see living wall for fun and possible disgust) but they won't be alive unless they were already made alive. Animated stone becomes animated flesh, it doesn't have stats or rules for that flesh being shapeless and/or without a skeleton.
It doesn't have stats or rules for animated flesh without a skeleton because lacking a skeleton doesn't affect animated flesh. Animated flesh produced using Stone to Flesh is probably an animated object*. Animated objects work just fine without a firm structure: eg the animated straightjacket. You can use the same stats as for a stone animated object, just remove the 8 hardness and +1 nat ac from being made of stone. Since animation doesn't require bones or similar structure, Stone to Flesh's ability to produce animate flesh doesn't require it to provide bones. It's not required to provide bones, it doesn't say it provides bones, therefore by RAW it does not provide bones.
Different rulings are fine, but it's not really fair to say that stone to flesh causes the rules about undead break down when it's you're allowing the spell to do something different from what it actually says it does.
*Animated flesh isn't humanoid, bones or no. It's only a zombie if you animate it through necromancy, and since you can't make a zombie out of a stone statue you're never going to get a zombie as the direct output of using stone to flesh on an animate statue. (And if you argue that the flesh produced by StF can be used to make a zombie, therefore StF produces bones, you're begging the question.) Specific stone constructs such as stone golems or caryatid columns usually have specific reactions to stone to flesh that indicate how stats are affected.
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I was thinking possibly the Khaibit. I am amused that none of the web sources I've looked at seem to agree about how many parts of the soul there were...
Khaibit - (a fan; an object which intercepts the light) - the "shadow"; Closely associated with the Ba and regarded as an integral portion of the human being. Like the Ka and Ba it partakes of funerary offerings; and is able to detach from the body, with the power of going wherever it might. References to the Khaibit are infrequent, and the meaning usually obscure. It may be that it was a redundant hold-over from an earlier magical conception of the physical shadow.
I like that its purpose is mysterious and that it can detach and reattach from the body when it wishes.
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I was thinking possibly the Khaibit. I am amused that none of the web sources I've looked at seem to agree about how many parts of the soul there were...
Khaibit - (a fan; an object which intercepts the light) - the "shadow"; Closely associated with the Ba and regarded as an integral portion of the human being. Like the Ka and Ba it partakes of funerary offerings; and is able to detach from the body, with the power of going wherever it might. References to the Khaibit are infrequent, and the meaning usually obscure. It may be that it was a redundant hold-over from an earlier magical conception of the physical shadow.I like that its purpose is mysterious and that it can detach and reattach from the body when it wishes.
Sounds good.
As far as I can tell there's not much agreement on the particulars of the Egyptian souls because the primary documents are sparse. As such it's probably a good idea to exercise creative license and pick which parts and interpretations you like.