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No one has mentioned a Devourer. A limited wish, wish, or miracle can free a trapped soul that is locked inside of one, but that essence is expended as it burns its spell-like abilities. Burn through all the persons levels that way, and the soul dissipate.
Its only got 12HD, so that puts it well in the realm of an undead that could be controlled and used as a disposal technique.
The trouble with pawning a soul off to some extradimensional entity, be it a Lord of Hell or some Nameless Thing from Beyond the Stars, is exactly that: You're pawning it. Anyone who has the right price can redeem the pawn ticket. Yes, there's all the waffle about "X-- never releases a soul from his realm!" but in reality, a suitable bribe or a game of hellish Parchesi is usually sufficient for them to let it go, so long as there's someone determined to get it.
Convincing a soul to stay dead is much of the same. They can be unconvinced, so long as you have someone to go to them and tell them it's okay now, or you just have a competent necromancer do it.
Destroying a soul? Problematic. There are gods who have a chance of putting one back together, and they're just as bribe-friendly as the Lords of Hell, if not more so.
The best bet is generally Trap the Soul, a drop of Sovereign Glue, and an amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location, now with a sparkly new jewel. Drop it in a treasure hoard somewhere where's it's likely to be traded around, and tell the heroes when they come for you exactly what you did and how you honestly haven't the faintest idea where it may have gotten to.
Dealing with all the merchants, dragons, and jewelry boxes in a dozen kingdoms is more trouble than dealing with just one Lord of Hell or Goddess of Reconstructing Devoured Souls.
Ohh, devourer... I used a devourer as a BBEG once. The party was much lower level (6th or 7th?) but the devourer had been trapped in iron bands of Bilarro for nearly two millennia, so it was limited to using its spell-likes and didn't have a lot left after "winning" the fight that had left it trapped in the bands. It had blown a few on lesser planar ally and assembled a small throng of intelligent undead lackeys, but there was no way out through the surface (until the party came and broke the wards) and all the ways down were blocked by kobolds.
Interesting thread. As a reversal, the question is how to avoid death and not have to be resurected. In terms of avoiding death, the easiest way is to pay protection to the local assassins guild and to have a retainer on file. The retainer being payment to the guild to kill whoever kills you (both agent and control). Fairly straightforward if you're rich and powerful. Alternately you could give the guild a pass on it's existence and activities in return for protection. Also fairly straightforward. The threat of retaliation is probably the surest way to avoid being murdered. Combine that with the usual precautions to avoid death by amateurs and you should be reasonably proof against assassination. PCs might give it a go, because they generally have all the survival instincts of lemmings. Nobody who *really* lives in the world is going to be tempted.
Intimidation of priests, as mentioned above, could be a problem. The above process is useful in insuring priestly cooperation in resurection as well. If the priest thinks assassination by murderer could be a problem he has to know the king's assassin is certain death, if he finds the king non-resurectable for obscure "doctrinal" reasons.
In my game the Assassin's Guilds tend to make more money from protection and information brokering than outright assassination. Assassination is flashy, but the kind of attention it brings to a local guild is a distinct negative. If an outside guild is hired, well, nobody likes being poached on or taking the heat for other people's killings. And if amateurs try to intrude on guild turf by an assassination the Guild would be very interested...
I gotta say, I've always been a big proponent of the Call of Cthulhu tenant: Fire Cleanses All.
Or- Burn it, bury it with a shovel, then bury the shovel.
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I have a question.
I was thinking of creating a necromantic spell that blocked or hindered the use of raise dead.
Does anyone know of an existing 3.5/OGL spell that already does that?
Make a spell, Blessing of the Dead. Not your normal necromantic spell, you bless them with such a wonderful time in the afterlife they refuse to come back, a sort of Charm Dead spell. heh.
Even for a True Ressurection they MUST be willing to come back.
Given the problems some spells present of 'make a new body, even if you don't have the old one', it seems to me it might be simpler to abduct someone with a teleport or gate, and keep them prisoner alive somewhere that divination spells are never going to be able to find them.
For showmanship, fake an 'assassination' using illusions to show the body being disintegrated, and maybe the nearest & dearest will get sloppy and not pay for a commune to find out why the true resurrection didn't work.
Imprisonment + Simulacrum + Disintegrate can work wonderfully to this effect.
For an added bonus, arrange a low level witness or two to see an illusion of a Devourer being commanded by some obvious necromancer. They won't know what the horrible monster was, but the distinctive description will let the consulting wizards make their Knowledge Arcana rolls and go off on the desired goose chase.
Here's an idea, though a costly and dangerous one.
If you need someone dead, incapable of being raised, resurrected, wished back to life, truly resurrected, or even the product of a miracle...if you want both body and soul of the hapless target utterly, totally, and completely GONE, as if he never existed...
Hit him with a sphere of annihilation.
Or, if you're not adverse to perusing a 3rd-party spellbook, there's a couple that'll do the trick, with names like "eradicate" and "balefire."
There's even the possibility of an epic spell, which will do whatever you build it to do, if you don't mind selling your own soul to make it happen.
I have a question.
I was thinking of creating a necromantic spell that blocked or hindered the use of raise dead.
Does anyone know of an existing 3.5/OGL spell that already does that?
Well if you really just want to hinder raise dead, just shred the corpse. If you absolutely positively want them to be unreturnable from the dead, you'll have to trap or even better, utterly obliterate their soul. I don't know though, if there's a spell for that. Maybe it works by planeshifting after the soul to wherever it will spend its afterlife and kill it there. But I don't know for sure if killing a soul on its afterlife-plane will eradicate it permanently.
Soulbind is a nice spell, but less useful than Trap the Soul, which costs the same, is one level lower, and works on the living instead of the dead. But since it works on undead as well, if you've got someone you want to stay dead who is currently dead, you just throw Create Undead on them (which they don't have to be willing for) then use your eeeeevil necromantic powers to command your new undead to willingly accept the gem for Trap the Soul. Then you get a soul stuck in a gem, and when they come out, they're undead, which is extra inconvenience for any good clerics attempting to resurrect them.