Hi!

I have a witchhunter-type character that collects the souls of evil creatures/people. That used to include bandits, but after listening to their pvssyr-dialogue while sneaking, I'm not so sure if I will continue harvesting their souls..

Well, I dunno' if this makes me evil, loving, or utterly bat[censored] insane:

I have my wifes Shahvees death ALL planned out (if she ever dies, ofcourse!)

Get a black soul gem, svck out her soul, then use it on my armour so she will be with me even when in death.

Azura's quest gives a couple interesting insights into soulgems. No spoilers from me, though.

Haha, I see your point. I have 2 cats actually.

What I mean is, killing animals have always been a necessary evil. For food, pelts, might just capture the soul while you are at it

My main point is that it's just weird that noone (in-game that is) is questioning the ethics of capturing souls for your own good.
To doom a person's soul to eternal damnation and madness.

I know now that black gems are considered evil, but noone seems to really care about that either. It's just a loophole to bypass the gods for capturing human souls.

It seems all the intelligent creatures have some kind of god, and regards the soul as something that passes on when the body die. For Nords you enter Sovngarde and so on.
But to capture that soul of someone, even a lowlife as a bandit just seems evil to me. And like I said earlier, noone in-game seems to care about that fact. I haven't found any lore-books mentions it either.

I know some of you say that you just capture the energy of the soul when it leaves the body, but to me, it really seems like you are capturing the soul literally speaking. I'm also basing this on specific quest.

Anyway, I just find this whole concept very interesting

Yeah this is of long debate.

However, I think Azura's quest somewhat helps here.

This. Think of the personality of an animal, however crude or minimal. Think of that personality trapped within an object, fueling magical effect ceaselessly and without rest or reprieve. Forever. It's evil with man, mer, beast folk, or just plain beast. Too bad enchanting armor and weapons is AWESOME! ^_^

http://www.comicgasm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/cary.jpg

Your soul is mine!

I think capturing souls isn't really evil since it been going on for centuries, hell I even bet Tiber Septim captured a few souls himself for his stuff to be more powerful.

Using black gems to capture the souls of necromancers sounds fair enough to me.

Killing a sentient being in order to trap their soul is in itself comparable to murder followed by robbing the victim. The fact that soul drain is involved, makes it an evil practice. Animals ... well ... butchers kill animals for their flesh and pelts, we eat and wear them. Not evil in my book. The really interesting question is on some of the sentient races that can be soul trapped, e.g. goblins or golden saints. Is it okay to trap them because Arkay does not protect them?


Necromancy is much, much more than black soul gems. Given that spells to raise undead is common and easy to get at, I would hazard the guess that necromancy is not illegal in Skyrim.

Well that was quite a special case as

Pfft, if you could take his soul and make a magical sword out of it in real life, I'd say go for it!

This could go many different ways depending on what your beliefs are. I for one think that "soul" when capturing an animal's is more comparable to "life essence" or "energy". However, when you capture a black soul of a human(oid), their "soul" is their consciousness, thus imprisoning them and preventing them from going to their respective after life.

This is why the Mages College/Guild, etc. are fine with enchanting as long as it doesn't involve black soul gems, in the same way that "murdering" animals is legal.

Though, I believe human and animal "souls" differ. However, the religious beliefs of Bethesda's chief story people are the only ones that matter, as they ultimately decide on the TES reality.

I guess you are confusing sentient with sapient. Dont worry, happens the best of us. Its quite safe to say that most animal life is sentient (to a varying degree of course) even in skyrim.
Its interesting through, that since rise of certain monotheistic religions (which very much coincided with the introduction of large scale or "industrial" animal husbandry removed from its earlier natural form - that is nomadic hunting- in other words, with starting to animals as useful property) proclaimed that the reason why it was OK to kill animals was that they did not have any soul and thus was not able to experience pain or anything else. This idea was actually still around until quite recently and was strong because it was part of religious understanding of life.

So I guess in an elder scroll context, given that its not just a surplus energy that is harvested as the being passes through the gem,( or if it escapes or moves on as the soul-gem breaks when depleted)
it would be considered very evil according to any definition that equals evil with harming or entrapping sentient life. However, there might be other doctrines that defines evil otherwise (for example questioning the gods, worshipping daedra or helping those who doctrine declares undeserving etc).

I generally am playing the game as a good guy. I use the black star to capture the souls (when I remember lol) of anybody who attacks me. I mean they are trying to kill me right? The best chance you have is if I forget to cast it and I do more than half the time so you at least have a good chance.

I personally like to believe that it's not just their energy, but their very soul you capture in a soul gem and they live life like the example everyone else has been talking about. It's why, as a collector, whenever I see someone whose soul I would like in my possession, I usually take something of value from their corpse that I can enchant with their soul.

And of course, I name the enchanted item after the harvested soul. And I'll only ever use an enchantment that makes sense with that select soul. A Fire mage gets harvested? Easy, Fire Enchant. Necromancer? Soul Trap. See, it works.

Fixed.