Can shamans capture the souls of recently dead?

[Brootse]

Do souls go to the Spirit World for 7 days after dying? And if so, could shamans find them and how easily? Would having the corpse help in that? Would the souls be ghosts in rules terms?

Edited April 21, 2020 by Brootse

[Gallowglass]

7 minutes ago, Brootse said:

Do souls go to the Spirit World for 7 days after dying? And if so, could shamans find them and how easily? Would having the corpse help in that? Would the souls be ghosts in rules terms?

Those are really good questions. In my campaign we always played it that anyone with Second Sight could see the spirit hovering over a body for 7 days after death. My shaman PC was fairly scrupulous and never tried to capture any fresh ghosts, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do that by the rules. It just seems like a nasty, amoral thing to do. Rather than use a ghost I would probably just use the dead person’s POW, INT and CHA, no spells or anything. I would also let their spirit combat skill change to POWx5.

[jajagappa]

10 minutes ago, Brootse said:

Do souls go to the Spirit World for 7 days after dying? And if so, could shamans find them and how easily? Would having the corpse help in that? Would the souls be ghosts in rules terms?

There's been a few different notes on how quickly souls depart (do they linger for the full 7 days? or are they enroute during that time?), but the overall gist is that they are somewhere between where they died and the River Styx during those 7 days, which is why they can still be resurrected during that time period.  Once they've crossed the Styx/River of Swords, etc. and met Daka Fal for judgment, they cannot be resurrected.

During that time period, shamans should be able to seek out the spirit and bring it back (assuming the body can be brought to positive hit points to receive it). Likely the effort gets progressively harder each day.  Perhaps the 1st day they are still nearby, but then are pulled along the path to the Underworld.  I might require a Spirit Travel roll for each day after the 1st to find the way to the person's soul, then must convince the soul to return, and then additional Spirit Travel rolls to get back to the body.

Yes, having the body is needed for resurrection.  Having relics of the person should help too.  You could treat them as a ghost - whether or not they are hostile depends on whether they know the shaman. 

[soltakss]

9 hours ago, Brootse said:

Do souls go to the Spirit World for 7 days after dying?

Yes, but they are on the path of the Dead, only arriving in the spirit World proper after 7 Days and going through Daka Fal's Hall of Judgement.

9 hours ago, Brootse said:

And if so, could shamans find them and how easily?

Yes, shamans could find them.

How easy depends on the shaman, I suppose.

You could apply some modifiers to the shaman's roll. Have a look at the Affinity shamanic ability for some ideas about how this works.

9 hours ago, Brootse said:

Would having the corpse help in that?

Probably, I'd give a +20% Bonus for having the corpse available.

9 hours ago, Brootse said:

Would the souls be ghosts in rules terms?

I'd think so, yes.

A shaman could find a recently deceased spirit and bind it, to prevent Resurrection.

[David Scott]

11 hours ago, Brootse said:

And if so, could shamans find them and how easily?

This is covered in the Finding Spirits section on page 374. I'd say a dead person's spirit is common (people die all the time). The only major difference is where to find the spirit - 1 to 7 days Inner World, then the psychopomp of the relevant pantheon guides it onto the Path of the Dead, which I think is accessed through a hidden vortex. A shaman needs to learn where this is to act as a psychopomp themselves, Daka Fal shaman already know where it is as it's their job to see that harm comes to a dead spirit or that others tamper with it (have a look at the ritual in Cults of Prax). The Path of the Dead is an Outer Region leading the Courts of Judgement. 

[g33k]

It's worth noting, however, that Daka Fal is kind of central to that whole "moving the Dead to their Final Rest" sort of thing.

DF might not be best pleased by a shaman who made a habit of disrupting that process!

 

Other shamans' patrons might find it entirely appropriate; and of course some shamans don't have any special patron...

 

[Austin]

11 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

My shaman PC was fairly scrupulous and never tried to capture any fresh ghosts, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do that by the rules. It just seems like a nasty, amoral thing to do.

I have a player who is fixated on learning to do this exact thing.

Currently, I'm planning to let him play the hubris game with this one. It'll go badly some day.

[GAZZA]

Would this prevent "coming back from the dead"? (As opposed to "being resurrected"; that is, I'm talking about something like the Lightbringer Quest, or the Pharoah's self resurrection deal, or some other Heroic means of coming back to life).

If so it looks a lot easier than the Grisly Portions.

[PhilHibbs]

I think that's a very dangerous thing to do. Preventing a soul from going to its proper afterlife could even be a chaotic act. Of course there are established legitimate route such as resurrection, so I'm sure that there are ways to do it without bringing about chaos, just as there are ways of spreading disease and cannibalizing that are not chaotic, but not everyone is entirely comfortable with them. Especially the relatives of the deceased if they aren't on board with it.

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Crel said:

14 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

My shaman PC was fairly scrupulous and never tried to capture any fresh ghosts, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do that by the rules. It just seems like a nasty, amoral thing to do.

I have a player who is fixated on learning to do this exact thing.

The shaman in our last Gloranthan game sometimes did that, but not often.

She was a Daka Fal worshipper but justified it as being a representation of Daka Fal, so she could intercept these spirits. She always released them again to continue their journey.

I might rule that this interrupts their walking the Path of the Dead, causing them to remain as ghosts.

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, GAZZA said:

Would this prevent "coming back from the dead"? (As opposed to "being resurrected"; that is, I'm talking about something like the Lightbringer Quest, or the Pharoah's self resurrection deal, or some other Heroic means of coming back to life).

Yes, I think so.

Resurrection pulls the soul back from the Path of the Dead, so if the spirit is bound it cannot be resurrected.

The Lightbringers Quest requires them to find the soul and free it. So, they might rock up at the shaman's doorstep and free the soul from its binding. 

Self-Resurrection, the Pharaoh way or the Yelm way, probably requires the spirit to be intact and able to self-resurrect. The Pharaoh might be able to self-resurrect from his spirit being bound, but I doubt if he could. After all, that is pretty much what actually happened to him.

Of course, a Hero might be able to burst out from a binding Enchantment, or summon people to help become free.

[Runeblogger]

18 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

My shaman PC was fairly scrupulous and never tried to capture any fresh ghosts, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do that by the rules. It just seems like a nasty, amoral thing to do.

This also happened in a campaign I played in. One of the PCs was a shaman and he hated so much the villain of said campaign that when we finally defeated her, the shaman  had a fetish ready and he imprisoned her in it FOREVER. Pretty nasty, yes. He didn't confess it to the rest of the players until the campaign ended. 😋

[Mirza]

12 hours ago, soltakss said:

15 hours ago, Crel said:

On 4/21/2020 at 3:55 PM, Gallowglass said:

My shaman PC was fairly scrupulous and never tried to capture any fresh ghosts, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do that by the rules.

I have a player who is fixated on learning to do this exact thing.

Currently, I'm planning to let him play the hubris game with this one. It'll go badly some day.

The shaman in our last Gloranthan game sometimes did that, but not often.

She was a Daka Fal worshipper but justified it as being a representation of Daka Fal, so she could intercept these spirits. She always released them again to continue their journey.

I might rule that this interrupts their walking the Path of the Dead, causing them to remain as ghosts.

So how does this differ from the Bloody Tusk or oh say Thanatar again? Like those are the immediate comparisons I make to cults that interrupt the cycle of death like this, and it's something that every single npc should be making as well once they know. There should be some serious reconsidering if a character is attempting to recreate what a thoroughly evil and culturally unacceptable death cult (Bloody Tusk), or a chaotic death cult (Thanatar) does as a Shaman, Daka Fal or otherwise.

Dealing with the dead after they have made the journey to the Court of Silence, whether the spirit remains in the land of the dead or not, is one thing, but actively interfering with the cycle of death by trapping someone's spirit just after death with no intent to resurrect is perhaps one of the graver insults to Daka Fal, imo.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Mirza

[davecake]

I agree that binding a spirit of the dead prevents Resurrection and such things. Attempts to Resurrect will probably reveal that the spirit is not available, though. Resourceful opponents should be able to work out what is going on. 

This has lots of great potential for play (you want to Resurrect someone important, but an enemy shaman has bound them and you have a very short time line to find them!). I suspect it is known to people who care a lot about making someone dead, such as assassins, and keeping the spirit bound at least long enough to be unresurrectable is something that is often attempted. Black Fang is an assassin cult with shamans. You probably also find Jakaleel witches in Lunar Dart Competitions. In my game its been a thing the Lunar shamans of the Red School of Masks would do to enemies of the Empire. 

I think enslaving a spirit this way isn't necessarily regarded as awful as the Bloody Tusk or Thanatar. In some cults doing so voluntarily may even be an accepted practice the way a voluntary ghost binding is for Humakt. In some cults spirits of the dead voluntarily stay behind to be cult spirits/allied spirits etc (including Thanatar, for that matter). But doing it to the spirit of an enemy involuntarily is at least regarded like taking a thrall (only magic) at best, and likely something that is going to earn you the vicious enmity of the spirits family and allies.