Wait, taking their life is ethically fine and doesn't need to be thought about, but trapping their soul is ethically questionable?

The way I see it, if people have become bandits, necromancers or just become plain evil, being trapped in a soul gem is a far lesser punishment then what awaits them in oblivion or in the void. As far as I am aware, in TES lore, I believe souls can only truly be destroyed in the void/by sithis, so soul trapping does not destroy a soul but what effect it has on a soul isn't really known.

If Soul Trap is evil, is absorbing a dragon soul evil also?

Lol actually they don't realise they exist, they just exist. Only a handful of creatures are even able to identify themselves in a mirror, and even they are not capable of reflection; that is, the ability to think about yourself thinking.

Hmm. If I were a Necromancer I would use teleology and declare that their soul had extrinsic value. For my purpose and my ends their souls are fair game.

Interesting thread.

I want to note that I miss being able to see which soul was captured in a gem. Did Oblivion have a hook that mods allowed us to see them? I know it was a default feature of Morrowind.

My ingame justification is that a soul is released through use of the enchanted item. No soul is ever destroyed.

I don't really have a problem with the whole soul trapping things. I need them AA soul gems to recharge my staff of magelight (aka the flashlight).

The Dragonborn's soul must be quite the prize for any necromancer out there. Hm.

Fun fact, when you soul trap something or someone into a ,say, weapon for example, they essentially become the weapon. They can hear you, see you, feel you, just not speak to you. In a sense it's pretty evil and almost like torture, being bound to an item forever, feeling everything but not being able to do anything. Read that in some in-game book... Or was it an NPC in Morrowind who told me that?

Here is my take on soul trapping.

Sentient souls are completely different from creature/animal/monster souls. The terms tend to refer to generally a "life essence" which is somehow related to magic in the Mundas universe.

It is evil to trap a sentient soul. In particular for any human or mer because it violates a pact with the Nine (Arkay in particular as I recall). Even evil humans or mer should not be trapped by a good character (in my opinion). The questionable area is Dremora. that may or may not be legitimate.

For creatures, the "soul" is a different thing entirely. In game there may be an afterlife for humans - we kind of see that in game. But I doubt there is an afterlife for mudcrabs. So you are really not harming anyone or anything by trapping creature "souls".

Undead are abominations. Killing them will often be a relief for them. I don't believe their "souls" are human or mer. They are just some sort of (re) animation magic.

I could never bring myself to soul trap a creature I summoned. Not so much because of the soul trap but because I feel bad about killing it. I summoned it to help, and not to get hurt by my (good) characters.

A role playing game. Some people like to get into a character, try and make them act in a consistent way with the role they imagine. So ethics don't go out the window if you want to role play an "ethical" character (I like that word). Or one who doesn't do what is right.

But like having a character who has an opinion on slavery in Morrowind.

It is an interesting question - I can't think of it, but what is the Lore stance on this? It seems like one of those things a religion of philosophy or culture would have an opinion on.

I also remember something like this.


See? Soul trapping is evil.

With the exception of Vampires and Liches that's pretty much true. I believe Lich store their souls within a special item and then remotely control their bodies via magic, since you can get white souls from them, my guess is that they set-up a sort of remote controlled animation spell over their own body. I'm guessing the Dragon Priests are Liches and that they store their true/black souls within the masks that they wear.

Vampires still have the soul they always had but are considered undead.

It's a good thing that you can't enchant underwear then :cryvaultboy:

No. Liches in TES don't have phylacteries that they guard with their un-lives.

Depends.

I soul trap necromancers for ironies sake.

I soul trap tons of animals.

But, if I am roleplaying as me, I probably wouldn't do it. It just seems wrong to trap someones soul to further your own needs.

I'd totally soul trap a bandit that just tried to kill me. May even keep the gem and do nothing with it, or stick it in a weapon.

Not sure if this is a response to my post, but I'll take a shot at it anyway. There are a number of rational arguments for why defending yourself or even murder is acceptable, but soul trapping is not.

What if, for example, a body is nothing but a meaty soul trap? Clearly superior to a sword or whatever because it's mobile and you control it, but if this is your interpretation of life on Mundus, then you're doing someone a favor by killing them and freeing their soul. This idea has some similarity to Aldmeri beliefs, though it's not exactly the same.

Also, if the soul is eternal, and the soul is the true essence of a person, then trapping it--possibly for a long time or forever--is much, much worse than robbing somebody of 30 or 40 years of life. There's also the state of the soul that is trapped. To what extent is it aware? If the soul is fully aware, then you're inflicting a potentially long-term or eternal torture on it. Even if the soul is in a sleep or dream-like state, it's IMO a lot more evil to capture, and/or arguably destroy, the essence of a being then it is to destroy the vessel of that essence.

But aside from Merari's and a couple other people's posts--and even in those I didn't see anything definitive--we don't know what a soul really is, or what trapping one means. So it may be an act of extreme evil, or it may be just a minor hiccup or inconvenience.

Also (responding to some other posts), just because the Aedra say one thing is good and another is bad, doesn't necessarily make it so. To borrow some lines:



In other words, while many on Tamriel would begin and end their concepts of morality on the words of the Aedra, not everybody would accept them as authorities. Others would prefer to develop their own beliefs through reason, such as the entire Dwemer race, for example (and I'm sure a lot of mages and others).

Sorry, just wanted to add that I thought Merari's posts were excellent, informative, and well-thought out. The idea that the soul provides the motive force to drive an enchantment is a great concept.

Even if this were true (i.e. official lore), though, there would still be the ethical issues of keeping a soul prisoner for an indefinite amount of time. At this point you might reasonably argue that trapping a soul is less serious than murder, what if a soul is trapped for a million years?

That line always gets me :rofl: