At best, Necromancy is questionable but at the same time, no one seems to care about the fact that you need to kill people or animals and use their soul in order to be able to enchant an item, yes i'm aware that it can be done with sigil stones aswell but i doubt that's how it's commonly done. But why is that? Taking someones soul sounds like a even worse crime than using their dead body, dosn't it?

Killing animals for their soul is no worse than killing the for their fur or their meat. Killing people is considered bad no matter what.

I wasn't supposed to kill people ?

I would consider it worse. :shrug:

You may consider killing a monster and harvesting its soul worse than simply slaying it but apparently Tamrielic morality is different. A group of people opposed to soul gems and by extension enchanted items would be interesting to include in the game.

I imagine the average resident of Tamriel expects soul gems generally contain daedra or terrible monsters in which case it's best that they were killed to begin with.

you consider it worse because on our planet we can't harvest animal's souls.

Using black soul gems aside, enchanters never use the souls of people, they only use the souls of animals and monsters, which I would imagine is why it's considered acceptable. I'd imagine that Tamriel's society isn't that big on animal rights, as a whole, or Daedric rights or goblin rights, for that matter. So they probably don't consider killing and trapping the souls of these creatures to be unacceptable. Now if someone used a black soul gem to trap a person's soul and use it for enchanting, I'd imagine that would be regarded as wrong, but black soul gems aren't exactly common-place items, which I think answers the question. Basically soul trapping creatures that are not people is considered okay because Tamrielic society doesn't see harming them as unacceptable.

Though going by this logic, I could see certain select groups seeing it as wrong, and it wouldn't surprise me if such groups exist, though they're not that often portrayed (Though I do, at least, recall a Redguard mage in Oblivion who still has objections to certain areas of magic, stealing souls among them.) in the game, but I'm talking about the general beliefs of most people in Tamriel here.

Read http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Aetherius

Anytime anything dies, their soul eventually gets recycled into magicka anyway. Enchanting an item with it really just quickens the process.

When you kill a daedra, it really just gets banished back to Oblivion, so trapping its soul might be the only way to truly destroy a daedra completely. Which would make soul trapping a service to society.

This deviates from the op question but I think they made necromany illegal because it adds more variety to the game. Most of the mages guild quests in OB were related to necromancy issues. If everything was okay to do and nothing you did was bad, then that'd get kinda boring after a while, at least for me.

And on the enchanting items thing, didn't they have that in Arena? Honestly, it was just something cool to add to the game back in the early 1990s. You don't need to look too deep into it, although it is fun to discuss it (which is why I'm posting here). But I don't think they even had necromancy in mind when they made the first game.

That spell "Destroy" in http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Magical_Effects was an awesome idea. It'd be too hard to make it work in current games but I hope Bethesda's team uses technology that'll allow a spell like that to be used to destroy static objects.

Boy I really went way off topic with this post.

I hold the soul of Alamenxia! I will eventually use it on a rusty iron dagger as an insult :chaos:

Thank you, this was the kind of answer i wanted.



If we asumme something like souls actually exist in reality, i can assure you i would consider killing an animal, taking its soul and destroying it more wrong than to kill it for food.



Interesting way to look at it.



Oh but i completely agree. Necromancy should be illegal, no doubt about that. I didn't mention it to justify necromancy or anything, i did it because i felt it was a double standard.

rotflmao!

Explain to me why necromancy is evil, bad, etc. Also, drawing from games other than TES is illegal.

You're pulling souls from their afterlife. That is evil.

As for soul collecting, I enchanted Vivec's teeth - the necklace w/ the fang - with his soul. I'd sometimes wave his teeth in front of the priesthood. I guess I'm evil, but whatever.

It's not "evil" by itself, but a lot of necromancers engage in grave-robbing and murder, both of which are very serious crimes in the Empire. In addition, many will summon and bind spirits without their consent, which is akin to slavery. And many necromancers work for Mannimarco, and those of his followers that take the time to talk to you in Oblivion show a disturbing sadistic streak. Of course, as seen in Morrowind, summoning and binding the dead is common practice, yet avoids the vices that separate it from what is traditionally considered "necromancy".

Agreed. I think of it this way: would you want your loved ones to become raw materials for some necromancer? It's wrong, no matter how much necromancy is glossed over.

Think of it as putting monsters to a better use, or bandits in my case. ^_^

It subverts the natural law that is established by Arkay. And he gets to dictate it because his being is wrapped up in that part of reality.

Ofcourse the Dunmer would say that it's time good for nothing uncle bobby made himself selves useful for the family.

The fact that some famous artefacts (practically everything in Tamrielic Lore) are supposed to have a mind of their own - Umbra in paticular - seems to support the idea some portion of the conciousness remains trapped in the object. It is probably acceptable as it serves the interests of the Empire - who have generally had a monopoly on magic through the apparatus of the Mage's Guild. When they were less dominant, in Daggerfall chiefly (although I havent played it) it was considered less savoury to 'deal in souls'. Although exactly how much existential languor can plague a mudcrab trapped inside an item is impossible to determine, but I imagine humans enjoy the experience somewhat less - regardless of Black Soul Gems being an abomination unto Arkay etc, Grand Soul Gems can catch creatures that are sapient and intelligent and once-man or mer, such as Liches, who presumably would feel some sort of suffering. Again, this is all in the realm on conjecture.

Surely reanimating the dead matter of a human being is very similar, as Preparation of the Corpse states more intelligent individuals make more intelligent minions - implying again some conciousness remains.

Whether or not conciousness in the Elder Scrolls is derived from the 'soul' or brain notwithstanding...

I imagine it is reasonably common to oppose Soul Gems and Enchanting in Hammerfell, but less so in say, High Rock or Summerset Isles.

Ugh, guys I knew what it all is, I was trying to get thehunter to say it :facepalm:

Any who, I still think too many people here need to be more open minded with necromancy. First off, it is legal throughout the empire, save for some areas (Morrowind, Summerset, and Valenwood). Breton nobles are rumored to have sanctioned necromancy in order to scare bandits, the empire employs necromancers and even donates fresh bodies, and the khajiit really don't give a damn.

Of the books about necromancy, I haven't seen where souls are used as ingredients to reanimate dead bodies. The only in-depth source doesn't even mention soul gems, only magic.


The dunmer do it naturally, but they're not considered evil, sometimes holy.


No one likes Arkay. And if his law was natural, dead bodies couldn't be reanimated in the first place. Plus, it's just a pile of flesh that only looks like your dead grandmother, it's not her anymore.

One thing, Necromancy is thought by the Mages Guild to have a bad effect on the practitioneer (from that discussion about necromancy with Hannibal Traven and two other people). No details, just that.

It really depends on how you were raised.

Most cultures in the empire would consider it an insult to use a person's corpse as a puppet, essentially.

But, if you were raised as a necromancer, which is a pretty extensive faction, further west, then you'd consider it an honor. The Bosmer eat their dead, I'm pretty sure.

It's pretty up in the air as to what's really the right or wrong thing to do with your corpses. It depends on where you came from.

Think of it this way:
After you die, would you rather that your corpse sit under ground and become compost, or to continue on fighting for your people. I'd say, that since the necromancers are a tightly-knit faction, and they consider death a reward, that most of the corpses under their control are of their own people.

Some necromancers will grave rob or murder, of course. But there are non-necromancers who rob graves and kill people, too. It's ignorant easterners who associate the majority of necromancers with grave robbing and murder.

Bosmer don't like necromancers for the explicit reason that they steal their food and play with it. Morrowind hates it for obvious reasons of ancestor worshiper (unless you are part of the temple, then it's holy). The altmer forbid any practice of it, unless you are a noble doing it for the reason of extending their life. Everywhere else, it's more or less okay, as long as you are not breaking any laws. Plus, the Cyrodiilic empire does sanction necromancers, often donating fresh young bodies to them (usually bandits). There's no east vs. west division of who likes/hates necromancers. Hell, from what it seems, if we are to take PotC wholly truthful, most necromatic research looks to be pretty much how the body works (and how to create free labor as a side bonus).

Necromancers get too much hell for playing with dead bodies than what it really warrants. You ask me, those daedric conjurers end up causing a lot more problems (even practicing students will occasionally lose control of their daedric pet), and destruction mages for obvious reasons.

And remember, children, necromancy is only banned IN THE MAGES GUILD.

I've always thought that around 80% of the population hates Necromancy, and even more don't practice it, but it has still remained legal in most places somehow. I have a feeling it will soon become illegal, and there will be some quests centered around it, that perhaps shows us to sympathise with the Necromancers, and abolish the laws against it. Perhaps we'll even be involved in the creation f the law itself, initially?

I've also always had the feeling, myself, that Enchanting is quite immoral, but I can understand people's want to be protected by such powerful items is often greater than thier moral sense. Most of my characters don't care about it, anyway.