Then it all falls down to "Evil" being a point of view. Correct?

What Crimson Paladin said. Necromancers are violating the freedom of the dead to go to Aetherius. That is evil. Are cops evil for preventing murder?

Again, consider spirit revenants like bound ghosts and bonelords. One can find soul gems in the latter's remains.


Even if this is so, it suggests that the're still sentient on some level.


It's evil to suppress one's freedom to suppress someone else's freedom? How Telvanni. By that logic, the necromancer is in no position to judge Arkay, he just has to find a way to thwart him.


That said, being wiped blank or recycled after each life doesn't sound very appealing to me, so maybe well organised 'school' of necromancers or god-like necromancer (looking at you, King of Worms and Scourg Barrow) could come up with a better alternative. Unless all they want to do is turn people into corpse puppets for their own drunken amusemant.

Freedom doesn't exclude cruelty.

Doesn't forbidding people from tormenting others for their particular purposes benefit everyone overall though? So that evil is defined by consensus?

Morrowind mentions that it's perfectly legal to sell bodies and souls for necromantic purposes. So if you make a contract with a necromancer where he pays you in exchange for him reanimating you for his own purposes after you die, is it still an evil act? No. Therefore, necromancy is not inherently evil.

I don't think revenants are souls, nor are shades. Ghosts maybe. I think some Necromancy is just basically using souls to enchant corpses, so it does include enchanting.


Now that I think of it, Necromancy would work pretty well with the Arena. As long as those bloodthirsty spectators didn't know the combatants have already died.

Necromancy is not inherently evil, but most of its practicioners are. It's fine to make one of those necromancy contracts to get subjects, but it's a whole different animal to re-animated peope you randomly dug up or killed.

You might want to reread 'http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Legions_of_the_Dead' and perhaps 'http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Blasphemous_Revenants'. Dark elves have written a few books about the dead and the undead. They did have the largest legitimate necromancy ancestor worship practising organisation in Tamriel so they knew what they were talking about most of the time.

I guess in KoTN the shade of Lord What's-his-name has a soul in it. Still, shades and revenants, including skeletons, don't have souls or are corrupted souls (really evil people I guess). I don't know about bonelords. Also, the Bonewalkers definition says "spirit" not "soul". I'm not sure if those are different, but "spirit" might refer to the energy of their soul, and not their actual consciousness. That might also be how enchanting works, by stealing from the souls instead of enslaving the soul outright.


And who said all necromancers practice on people? Animals can be just as good, we just dont see it in game asmuch because its not as cool.

I would think that many would view the act that reanimating the dead and enslaving their souls would be considered evil. I'm guessing that most necromancers raid tombs and practice their art on the innocent, although personally I have no problems on reanimating a bandit I just killed and forcing him to wipe out the rest of the camp. It seems to be no different that using illusion magic.

As for if they really conjure the soul back into the body, several in game books and events in Skyrim say or imply yes. Here are three examples that I found.

http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Arkay_the_Enemy
http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Blasphemous_Revenants
http://uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ancestors_and_the_Dunmer (this book has a lot on necromancy/souls/death, although I guess you could argue its validity)

There are a few necromancer related side quests in Skyrim. One of them (I don't remember the name) invovled you going into some nordic tomb and a woman was trying to resurrect her husband by using someone else's body (Holgeir). She failed this, and reanimated Holgeir and his wife(?) Fjori. Upon completing the quest, you free their spirits and they reward you for it. There is also the Blood on the Ice quest in which the necromancer Calixto is trying to bring his sister's soul back to the mortal world. However, unlike the previous quest, Calixto tries to use parts from many different bodies to do this. Unfortuantely you don't know if he'll be successful or not, but I think his chances are higher. After reading Ancestors and the Dunmer, it seems like a person's remains acts as a beacon for the soul to contact the mortal realm. The woman in the first quest failed because Holgeir's spirt was too strongly connected with his remains, while Calixto may have had a better chance since there isn't just one spirit connected with the body.

There was also the quest where necromancers tried to resurrect Potema, and although the player stops them, her spirit is still connect to her remains and at the end of the second quest, her remains are blessed by Arkay which should prevent anyone else from trying to bring her back to the mortal realm. Then there was the quest with the necromancer/philiac who reanimated bodies of woman, and managed to conjure up their ghost, which seems to be more or less like their actual spirit or soul. Again, their remains probably just acted as some sort of beacon to summon their souls. I also think that there is another quest in Skyrim in which a Nord talks about a Dunmer necromancer enslaving his ancestors...

I would also say that black soul gems are also within the field of necromancy. They too appear to be more or less evil according to the Ancestors and the Dunmer book, as it states that souls who were unwillingly bound to weapons go mad.

You could question all of the validity of these sources, but I have yet to stumble upon any good piece of information that indicates that you can reanimate a corpse without summoning its soul. The only thing that suggests this would be bethesda's gameplay mechanics, as the undead conjured in oblivion (and in morrowind too? ) had white souls. In Skyrim you can reanimate undead that you soul trapped, but you can't soul trap your reanimations. However, gameplay mechanics does not define lore.

It's a bit of a matter of perspective based on exactly what is done with the corpse. If you handle it with some degree of reverence, as the Dunmer seem to, that's one thing. If you go the route of Potema, that's DEFINITELY evil. As far as the conjurer in the College goes, mad scientists are mad scientists. They're not necessarily good or evil. They are mad scientists.

Well, to start, I'd say the type of spells used in Skyrim are not the typical run-of-the-mill Necromancy spells. After all, skeletons and zombies are not the same as a thrall. Thralls are just bad. Second, that's just because Necromancy isn't being used correctly (or rather, benevolently.) You wouldn't call a Destruction mage evil merely because he uses Destruction spells. You'd call a Destruction mage evil if he used Destruction spells to murder innocents and cause trouble. Likewise, we see hostile Conjurers all the time in Oblivion and Skyrim. That's because they use their Conjuring skills to conjure up hostile Daedra and wreak havoc. There are also Conjurers in the Mage's Guild who conjure things for the purpose of self-defense and speaking with other-worldly beings to learn.

Necromancy can be used for the benefit of people and society. It's all about how you use it, same as any other school of magicka.

Necromancy - Raising the dead.


And very often, the person being reanimated does not want to be a part of the ritual, so it's like an enslavement.


If Necromancers had only reanimated people whom sought undeath, like great warriors seeking eternal battle, and NOT desecrated the tombs of the honored dead, pissing off the townsfolk, then Necromancy might have bit permitted.


Problem is that a lot of Necromancers are often mad with power & don't care about respecting the dead.


... oh, and undead, even free willed ones, are kind'a... hungry for blood, pain and agony. That makes them also pretty scary as well.

All that evil magic flowing through your body(or rather, spirit) really isn't good for your sanity...

story reasons in ob, necros were allied with the cult of mannimaccaro (spelling?) Also its not a real nice thing to do anyways, first you have to find a corpse, which are much easier to make than find, play around with it (which is weird), and then...well you sic it on unsuspecting adventurers to create more zombies...its a never ending cycle

also in skyrim you can become a half ass necromancer, so i guess it doesn't make you evil by default

Problem with necromancer's is that they usually hold themselves up in some cave for excessive periods of time, and then they just start to unravel. One women turns to Necromancy to raise her husband from the grave once more, and when that doesn't pan out, she has insane visions of grandeur and vows to make everyone who participated in the great war pay for what they have done. Then you get guys like Arondil who start getting really nutty, and it all goes down hill from there. Unfortunately for necromancers, its guys like these that become infamous, which paints a pretty pessimistic picture for them, especially in a like Skyrim.

Surprised that lichdom hasn't come up yet in this discussion, given that it's a core practice of necromancy, yet the only good lich is a dead lich. Mannimarco himself was the only one (IIRC) you could actually hold a conversation with, and even he was somebody you would never turn your back to.

Lichdom is held to a different standard because it involves you practicing it upon yourself, and not others. Its your body and soul, not some poor strangers, at stake.

Lorgren Benirus has a conversation with you too.

And corrupted shades are the coolest things ever. ever.

There's also Aesliip in Bloodmoon. You could talk to him, and he was rather forthcoming and trustworthy. Might not be as strong as Manni, but he was a lich capable of holding back a daedric horde on his own for many years.

Daggerfall had a quest where Vaermina tasks you to kill an innocent Lich. And Barilzar seems to be guilty about his misdeeds, as he says that the evil artifact he created should never be used again.

Also Underking is a Lich (albiet not a normal one, and not of his free will) and he is relatively nice.

Do we know how someone becomes a lich? It might not be unethical to do so, especially under circumstances like Aesliip's, if it doesn't involve sacrificing tons of innocents and stuff like it seems to in a lot of fantasy settings.

People are evil, not the actions they chose to do. Evil and good, no matter how you describe, are subject to points of view and bias. There are only actions which harm and actions which help. There is no action which does neither as to do neither is to do nothing at all. Is Necromancy, as an art 'evil'? Subjective. Is it a pure action? I'd have to argue no, it seems to be a rather impure action as it implies more harmful action then helpful action. However, if a necromancer were plying their 'trade' to help society as a whole, then I'd argue for it being a pure action (good luck finding that situation!). Really it all falls down to circumstance and individual. As for the one's encountered in game, I'd imgaine they attack you for research material. In case you're wondering they would be doing impure actions, so go ahead and take care of 'em.

Sources are Mannimarco, King of Worms, and The Path of Transcendence.