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I'm not sure how much of this is going to arrive at an actual question so much as an assemblage of vague gesticulating at lore, but something that has been eating my brain lately has been the interaction between the positive and negative energy planes as the cycle of souls.
In particular, I wanted to address your attention toward beings who, while still living, have an inverted relationship with vital essence such that their bodies gain sustenance through void and decay, and are harmed by life. This list includes but is not limited to dhampirs, urdefhans, mortics, as well as those graced with the divine mysteries of death.
Now, as (mostly) living, mortal creatures, these people have souls which will survive them and go on to the Boneyard for their final judgment. From Planar Adventures we know that souls themselves are made up of a) a spark of unaligned quintessence, i.e. raw spirit-stuff of the outer planes, infused with b) a unit of positive energy (p.67), as well as possibly other unmentioned trace ingredients.
I understand that dhampir and the like are intended to be rather unique exceptions to the relationship between living creatures and vital energy, but while I have an idea or two, I feel like I would like more insight into how this process functions beyond the way the game mechanics treat them. For example, do dhampirs et al still have normal, living souls inhabiting a void-powered vessel? I would say it seems like they must, since there is no garden of anti-souls mentioned in any sources so far, although it seems that urdefhan reportedly do have un-souls from their daemonic patrons.
I don't have the Guide to the Multiverse for reference, I vividly recall references to an ancient struggle between positive and negative planes remniscient of the mystery behind matter and antimatter, described as a primordial crime which robbed the negative energy plane of its potential for creation, forever relegating it to the role of cold, empty void. I have seen barely any reference to this event since, but the question still compels me. Are urdefhan an jury-rig version of the kind of life the Void would have produced in its own version of the Material, or was one or the other energy plane always meant to 'win' in order to begin the dualistic engine that powers the cycle of creation?
Basically, how do living creatures in a universe powered by positive energy, where almost all creatures from mortals to incarnated souls such as angels and demon are sustained by it, come to be physically healed and sustained by its antithesis, an energy known to bring only death and decay normally, while still alive?
Thoughts?
To the best of my knowledge, as you have pointed out there is no real definitive lore answer (maybe in Secrets of Magic?). In my headcannon, I just treat positive and negative energy as positively and negatively charged electricity. They're essentially the same thing, but have slightly different properties/directions, and the engineer behind the universe just decided to use a positive system rather than a negative one (which would probably leave the negative feeling slighted).
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The negative feeling slighted is IMO the cause of its plane's native inhabitants' tales of being robbed of creation.
The cause for even the existence of these native negative beings is unknown. Maybe a quirk in the whole cycle. Maybe something else.
I see the other negative-healed beings in a similar light.
The mere existence of undeath shows that the cycle and Pharasma's will is not all there is within reality.
To the best of my knowledge, as you have pointed out there is no real definitive lore answer (maybe in Secrets of Magic?). In my headcannon, I just treat positive and negative energy as positively and negatively charged electricity. They're essentially the same thing, but have slightly different properties/directions, and the engineer behind the universe just decided to use a positive system rather than a negative one (which would probably leave the negative feeling slighted).
Heh, I won't pretend that my high school Physics notes aren't covered in diagrams of two spheres, one blank, on shaded, with field line drawn from one to the other. I loved the mental image of positive and negative energy reacting like (if not being like) electric charge.
I do hope that the Secrets of Magic entry on the four essences written by Mark Seifter will shed some lore on my mad ramblings and headcanons. At least enough to let me know which of my various possible explanations is most supported by the text.
The negative feeling slighted is IMO the cause of its plane's native inhabitants' tales of being robbed of creation.
The cause for even the existence of these native negative beings is unknown. Maybe a quirk in the whole cycle. Maybe something else.
I see the other negative-healed beings in a similar light.
The mere existence of undeath shows that the cycle and Pharasma's will is not all there is within reality.
Indeed, I would say that Pharasma's will is not even the most significant determiner of the construction of the multiverse. If we take the Three Fears of Pharasma to be accurate, she is not directly responsible for the creation and ordering of the Great Beyond, so I readily accept the theory that there are things in the multiverse mysterious and beyond the will of even the gods.
In my opinion, I feel like the theft of the Void's creative potential may be more complicated than we might understand from that combination of words. After all, I believe that the Shadow Plane is also created by the Void as a twisted mockery of the Material, so perhaps having a missing power of creation says more about the ability of the void to create wholly independent creations. A 'damaged' power of creation, if you will. The parts are still there, but it can only perform pale reflections of creation.
At the very least, we know that when negative energy gets into a (ostensibly positive-aligned) body, it can crawl up in there and make it start moving again with an instinct to kill.
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Come to think of it, I do not remember there being any example of an undead rising from a peaceful dead unless active necromancy was involved. Spontaneous undeath is a thing but IIRC it is always linked with a pretty awful death and/or unfinished life.
Or is an abundance of negative energy enough to get undead ?
Is a dead and soul-less body positive-aligned ?
Come to think of it, I do not remember there being any example of an undead rising from a peaceful dead unless active necromancy was involved. Spontaneous undeath is a thing but IIRC it is always linked with a pretty awful death and/or unfinished life.
Or is an abundance of negative energy enough to get undead ?
Note also that the positive and negative planes are not at all mentioned in the Three Fears of Pharasma.
Admittedly there is no concrete evidence that I know of to suggest that the dead body of a Material plane mortal is positive aligned. The sceaduinar are said to despise undead as the bodies of positive-creatures in a twisted mockery of what a true negative life-form would be. Meanwhile, the Material Plane is on the same half of the planar coin as the Positive plane (albeit no more overtly positive-dominant than the Shadow is negative-dominant).
These don't seem to add up to sufficient reason to believe that a soulless non-living body is anything more metaphysically aligned than a vessel capable of being filled either with soul or void by means of necromancy.
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As far as spontaneous undead uprisings go, as you point out, the vast majority occur due to a traumatized or hateful soul clinging to its body after death (or becoming filled with negative energy outside of its body). However, it is my understanding that the mindless undead are capable of arising from nothing more than a concentration of negative energy (I can't point to any one source for this, but it would line up with concerns over proper burial rites and the notion of the undead uprising as a 'supernatural' disaster; likewise, an uprising not caused by direct magical intervention occurs in Carrion Crown).
Undead are also capable of rising 'naturally' through exposure to the mineral lazurite, but whether this has the correct mouthfeel for a natural, spontaneous uprising compared to undead spawn is debatable.
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It is correct, the energy planes are not mentioned in Three Fears. I was drawing allusion to the fact that the creation of the Outer Sphere seems to have occurred more or less by the action of the Seal, and not at the conscious will of any one creator. That said, I managed to conflate another Windsong Testament, the Rage of Creation, in its mention of Pharasma touching the 'source of the River of Souls' to activate it. Either way, the idea is to reinforce your point that the multiverse itself is not wholly within any deity's control, even Pharasma's, as a second point of evidence aside from the existence of undeath.
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I have been replaying Hollow Knight lately, so parallels about creatures comprised of both soul and void have been on my mind a lot. Unfortunately, trying to read between mechanics of the game itself often refuses to distinguish between negative energy and 'necromantic power', so the interactions can be difficult to pin down at times, even aside from accounting for the expansive lore of undeath.
Not exactly, or at least not explicitly.
Not every necromancy spell has the positive or negative traits, and the ones that do don't always obviously manipulate the energy they are tagged with. Vampiric Touch, for example, drains your living target of blood and life energy and draws it into your own body. Though tagged with the negative trait, it appears to manipulate your opponent's positive energy on the surface. One could make the argument (and this is my headcanon now that it has occurred to me) that the spell is actually using negative energy to attracted the positive without interacting directly (though why stealing positive energy only gives you temp HP is a little unclear and points toward more sophisticated but nevertheless unexplained interactions).
On the other hand, and more to the point, there are many necromancy spells which do not obviously include the interaction of either positive or negative. For three quick examples before I have to make supper:
* False Life creates a 'reservoir of necromantic energy'. If this reservoir is either positive or negative energy, the spell is untagged, and functions the same whether your are living or dead (and again, notably only grants temp HP, unlike Heal or Harm).
* Spirit Link appears to manipulate the targets' spiritual essence, and explicitly does not involve either positive or negative energy in the process.
* Goblin Pox, as well as most other poisoning or contagion-inducing spells I've seen don't offer explanation by what forces they operate.
I'll grant you there are only relatively few spells and a handful of monsters which use the phrase 'necromantic energies/power'. In most cases it appears to be used as a synonym for negative energy, but it is also not always explicit, since it is readily apparent that there are other energies which may be involved in necromancy (and at the very least, you'd expect positive spells likewise wield necromantic energies but are rarely called out as such).