IN> Painted myself into a logical corner

[Jonathan Lang]

Note that Liber Umbrarum is primarily about spectres: ghosts,
apparitions, poltergeists, and will'o'wisps.  It doesn't have much of
anything to say about walking corpses, nor about Blessed or Damned
souls (nor Dreamshades, for that matter).

theheretik wrote:
> My poor undead protagonist has to collect X number of souls to save his own.

Is he aware that his soul isn't going to end up in Hell?  Seeing as
how he signed with a Balseraph, I can understand if that little detail
got left out; but still... (Remember: when an undead "dies", its soul
disintegrates, never to be seen again.  By anyone, Hell included.)

> What I've run against as an adventure-writer is--where do you keep a soul?
> He's on a boat, but I don't see it housing that many people,
> especially as they're not Damned properly speaking until
> they're dead.

Not Damned, no; but if they've signed a contract with a demon, they're
Hellsworn, which is almost as bad.

Are you going for soul-theft?  If so, you're going to need a unique
Artifact (probably of unknown origin) to accomplish it.  You _could_
use this Artifact as a way around the "disintegrating soul" problem as
well: figure that he's somehow come across an item which can be fed
souls; once it has acquired X souls, it tears them apart and uses
what's left of the raw material to rebuild undead soul.  I can see
three possibilities at that point:

1. The undead continues on as an undead, only now with an intact soul.
 Metaphysically, this runs in the face of how the undead are
described.

2. The undead's body comes alive again: he is now either a mortal once
more or a quasi-Saint (a human soul in a living Vessel, effectively
immortal).

3. The undead dies, and his newly-repaired soul moves on according to
the rules for the death of a mortal.  That is, the status of his
destiny and fate determine where his soul goes, unless the
newly-repaired soul counts as Hellsworn or he manages to anchor
himself to the corporeal or ethereal realm, becoming a spectre or
dreamshade respectively.  (The latter two options merely postpone the
inevitable, while the former kind of defeats the "save his soul"
angle.)  Chances are good that he's met his fate, so Heaven (destiny,
no fate) and reincarnation (no destiny, no fate) are almost certainly
out; that leaves dissipation (destiny and fate; and very ironic,
seeing as how this is what the artifact was supposed to prevent) or
Hell (fate, but no destiny; arguably not an improvement) as the only
remaining "normal" destinations available.  Not very promising...

Of the three options, #2 seems to be the only one that provides a
decent "out" for the undead's predicament while remaining more or less
within the spirit of the game.  Even then, the rules for his soul's
ultimate destination still apply: when his newly-resurrected body or
vessel finally dies, he probably won't have a lot of good choices.
The best result for him would be the soul-in-a-vessel angle, which
means that he's unaging - meaning that he can prevent his death
indefinitely if he's careful.  Now all he has to do is to figure out a
way to undo his fate, so that the more acceptable afterlife options
(Heaven or reincarnation) become possibilities once more.

-- 
Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang