|
So in the Lost Omens setting when a person dies, their soul joins the River of Souls which traverses through the Elemental Planes before reaching the Astral Plane, moving from the Inner Sphere to the Outer Sphere, and moving onto the Boneyard.
Before reaching the Boneyard and being judged, there are plenty of things that can happen to a soul that prevents it from continuing its journey—souls being trapped via magic; souls being devoured by daemons; souls being kidnapped by hags and other creatures; resurrection and reincarnation magic; and being turned into an undead.
Being brought back as an undead is an action deemed evil by Pharasma, regardless of the intent as it is an interference in the natural cycle of life and death.
Once reaching the Boneyard, souls wait to be judged before being sent to their appropriate afterlife depending on their actions in life, principles, alignment, and deity (if applicable). Some souls get a second chance via reincarnation while others come back as specific races—Samsarans reincarnate into other Samsarans; some souls come back as Duskwalkers in service to the Boneyard and Psychopomps. Pharasma also sometimes holds a soul back if she knows they have not yet fulfilled their purpose before being judged.
After being judged, a soul moves onto the appropriate plane in the Outer Sphere. At this point, only very specific powerful and occult magic can bring a soul back and usually with consequences.
If the soul worshipped a deity, that soul ends up in that deities realm. When they arrive, a soul is transformed into an Outsider (an entity who's soul and body is the same) known as a Petitioner. An outsider loses all memories of their mortal lives but sometimes, almost never, an outsider does retain their memories.
A petitioner slowly transforms into a full outsider of that plane, with conditions determined by that plane. Outsiders are not immortal however, and while they can live for many many years, they will eventually dissolve into the quintessence that makes up the Plane they come from.
Planar quintessence is broken down into pure unaligned quintessence in the Maelstrom before passing by the Positive Energy plane where it is infused with positive energy, turning it into a soul waiting to be received by a mortal creature.
|
|
So with this lore out of the way (which is accurate as far as I am aware):
Can a soul be brought back as an intelligent undead once it has been judged? Has this always been possible?
I haven't been able to find anything that sufficiently answers what I am looking for and some of my players believe that the creation of undead being evil is because it CAN take a soul that has been judged (I haven't found any information to back up that claim).
There are reasons why I ask too. For example, if a person with magic tried to turn a 10,000 year old corpse of someone who's already been judged into an intelligent undead such as a skeletal champion, would the spell fail?
Has there ever been an instance of a spell failing that tried to bring someone back as an intelligent undead, because if there hasn't then that would leave the situation open as to what is actually happening.
Because either that means:
A) The soul just hasn't been judged yet, even though its been such as ridiculously long period of time.
B) It takes the soul from its afterlife, after being judged, and turns them into an undead which bypasses the time limits for resurrection magic. Then you could target that undead with Resurrection or True Resurrection to properly restore it to life.
Is there an official canon answer to any of this?
In the opinion of James Jacobs about 2 years ago, an intelligent undead cannot be created from a soul who has been judged.
Mindless undead, yes. Other undead, no.Could an undead be created out of a body whose soul has been judged and moved on, even just mindless undead? What would happen to the petitioner/outsider in that case?
From the Ask James Jacobs thread circa 2020. James often reminds us that his answers on the forum shouldn't be wielded as 100% official canon, but this matches my expectations of the circumstances.
|
|
In the opinion of James Jacobs about 2 years ago, an intelligent undead cannot be created from a soul who has been judged.
From the Ask James Jacobs thread circa 2020. James often reminds us that his answers on the forum shouldn't be wielded as 100% official canon, but this matches my expectations of the circumstances.Mindless undead, yes. Other undead, no.Could an undead be created out of a body whose soul has been judged and moved on, even just mindless undead? What would happen to the petitioner/outsider in that case?
Thank you kindly. Just what I was looking for.
On the one hand, once a soul has been judged it goes to its afterlife and becomes quintessence either used to shore up the planar structure or outsiders. After that their souls aren't available for resurrection, because they're something new and even blended with the quintessence of other beings to make up one composite whole. Short of a Judgement Undone or Wish spell, you can't bring those back. I can only assume the same is true for creating undead - if the soul is no longer there, then the spell doesn't consider it a valid target. On the other hand, even outsiders can be turned into intelligent undead despite being made of that quintessence. Arazni was an Astral Deva when she was Herald of Aroden, and when outsiders die their bodies are meant to be absorbed by the plane they die on. And yet Geb was able to turn her into a lich. So for the specific spell, I would guess it depends on what the spell is targeting - is it targeting the 10,000 year old corpse (which probably has an extremely low chance of creating a Consummate Undead) or is it targeting what that soul eventually became (which seems to have worked in Arazni's very specific case, but the workings of a wizard like Geb may not be replicable to even other powerful spellcasters).
And I'm also not sure whether undead should still HAVE souls. My first instinct is that, even for Consummate Undead, such a perversion of life necessarily cannot have a soul. What is animating the corpse is magically infused negative energy as a substitute. With some magical tinkering, or the natural buildup of necromantic energy, it can still think and feel and believe it's still the same person, and even retain much of its memories and personality, but it no more has a soul than an echo is the voice, or a footprint is the boot. But flipping through Book of the Dead seems to disprove that. Undeath appears to be the result of negative energy poisoning the soul and corpse (or just scraps of soul in the case of ghosts), which in the living is animated by positive energy, corrupting and infusing them to replace the positive energy. The stronger the soul, the stronger the undead. Something of the soul lingers, still tied to the corpse even after death, but the older the corpse the fainter the trace of it. But does that process replace the soul, or is the soul a separate multifaceted component, the same way the Egyptian Ba (personality) was separate from the Ka (lifeforce) and Ib (memory)? That might be one explanation for why Osiriani still mummify their dead when mummies are notorious for rising as fairly powerful undead - the process is meant to slow it down with rituals and rites to slow the necromantic buildup that replaces the Ka.
Makes the Pharasmin practice of throwing bones about seem a bit haphazard. :P
All knowledge of every mortal is stored with the Akashic Record (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Akashic_Record) so theoretically it wouldn't matter how long a person is dead and if their quintessence is absorbed, because their experiences are contained in the record, ready to be recalled and reconstituted into the individual. That's how I interpret it, anyway. Like the library of human brains in Westworld.
|
A few notes :
Undead creation is anathema to Pharasma. That does not make it evil per se though.
Creating lasting undead who can attack people is Evil though. But not because of Pharasma's opinion.
You could create an undead from an incredibly old corpse. It just means Pharasma knew the soul's fate was not done yet and withheld judging them.
Undead have souls (even if only tiny bits of them for mindless undead). It is what animates them. This is why undead are anathema to Pharasma. Because these bits of souls imprisoned in undead frames are not going through the cycle of life and death, thereby weakening it. Since the cycle is what ensures the continued existence of reality and Pharasma is its caretaker, undeath is a big No-No to her.
Finally, IIRC Devourers are also undead created from fiends who went too far away from reality.
I do not know of undead created from other outsiders such as Celestials (except for Arazni of course) or Monitors.