So after death all souls are supposed to line up to be judged by Pharisma and the servants of different deities will sometimes work together to protect those souls from the depredation of Daemons and the like.
And while we haven't seen an indepth description of Pharisma, she doesn't seem like the type to be very happy with anyone who prevents a soul from reaching it's proper place.
I'm curious as to how spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray work when the target dies. Both damn the target to Hell, regardless of their actual alignment or faith. For that to work, the spell clearly needs to bypass Pharisma in order to prevent the soul from moving on properly.
Does the soul simply appear in Hell or is it marked in some way that forces the goddess to consign them to the Pit? If either, how would Pharisma look upon something that interferes in her duty and why wouldn't she demand the return of those who are wrongfully consigned to the Pit for proper judgment? Asmodeus couldn't find the odd extra soul here and there worth the displeasure and enmity of Pharisma, who could start interfering with the flow of souls he is supposed to get, or the gods who find their worshipers damned because they were unlucky enough to get targeted by the wrong spell before death.
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So after death all souls are supposed to line up to be judged by Pharisma and the servants of different deities will sometimes work together to protect those souls from the depredation of Daemons and the like.
As of Classic Horrors Revisited, which explicitly states that animate dead denies you your 'heavenly afterlife' (p. 56), Pharasma's pretty much a paper tigress anyway. Any Cleric in Golarion can steal souls right out of the heavens or hells by animating the bones of the priests and followers of rival dieties, and then just tying up & burying the skeletons, where nothing will ever destroy them and they can't break free. (I strongly disagree with this, for my own version of the setting, but canon is canon, and the gods are powerless to protect the souls in their realms from animate dead. Necromancy trumps gods.)
Even a contract with Asmodeus could be cheated in this manner (although I don't have Princes of Darkness, and Asmodeus might be, perversely, better at guarding souls in his domain than Pharasma...), and since the skeleton / zombie remains mindless, the soul is apparently unconscious the whole time, making it a perfect way to avoid eternal torment. Have some ally turn your corpse into a skeleton and bury it, and never have to actually go to hell and pay off your debt.
Doesn't matter if you were a 17th level Paladin of Iomedae (Blackguard of Asmodeus), and your soul got advanced to Hound Archon (Barbed Devil) status over the centuries you spent serving her (his) will, some 5th level Cleric of Rovagug casts animate dead on your bones, and it's game over. Best of all, the soul remains unconscious and unaware, trapped in the mindless corpse, serving no purpose at all, as it's animated by negative energy, not 'soul-power.' The *only* reason the soul gets yanked away from it's afterlife is apparently to extend a big middle finger to Pharasma, and make her rage in impotent fury.
Clerics of non-evil dieties that use undead, like Abadar, could routinely animate the bodies of fallen gnolls, goblins, etc. and thus deny all those souls, and the power that they confer, to their evil gods (mostly Lamashtu, in these cases), burying them afterwards, since they'd have no real use for these undead, and if they get destroyed in battle, there's a chance the souls might return to Lamashtu, which kinda defeats the purpose.
The evil gods would obviously have an advantage here, since their clerics are more likely to be able to (and be encouraged to) cast animate dead, and I'm sure grave-robbing of the burial sites of followers of the good gods would be a standard tactic to steal power from the gods of good by yanking the souls of their priests and heroes out of celestia / elysium / wherever and denying them their afterlife.
It could also be interpreted, that since the skeleton/zombie is 'always evil,' and yet mindless, that the nature of the spell must make the *soul* become evil. Perhaps casting animate dead is not only sufficient to rip a Paladin's soul out of Celestia, but also instantly taints the soul and turns it evil, allowing the Cleric to just bash the skeleton to death one round later and send that Paladin screaming to Hell, converting power for the good gods into power for the evil gods, and explaining why it's so noisy in the Abyss, and so quiet on Mount Celestia, becoming a ghost town one animate dead at a time.
No wonder Pharasma hates animate dead! It's a third level spell, and renders her entire raison d'etre pointless!
(Presumably, if a soul is devoured by Groetus or by the daemons, either the animate dead spell fails completely, or the spell works, and this particular skeleton/zombie doesn't have a mindless soul stuck in it.)
She's the girl trying to plug a leak in the dam with her finger, while half the ocean spills through a big hole on either side of her...
So after death all souls are supposed to line up to be judged by Pharisma and the servants of different deities will sometimes work together to protect those souls from the depredation of Daemons and the like.As of Classic Horrors Revisited, which explicitly states that animate dead denies you your 'heavenly afterlife' (p. 56), Pharasma's pretty much a paper tigress anyway. Any Cleric in Golarion can steal souls right out of the heavens or hells by animating the bones of the priests and followers of rival dieties, and then just tying up & burying the skeletons, where nothing will ever destroy them and they can't break free. (I strongly disagree with this, for my own version of the setting, but canon is canon, and the gods are powerless to protect the souls in their realms from animate dead. Necromancy trumps gods.)
Even a contract with Asmodeus could be cheated in this manner (although I don't have Princes of Darkness, and Asmodeus might be, perversely, better at guarding souls in his domain than Pharasma...), and since the skeleton / zombie remains mindless, the soul is apparently unconscious the whole time, making it a perfect way to avoid eternal torment. Have some ally turn your corpse into a skeleton and bury it, and never have to actually go to hell and pay off your debt.
Doesn't matter if you were a 17th level Paladin of Iomedae (Blackguard of Asmodeus), and your soul got advanced to Hound Archon (Barbed Devil) status over the centuries you spent serving her (his) will, some 5th level Cleric of Rovagug casts animate dead on your bones, and it's game over. Best of all, the soul remains unconscious and unaware, trapped in the mindless corpse, serving no purpose at all, as it's animated by negative energy, not 'soul-power.' The *only* reason the soul gets yanked away from it's afterlife is apparently to extend a big middle finger to Pharasma, and make her rage in impotent fury.
Clerics of non-evil dieties that use undead, like Abadar, could...
Huh, I always thought of animate dead as reviving the mind (sort of) but not the soul (the identity but not the essence). Perhaps both are necessary for an afterlife; the soul fragment may be trapped in the Boneyard. This would anger Pharasma.
In many RW religions the soul doesn't move on for a while (in Islam it's Barzakh, in Judaism, the interval before burial, in Buddhism, 49 days must pass). This seems to be how the Boneyard functions.
Actually, Jeff... if you look at the spell descriptions for Raise Dead, Resurrection, or True Resurrection they specifically state that they cannot restore those who have been raised as undead. The Resurrection spells can, but they do require the undead body to be destroyed first.
So what Set said above, is fairly well supported by the rules. Which has been one of my own personal beliefs that the creation of undead is quite inherently evil (even the supposed neutral undead).
I'm on Set's page here with objecting to that specific interaction of the base game rules and the world and cosmology flavor.
I read it as being a situation with the former of those Raise spells in that they return the soul to the original body if possible, and if the corpse is being used as a zombie etc it can't come back to that body. I would treat a body animated as an object by positive energy to be treated in the exact same way personally.
I don't think it implies at all that the soul is wrenched back from the Great Beyond without a god's say so. At the point that a raise dead spell etc no longer would work (ie the soul has already been transformed into a celestial, fiend, axiomite, etc) it would be a moot point and an animate dead spell would just act on the corpse without doing a thing to the soul wherever it was (because they would be beyond raise dead spells as well).
Generally speaking, and I believe that James has said as such before, that once a soul has been judged by Pharasma, it's off limits to such spells. They can't be raised from the dead, and likewise (whatever you read into it) an animate dead spell wouldn't do anything to that soul. Prior to that time when a soul is judged and shuffled off to whatever fate or reward awaits it, those spells could in theory yank them out of line. Zalasindre the Balor isn't going to suddenly be yanked from his infernal throne and stuck into a zombie, nor will Harum the Brave be yanked from playing his harp or spearing proteans and stuck into a skeleton. However any soul, regardless of the alignment or greatness in life, if they're still in line to be judged they're fair game for whatever spell might affect the soul directly, or could in theory be read into as having some direct or indirect affect on the soul.
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No mortal spell can bypass Pharasma's judgement and restore to life someone who's already been judged in the Boneyard. In order to restore someone to life who's been judged, you basically have to go to the Boneyard and plead your case directly to Pharasma, or you have to go track down whatever fate befell that judged soul, find a way to make it remember its life, and then drag it back to life. Like in all the myths.
Spells that create undead do sort of bypass Pharasma's judgement... but Classic Horrors certainly overstated things. You can't completely rob Pharasma of a soul to judge by casting animate dead on a body, but that act certainly violates the body and annoys Pharasma. Even if a soul's been judged and has moved on to its reward/punishment, if it's body's still around you can still animate it if you want.
The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged.
This gives GMs a way to prevent the PCs from resurrecting NPCs he doesn't want brought back, for one thing, and also explains why powerful NPCs aren't always resurrected. In most cases, Pharasma judges a soul in an amount of time that feels pretty quick, so actual resurrections are actually quite rare.
The thing that makes them feel more common is the fact that when it comes to a PC, the PLAYER gets to determine if his character's soul has been judged when he decides if he wants the character to come back from death. If he decides he doesn't, that means Pharasma's judged the character and that's that. If he decides he DOES, then that means that his soul hasn't yet been judged and he comes back normally.
Finally, spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray that do damn souls to Hell (such as trap the soul) do bypass Pharasma as well. She hates that. The spell is powerful, and basically forces the soul to bypass going to the Boneyard. It does NOT force Pharasma to send it there; if she got to the soul before it went to Hell, it does not go to hell but goes to the Boneyard as normal (which is what happens if someone is struck by an effect like this and resists the spell but dies from the effects or collateral damage anyway).
Finally, spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray that do damn souls to Hell (such as trap the soul) do bypass Pharasma as well. She hates that. The spell is powerful, and basically forces the soul to bypass going to the Boneyard. It does NOT force Pharasma to send it there; if she got to the soul before it went to Hell, it does not go to hell but goes to the Boneyard as normal (which is what happens if someone is struck by an effect like this and resists the spell but dies from the effects or collateral damage anyway).
Thanks for the response James. And thanks everyone for bringing up the points about Animate and Raising.
So I guess my next question would be why Pharasma doesn't simply demand the soul be returned for proper judgment? Couldn't she affect the number of souls he receives (as was suggested as being a possible, if unlikely way, she could retaliate against Gorum), or do all Hell bound souls automatically skip the Boneyard?
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Finally, spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray that do damn souls to Hell (such as trap the soul) do bypass Pharasma as well. She hates that. The spell is powerful, and basically forces the soul to bypass going to the Boneyard. It does NOT force Pharasma to send it there; if she got to the soul before it went to Hell, it does not go to hell but goes to the Boneyard as normal (which is what happens if someone is struck by an effect like this and resists the spell but dies from the effects or collateral damage anyway).Thanks for the response James. And thanks everyone for bringing up the points about Animate and Raising.
So I guess my next question would be why Pharasma doesn't simply demand the soul be returned for proper judgment? Couldn't she affect the number of souls he receives (as was suggested as being a possible, if unlikely way, she could retaliate against Gorum), or do all Hell bound souls automatically skip the Boneyard?
Pharasma is a mysterious deity and a busy one—two reasons that should be in and of themselves enough to explain why she doesn't simply demand souls be returned for proper judgment. And death itself is supposed to be mysterious—if we explain EVERYTHING about how death works, we not only take a lot of the fear of the unknown of death out of the game, but also block off any number of death plots we could use in the future.
In other words, the less we make official about what happens to a soul after you die, the better. Keeping it vague and mysterious is good for the game. And keeping Pharasma from being 100% omnipotent when it comes to all things death/soul related is a great way to do so.
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One reason I favour having several psychopomps in a setting is to provide easy ways to break the vanilla "you die -- your soul floats off to the plane of $ALIGNMENT -- somebody back home finds 5kgp of diamonds & brings you back to life". In general that's what happens, and most gods (especially gods of death) play ball most of the time; but having a variety of options for what happens after death allows for a little bit of breaking the rules when it's needed for the story/game
For example...
In Greyhawk I favour a clear distinction between Nerull (as god of violent and/or untimely death) and Wee Jas (as goddess of just, timely and/or natural death). My take on the Age of Worms campaign hinged on this, with the PCs having to ensure that the destruction of Kyuss was done according to ancient Jasidan laws so that it could be considered a lawful execution, with Wee Jas then having jurisdiction over the soul rather than Nerull (who would presumably just restore Kyuss to (un)life); rather than allowing the soul to pass on Wee Jas could imprison it (in the interests of justice etc) before Nerull could get his hands on it.
Similarly, in the Forgotten Realms, I consider Siamorphe to act as psychopomp for all nobility, so that there's a convenient excuse for why all nobles don't all get raised when they die -- nobless oblige extends beyond life, you have duties after death.
In Golarion, IMO, there are two places to "break the rules" of the afterlife -- while the recently deceased is waiting in line for his exit interview with Pharasma, and before then: en route to the boneyard, and for me that's where a lot of the more interesting bits of "cheating" can occur :)
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The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged.
This gives GMs a way to prevent the PCs from resurrecting NPCs he doesn't want brought back, for one thing, and also explains why powerful NPCs aren't always resurrected. In most cases, Pharasma judges a soul in an amount of time that feels pretty quick, so actual resurrections are actually quite rare.
I like this, as it keeps the mechanics intact (raise dead works as stated) and yet also preserves the Golarion flavor (Pharasma *eventually* shuffles souls off to a final reward, from which there is no return).
I could also see various dieties choosing to allow souls that have been sent them by Pharasma to return for specific reasons. (Your task in life was not yet complete, your destiny unfulfilled, I give you leave to answer your allies call and return...)
That must be kind of a surreal addition to the Boneyard 'line of souls,' the rare occasions when a light appears above someone in line and they are pulled back to the world of the living by some sort of raise dead or ressurection spell. Those adjacent in the great line, reach out, attempting to 'hitch a ride' and, who knows, maybe sometimes one of them succeeds, only to be 'reborn' as a shadow or wraith or something, having failed to return to the world of the living and only been ripped across the void as pure spirit, riven and tortured by it's incomplete passage...
"So I got ressurected, and this demon-thing hitched a ride back?"
"Sort of like a two-for-one deal?"
Animate Dead not tearing souls out of heaven (or hell) might be a useful thing to put in the FAQ. I know nothing in the core rules (of any edition of D&D) says this happens, but it seems to be a common assumption.
Animate Dead not tearing souls out of heaven (or hell) might be a useful thing to put in the FAQ. I know nothing in the core rules (of any edition of D&D) says this happens, but it seems to be a common assumption.
This, to me, is somewhat of the sticky point though... As having your body reanimated as some form of undead does prevent Raise Dead, Reincarnate, Resurrection, and True Resurrection from allowing you to be returned to life. Heck, True Res doesn't even require there to be a body, but yet it is foiled if somehow you and/or your body are unliving.
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That must be kind of a surreal addition to the Boneyard 'line of souls,' the rare occasions when a light appears above someone in line and they are pulled back to the world of the living by some sort of raise dead or ressurection spell. Those adjacent in the great line, reach out, attempting to 'hitch a ride' and, who knows, maybe sometimes one of them succeeds, only to be 'reborn' as a shadow or wraith or something, having failed to return to the world of the living and only been ripped across the void as pure spirit, riven and tortured by it's incomplete passage...
I'm picturing adventurers standing in line saying "No, after you." and trying to shuffle backwards while thinking "Any time now... why is it taking so long for those guys to find the diamonds I stashed in my boots and the note to have me rezzed?"
Meanwhile, back in Absalom, the wake was fantastic!
In regards to Resurrections and suchlike, I think there are a couple important things to remember. First off, Pharasma is not just a goddess of death but one of prophecy. If anyone could lay odds on someone being resurrected, it would be her. Consequently, I expect that when everyone is getting ordered in their line to be judged, Pharasma has psychopomps with a list of those likely to be resurrected and when, if all goes according to what she sees as what will happen, and has those souls taken out of line and put in some variety of waiting room so the psychopomps can conduct the souls back at the appropriate time.
It would save a good deal of trouble for the goddess and also would endear her to all the other gods and goddesses so they wouldn't have to worry about go-backs of souls they think should be theirs.
As for the business with undead, it's kind of peculiar that the dead get to say "No" to coming back for a full-on Raise Dead or Reincarnation but cannot say "No" to coming back as undead. This also means that if you want someone back alive and they don't want to come back, you force their soul to come back as undead, then either command them to say "Yes" to a Resurrection or just skip forward and pay a powerful witch to whammy them with Forced Reincarnation.
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This, to me, is somewhat of the sticky point though... As having your body reanimated as some form of undead does prevent Raise Dead, Reincarnate, Resurrection, and True Resurrection from allowing you to be returned to life. Heck, True Res doesn't even require there to be a body, but yet it is foiled if somehow you and/or your body are unliving.
IMO, and it's obviously a controversial one, this rule was put in place to stop what, from what I recall of 1st edition, was the fairly standard tactic at mid to high levels of using raise dead / Rods of Ressurection to Insta-gib vampires and liches.
"Mwhaha! I am Strahd von... Ack! I'm human again!"
"Yeah, that was totally worth 4 charges. So? Tomb of Horrors next? I want to see if Acerak remembers where he kept his spellbooks."
In-game, I guess the presence of all that negative energy in the body prevents raising, and even in the case of true ressurection, it only works without a body, *if there's no body.* If there is a body, the spell seeks the path of least resistance and attempts to ressurect the body, which fails, since it's all full of icky negative energy.
(That doesn't explain why reincarnate doesn't work. Reincarnate not working could be considered stone cold evidence that animate dead *does* affect the soul, since the condition of your original body is pretty much irrelevant to reincarnation. This is the sticky point, since, mechanically, your corpse being used as a zombie, animated as an object by positive energy, infested by a hive-mind cockroach swarm using it as a shambling meat-suit or filled with yellow musk spores, should have zero bearing on whether or not you can come back in the body of an angry badger.)
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In-game, I guess the presence of all that negative energy in the body prevents raising, and even in the case of true ressurection, it only works without a body, *if there's no body.* If there is a body, the spell seeks the path of least resistance and attempts to ressurect the body, which fails, since it's all full of icky negative energy.(That doesn't explain why reincarnate doesn't work. Reincarnate not working could be considered stone cold evidence that animate dead *does* affect the soul, since the condition of your original body is pretty much irrelevant to reincarnation. This is the sticky point, since, mechanically, your corpse being used as a zombie, animated as an object by positive energy, infested by a hive-mind cockroach swarm using it as a shambling meat-suit or filled with yellow musk spores, should have zero bearing on whether or not you can come back in the body of an angry badger.)
This is how I'd explain it:
The soul 'wants' to return to its original body, sort of a resonance thing. It can't enter a body animated by evil energy or one 'spoiled' by the previous presence of such. This is why you need to destroy the animated undead first. Ditto for reincarnation. Normally, the resurrection spell can use the dead body as a lodestone to draw the soul back and then into the new form via the 'touch' part of the spell. The above spoils this.
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The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged.
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Finally, spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray that do damn souls to Hell (such as trap the soul) do bypass Pharasma as well.
Do you think that Pharasma would grant her clergy alone a way to make a soul 'jump the queue'? That is, once they managed to track down someone who really needed killing, they could make them appear at the front of the line for immediate judgement and consignment to their appropriate fate?
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The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged.
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Finally, spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray that do damn souls to Hell (such as trap the soul) do bypass Pharasma as well.
Do you think that Pharasma would grant her clergy alone a way to make a soul 'jump the queue'? That is, once they managed to track down someone who really needed killing, they could make them appear at the front of the line for immediate judgement and consignment to their appropriate fate?
Oooooo! I like that. Maybe not for every cleric, but perhaps a special PrC type of Pharasma's.
IMO, and it's obviously a controversial one, this rule was put in place to stop what, from what I recall of 1st edition, was the fairly standard tactic at mid to high levels of using raise dead / Rods of Ressurection to Insta-gib vampires and liches.
"Mwhaha! I am Strahd von... Ack! I'm human again!"
"Yeah, that was totally worth 4 charges. So? Tomb of Horrors next? I want to see if Acerak remembers where he kept his spellbooks."In-game, I guess the presence of all that negative energy in the body prevents raising, and even in the case of true ressurection, it only works without a body, *if there's no body.* If there is a body, the spell seeks the path of least resistance and attempts to ressurect the body, which fails, since it's all full of icky negative energy.
(That doesn't explain why reincarnate doesn't work. Reincarnate not working could be considered stone cold evidence that animate dead *does* affect the soul, since the condition of your original body is pretty much irrelevant to reincarnation. This is the sticky point, since, mechanically, your corpse being used as a zombie, animated as an object by positive energy, infested by a hive-mind cockroach swarm using it as a shambling meat-suit or filled with yellow musk spores, should have zero bearing on whether or not you can come back in the body of an angry badger.)
However, in response to the bolded area, with spells such as Create Undead and its greater version, even True Resurrection can be rendered impotent when a corpse is defiled to make an incorporeal undead.
Raise it as a wraith, then Disintegrate body... Vio-la!!! One soul that cannot be restored even by True Resurrection, since there is no longer a "defiled body" to prevent raising. We now have a defiled soul, in essence.
I really truly doubt that the original AD&D rules were written with this situation in mind and the philosophy behind the body/soul connection. However those rules as a legacy influenced stuff right up to the present, which ends up with us having to rationalize things and to try to make the world flavor mesh with rules that IMO were never originally designed back in 1e or before with the fluff based implications as a driving factor.
That said, defiling a soul sounds like a hell of a Friday night. Or for me, the standard.
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As for the business with undead, it's kind of peculiar that the dead get to say "No" to coming back for a full-on Raise Dead or Reincarnation but cannot say "No" to coming back as undead. This also means that if you want someone back alive and they don't want to come back, you force their soul to come back as undead, then either command them to say "Yes" to a Resurrection or just skip forward and pay a powerful witch to whammy them with Forced Reincarnation.
Undeath is not a good thing. One of the ways it is not a good thing is that you don't get a choice if you get turned into an undead. Just one of MANY ways that undead are evil.
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The actual TIMING of how long it takes Pharasma to judge a soul that's died is the question, and fortunately, since her palace in the Boneyard is both a place where time stands still and time is infinitely fast (you can do that in crazy outer planar regions), the assumption is that whenever a mortal raises someone from the dead via WHATEVER method, that soul hasn't been judged yet. Once no mortal can or does resurrect that body, the soul has been judged.
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Finally, spells like Malediction and Hellfire Ray that do damn souls to Hell (such as trap the soul) do bypass Pharasma as well.
Do you think that Pharasma would grant her clergy alone a way to make a soul 'jump the queue'? That is, once they managed to track down someone who really needed killing, they could make them appear at the front of the line for immediate judgement and consignment to their appropriate fate?
Nope, because that opens that kind of thing up for GMs to use against player characters, and that's not cool.
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Raise it as a wraith, then Disintegrate body... Vio-la!!! One soul that cannot be restored even by True Resurrection, since there is no longer a "defiled body" to prevent raising. We now have a defiled soul, in essence.
Doesn't really work that way. Once the undead is destroyed, it's no longer undead. And once that happens, the soul that it corrupted is free to go on to the Boneyard.
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Nope, because that opens that kind of thing up for GMs to use against player characters, and that's not cool.
Do you think that Pharasma would grant her clergy alone a way to make a soul 'jump the queue'? That is, once they managed to track down someone who really needed killing, they could make them appear at the front of the line for immediate judgement and consignment to their appropriate fate?
That's a good point. I hadn't considered it from a generic GM point of view. Thanks.
I'd use it on a PC only if someone was taking a break and the rest of the party fancied a epic adventure to recover their comrade from beyond the final veil of death.
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As for the business with undead, it's kind of peculiar that the dead get to say "No" to coming back for a full-on Raise Dead or Reincarnation but cannot say "No" to coming back as undead. This also means that if you want someone back alive and they don't want to come back, you force their soul to come back as undead, then either command them to say "Yes" to a Resurrection or just skip forward and pay a powerful witch to whammy them with Forced Reincarnation.Undeath is not a good thing. One of the ways it is not a good thing is that you don't get a choice if you get turned into an undead. Just one of MANY ways that undead are evil.
Oh, I agree.
Bearing that in mind, I think a reasonably phrased Limited Wish, Wish, or even Miracle from an appropriately nasty and/or ruthless god should be able to raise or reincarnate a soul without their approval.
This of course would depend on your cosmology, where the soul was in the paperwork process, and how tightly assorted gods and goddesses have the keys on the souls in their keeping.
Another thing you can do is go with the Egyptian or Chinese metaphysics with there being multiple parts to the soul, one of which remains with the body wherever the body is. The spell Speak with Dead already intimates this metaphysics is partially correct, since the memory of life in the body is able to answer questions while not disturbing the actual soul wherever it is.
Presumably, if you're going to animate a skeleton or zombie, the dark negative energy animates it with this portion so the body remembers how to move and so on, meaning that the soul could still be elsewhere while this happens. However, that portion of the soul is still needed for the full soul to be raised. Ergo, the skeleton or zombie needs to be deanimated before a resurrection or true resurrection works.
This would also mean, metaphysically, that if someone dies and is then reincarnated, their former body should be useless for both Speak with Dead and also for Animate Dead, as this portion of the soul has been removed from it, leaving it inert.
Then again, I'm pretty sure most of these questions are left unanswered so every GM can decide for his world and himself, depending on the story he wants to tell. I'd presume there are cabals of ruthless necromancers out there who've already answered all these questions via experimentation (Necromantic inquiry #2: We have killed a subject, reincarnated him, then killed him again. Can we turn him into an undead using the original body?) but their work isn't widely published because it's up to the GM to decide the results. Which is cooler: meeting an undead version of your former self or not being able to do that?
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.....the soul that it corrupted is free to go on to the Boneyard.
So here is my example. Ok you have an Azlanti Lich whom has been living in an abandoned outpost on the western coast of Varisia, thousand upon thousands of years old.
A) If he is destroyed and then True Resurrection is cast on his "soul" would he be able to come back within the rules?
B) Is there any way within the rules said "ancient" Lich could be brought back to mortal form?
.....the soul that it corrupted is free to go on to the Boneyard.So here is my example. Ok you have an Azlanti Lich whom has been living in an abandoned outpost on the western coast of Varisia, thousand upon thousands of years old.
A) If he is destroyed and then True Resurrection is cast on his "soul" would he be able to come back within the rules?
Only with a caster whose level is well over 20th.
With True Resurrection, the limit is 10 years per caster level, so 200 years dead max. Anything over that, you need a caster level over 20.
Using a philosopher's stone, you're also at the limit of 200 years because it's caster level 20th.
Thankfully, these aren't the only knives in the drawer.
B) Is there any way within the rules said "ancient" Lich could be brought back to mortal form?
Sure.
Easiest way is if the ancient lich, when he was a young apprentice, had the foresight to cut a small hunk of flesh off himself, coat it with Unguent of Timelessness, then use that piece for a Clone spell. That should recreate the body as of the moment the sample was taken but leave the mind as it is at the moment.
Of course, it may be possible that the lich didn't have the foresight to do this, or that while he did, sometime in the intervening years, something happened to the sample. I mean, he thought the safe deposit box at the First Bank of Azlant would be secure. Who would have thought they'd sink the entire continent?
That all said, Limited Wish should be able to retrieve/recreate such a sample and Wish certainly could even if the lich didn't have the foresight to do this, if just because Wish can reproduce Polymorph Any Object which has the power to permanently transform all sorts of things. Or just skip to that and transform the 2000-year-old mummified lich pinky finger into a 20-year-old freshly severed apprentice pinky. That's a permanent transformation since all you're doing is changing the sell-by date on dead meat and should give you a perfectly viable sample for a Clone spell.
Having regrown the lich's apprentice body, his ancient soul can then go in when it's ready to come out of the vat.
Or you can go the divine route and have a Miracle cast by a priest of the god who currently has the lich's ancient soul, assuming Pharasma has done the paperwork and sent it anywhere else but with her. In that case, the goddess would be Pharasma who would be granting the Miracle to let the True Resurrection work, not by increasing the caster level so much as changing the decimal place of the time the body has been dead. Of course convincing them is more of a pain, so going the route of Polymorph Any Object + Clone seems a safer bet, even if you get a negative level.
Raise it as a wraith, then Disintegrate body... Vio-la!!! One soul that cannot be restored even by True Resurrection, since there is no longer a "defiled body" to prevent raising. We now have a defiled soul, in essence.Doesn't really work that way. Once the undead is destroyed, it's no longer undead. And once that happens, the soul that it corrupted is free to go on to the Boneyard.
In the case of wraiths, and other incorporeal undead, are they not then "tainted souls" with no longer any bond to their physical bodies? There is still a body left behind when they are raised, isn't there?
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This whole topic has me thinking of some Pharasma lore that might be fun if it ever has a way to work into my campaign.
I can picture a section of Pharasma's domain, the Restless Warrens, where she has special guards placed to guard the souls of those that have been animated as mindless undead.
The process draws the souls back towards their bodies, and to keep them safe and to secure Pharasma's right to either judge them or uphold he judgment, the guardians keep the souls carefully watched until such time as the animated bodies are destroyed and the restless ones no longer are drawn to them.
In order to keep the restless ones placated, the Restless Warrens have a pool in the center of the place called the Pool of Unblinking Eyes, where any of the restless ones can look and they will see in the waters what the eyes of their bodies see. Sometimes they are horrified, but while gazing through their old eyes the desire to enter their old bodies is quieted.
Once the animated forms are destroyed, the link is gone, and the guardians escort the soul back to its proper place, either back in line or in their final resting place.
Not unlike the remains of a saint, those souls that have become the basis of a celestial being such as an angel have their former bodies consecrated in such a way that they cannot be animated. This is not true of all good folk that pass on to their final reward, only those that become celestials, so as to allow them to not be distracted from their works.
Fiends are not quite so fortunate, and are often especially irritated by the feeling that part of themselves is bound to a mortal shell. Devils are often especially tormented, as they are not allowed to freely seek out these former shells quite so easily.
Those whose fate calls for them to return to Golarion reincarnated, either by Pharasma's decree or their own god's final pronouncement, may experience strange unsettling dreams while their former bodies are animated, and upon death, Pharasma's guardians immediately escort their soul to the Restless Warrens to await their old bodies demise (though these poor souls have the added discomfort of possibly having more than one body animated, and thus staying in the Restless Warrens even longer).
For those that are buried and decaying in the afterlife, there is no great change to their status, save that their rotting soul form cannot fully decompose and redistribute its soulstuff back to the multiverse until their former bodies are destroyed, at which point the decay rapidly reinstates itself.
Or something like that . . .
All these ideas inspired some interesting adventure sketches:
1. Go to the Boneyard to plead for a recently dead person; perhaps not to resurrect them, but to assure them a pleasant afterlife.
2. Or, as a variant, the classic Orpheus and Eurydice legend, but substituting Pharasma for Hades.
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Creative Director
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In the case of wraiths, and other incorporeal undead, are they not then "tainted souls" with no longer any bond to their physical bodies? There is still a body left behind when they are raised, isn't there?Raise it as a wraith, then Disintegrate body... Vio-la!!! One soul that cannot be restored even by True Resurrection, since there is no longer a "defiled body" to prevent raising. We now have a defiled soul, in essence.Doesn't really work that way. Once the undead is destroyed, it's no longer undead. And once that happens, the soul that it corrupted is free to go on to the Boneyard.
There is no body left behind when you kill a wraith, so in that case it IS harder to resurrect them, requiring the highest level effects to do so.
No mortal spell can bypass Pharasma's judgement and restore to life someone who's already been judged in the Boneyard. In order to restore someone to life who's been judged, you basically have to go to the Boneyard and plead your case directly to Pharasma, or you have to go track down whatever fate befell that judged soul, find a way to make it remember its life, and then drag it back to life. Like in all the myths.
Spells that create undead do sort of bypass Pharasma's judgement... but Classic Horrors certainly overstated things. You can't completely rob Pharasma of a soul to judge by casting animate dead on a body, but that act certainly violates the body and annoys Pharasma. Even if a soul's been judged and has moved on to its reward/punishment, if it's body's still around you can still animate it if you want.
I'm glad that I stumbled into this info. I have one question though: Is there any major difference between an undead that has had a soul dragged back into it and an undead that was animated after the soul was judged? Some people would probably claim that if you cast animate dead without trapping a person's soul it becomes morally neutral rather than evil. The only argument that I can think of that would make the act evil is that the body is being defiled.
I'm glad that I stumbled into this info. I have one question though: Is there any major difference between an undead that has had a soul dragged back into it and an undead that was animated after the soul was judged? Some people would probably claim that if you cast animate dead without trapping a person's soul it becomes morally neutral rather than evil. The only argument that I can think of that would make the act evil is that the body is being defiled.
There are all sorts of arguments as well as undefined metaphysics.
For example, a necromancer uses Clone to clone himself. He now has an inert body that looks like him. Can he cast Animate Dead on it to rise it up as a zombie which is also a highly effective body double? Can you Animate Dead on a dead body that never had a soul? We're not talking intelligent undead, but mindless undead.
There's also some trouble with the way that, any time a necromancer makes a skeleton, it automatically gets proficiency with a sword, even if it's the skeleton of a milkmaid who never touched a sword a day in her life. It croggles the brain to think of any sane metaphysics which somehow pulls the milkmaid's soul back to her skeleton and gives her full sword proficiency but lacking in any knowledge of how to operate a butter churn.
Now, the reason we've got skeletons running around with swords is because everyone remembers the great scene from Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts where the evil necromancer sows the ground with the teeth of the hydra and a bunch of skeleton warriors pop out of the ground.
Check that out and listen to the dialogue from the invocation: "Rise up you dead, slain of the hydra. Rise from your graves and avenge us. Those who steal the golden fleece must die."
To put not too fine a point on it, the necromancer isn't summoning the tormented spirits of milkmaids and magically shoehorning martial weapons proficiency into their tormented skulls, he's specifically summoning up the spirits of warriors slain by the hydra by means of sympathetic magic via the hydra's teeth.
Admittedly the original legend had the hydra's teeth sprouting living warriors, but the Harryhausen version at least provides a rational explanation for who these skeletons were and why they know how to swing a sword.
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Creative Director
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I'm glad that I stumbled into this info. I have one question though: Is there any major difference between an undead that has had a soul dragged back into it and an undead that was animated after the soul was judged? Some people would probably claim that if you cast animate dead without trapping a person's soul it becomes morally neutral rather than evil. The only argument that I can think of that would make the act evil is that the body is being defiled.
As far as the rules are concerned, there's no difference between the two. The rules as written do not "trap souls" in bodies with animate dead, though; effects that trap souls are very high level (such as trap the soul or soul bind), and letting those effects get into a lower level spell like animate dead isn't balanced.
As for animate dead... that spell IS evil. It's got the evil descriptor, and skeletons and zombies are both evil as well, because they're undead.
If you want a non-evil animated corpse, you have to do so via the animate objects spell. Doing so makes the body into a construct, not an undead. And it's higher level because it's harder to create life than it is to enslave it, basically.
OK... how to put this...
Of all of the undead, do not the incorporeal undead (such as shadows, specters, wraiths and ghosts) bypass Pharasma's Judgment?
They are essentially tainted spirits, aren't they? It isn't a body that has been defiled, but their spirit.
OK... how to put this...
Of all of the undead, do not the incorporeal undead (such as shadows, specters, wraiths and ghosts) bypass Pharasma's Judgment?
They are essentially tainted spirits, aren't they? It isn't a body that has been defiled, but their spirit.
Well, with shadows, specters and wraiths, if they were created by another undead's "create spawn" power or created by the spell of a dark priest or necromancer, then yes, they're defiled and basically possessed by dark evil black nastiness from the negative energy plane that makes them hate the living. They're not bypassing Pharasma's judgment so much as late for it, like all the souls trapped in the Final Blades.
Pharasma is likely not thrilled about it, but shouldn't count it against them when she does her accounting. Someone who lead a virtuous life until they were killed by a spectre really shouldn't be held responsible for what they did as a hateful spectre unless there's some extra bit of free will we're not being told about.
Shadows, specters and wraiths who arise on their own due to being nasty people in life or suffering really unpleasant deaths? More questionable what Pharasma thinks of that, but basically they're crazy. Interestingly, getting destroyed as an undead seems to work as therapy to get these souls to go back to the Boneyard where they're supposed to be.
Ghosts are another matter. They're also crazy, but if whatever keeps them tied to the earth is resolved, they go back for Pharasma's judgement. Whether they're held accountable for their actions while crazy undead is a matter of debate, but as ghosts can be of any alignment, they've got more in the way of free will and the "Here's what you did while undead" is less material than "Here's what you did while you were crazy."
Then again, in Golarion, you can ascend to godhood while you're drunk.
I have to say I really don't envy Pharasma's job.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Then again, in Golarion, you can ascend to godhood while you're drunk.
I have to say I really don't envy Pharasma's job.
Well if there's a divide between ascended mortals and the older gods (not to be confused with the Elder Gods) it might be a delay, not a change. Especially if Aroden just had an expiration date.
Cayden: Hey Pharasma, when can I ask you out?
Pharasma: *checks big book* I show you'll be finished in 1478 years, 27 days, 5 minutes, 30 seconds. So in 1478 years 28 days exactly from... now.
Cayden: Ok, that's cool. Wait...
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Creative Director
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OK... how to put this...
Of all of the undead, do not the incorporeal undead (such as shadows, specters, wraiths and ghosts) bypass Pharasma's Judgment?
They are essentially tainted spirits, aren't they? It isn't a body that has been defiled, but their spirit.
And eventually, ghosts are destroyed and allowed to move on to the afterlife. In fact, ghost-hunting is a big part of Pharasma's priesthood.
So how did Ghost Hunters International not make it into the Faction Guide?We had the "goofy idea" filter turned on, I guess?
Heh. The "goofy idea" filter is the Final Blade of freelancer manuscripts. ;-)
Heh. The "goofy idea" filter is the Final Blade of freelancer manuscripts. ;-)So how did Ghost Hunters International not make it into the Faction Guide?We had the "goofy idea" filter turned on, I guess?
We should totally pressure Paizo to publish a book of "Here's all the insane stuff our freelancers turned in that we said, 'Uhh... no.' to."
So speaking of that, how about it James? :D
;)
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Heh. The "goofy idea" filter is the Final Blade of freelancer manuscripts. ;-)So how did Ghost Hunters International not make it into the Faction Guide?We had the "goofy idea" filter turned on, I guess?We should totally pressure Paizo to publish a book of "Here's all the insane stuff our freelancers turned in that we said, 'Uhh... no.' to."
So speaking of that, how about it James? :D
;)
Nope. Not only do we want to preserve the appearance that everything that comes out of Paizo is perfect, but we don't want to reveal embarrassing and goofy ideas our freelancers come up with to the public. And being one of those freelancers myself who sometimes has goofy ideas, I heartily endorse this policy.
Not only do we want to preserve the appearance that everything that comes out of Paizo is perfect, but we don't want to reveal embarrassing and goofy ideas our freelancers come up with to the public.
Oh, I completely agree. Someone has to save us from ourselves. ;-)
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...Vive La Révolution!
--Neil
And eventually, ghosts are destroyed and allowed to move on to the afterlife. In fact, ghost-hunting is a big part of Pharasma's priesthood.OK... how to put this...
Of all of the undead, do not the incorporeal undead (such as shadows, specters, wraiths and ghosts) bypass Pharasma's Judgment?
They are essentially tainted spirits, aren't they? It isn't a body that has been defiled, but their spirit.
So, does this mean that those who have been killed by, and subsequently raised as, incorporeal undead do not go to the Boneyard?
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Creative Director
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So, does this mean that those who have been killed by, and subsequently raised as, incorporeal undead do not go to the Boneyard?And eventually, ghosts are destroyed and allowed to move on to the afterlife. In fact, ghost-hunting is a big part of Pharasma's priesthood.OK... how to put this...
Of all of the undead, do not the incorporeal undead (such as shadows, specters, wraiths and ghosts) bypass Pharasma's Judgment?
They are essentially tainted spirits, aren't they? It isn't a body that has been defiled, but their spirit.
If the rules state that the dead person cannot be restored to life, then yes. If the rules are silent on the matter, then also yes.
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So, does this mean that those who have been killed by, and subsequently raised as, incorporeal undead do not go to the Boneyard?If the rules state that the dead person cannot be restored to life, then yes. If the rules are silent on the matter, then also yes.
So an incorporeal undead is, as a poster upthread asked, actually the 'tainted spirit' of the dead person? If slain by a shadow, the new shadow that results isn't actually some negative energy undead thing spawned by your death (like a spider wasp or xenomorph, midwived by death, but not actually any continuation of the thing slain), but your corrupted human soul?
Since Shadows are pretty much universally Int 6, CE and have no motivation or goals beyond draining life, I never really thought of them as 'people.' They don't seem to have any of the characteristics of the person they came from, such as memories or intelligence or ethics or morals, which led me to think of them as something that came into existence as a result of someone's death, not a continuation of that person.
If a shadow (or wraith, spectre or ghost) is destroyed, say by positive energy, does this actually destroy the soul, since the shadow *is* the soul? Or does the process of 'destroying' the shadow only free the soul from that undead existence? Does the soul remember being undead (albeit probably much less intelligent?) Does it's former intelligence return? It's former ethics and / or morals? Or does it's time as an Int 6, CE critter permanantly taint it?
The idea of a shadow actually being a human soul (however twisted), and not just an undead monster that spawns by killing people, opens up a whole raft of questions, which would likely be of huge importance to Pharasmists, if destroying incorporeal undead through traditional means led to the annhilation of human souls (and, as the write up on Groetus suggests, the annhilation of everything!), or, almost as bad, their eternal damnation. I could see an individual capturing a shadow that represents the soul of a loved one, and confining it, working on a means to change it back, or at least remove the taint from it and restore it to an untainted soul, perhaps with Limited Wish or stronger magic, rather than risk the annhilation (or damnation) of their loved one's soul.
And it doesn't have to be a loved one. Paladins of Iomedae might wish to avoid allowing fellow Paladins, or Clerics of Iomedae, suffer this horrific final fate, and try to capture and 'fix' any that become incorporeal undead, rather than allow them to go to oblivion (or the Abyss!). Even if they lack the resources at hand to deal with them, they might still confine them and transport them later to a cleric capable of enacting the rites necessary to purge them of negative energy without destroying these souls, who, through no fault of their own, were tainted after death by the evil forces that they had sworn their lives to fight.
That could be an interesting adventure seed, actually. Party finds mostly-dead Paladin guarding a sphere of black glass enmeshed in golden traceries. She warns them that the sphere must be taken the temple at X, and under no circumstances should it be opened.
Inside are the souls of a half-dozen of her fellow servants of Iomedae, who fell to the spectral assassins of Tar-Baphon, and do not remember being healers or knights, only being monsters, at the moment. They must be escorted to the temple, where their souls can be cleansed and released to seek Pharasma's judgement. If they are released, and subsequently destroyed, a half-dozen of the most noble heroes of the war against the Whispering Tyrant will be damned forever...
Since Shadows are pretty much universally Int 6, CE and have no motivation or goals beyond draining life, I never really thought of them as 'people.' They don't seem to have any of the characteristics of the person they came from, such as memories or intelligence or ethics or morals, which led me to think of them as something that came into existence as a result of someone's death, not a continuation of that person.
Such would be the insidious nature of these fell necromantic energies... Stripping the poor soul of its "humanity", or at the very least suppressing it.
*shudders*
Nope. Not only do we want to preserve the appearance that everything that comes out of Paizo is perfect
This tempts me to writs some not-quite-perfect proposal, get it turned down and later publish it on internet as a living (or unliving as the topic goes) contradiction of thi statement...
but we don't want to reveal embarrassing and goofy ideas our freelancers come up with to the public. And being one of those freelancers myself who sometimes has goofy ideas, I heartily endorse this policy.
Admit, that you would be less eager to protect freelancers from embarrasment if you weren't on of them, wouldn't you?
And back to the topic (or somehwere near to it, at least).
Is there actual description of Boneyard and queue of souls awaiting judgemenet? I am thinking about shadowy half-existence reminding of Roman, Greek, older middle-eastern religions or Eberron's Dolruth where shadows of mortals (not to be confused with aforementioned shadows-as-monsters) mimic their former lifes, slowly devoid of their identities.