Poll: Necromancy morality question (edited)

[King of Asgaard]

Forgive me for being callous, but when you have to make a call which will influence the city, morality is pushed back on your list of priorities.
Naturally, Option 1 is obviously the best. From a Utilitarian perspective, more good for all will come out of it, since victory is assured, and a few people crying because the corpse of a loved one was 'desecrated' (which is bullshit) is immaterial. It was that or everyone joining ol' Uncle Jeremiah six feet under.

 

[Wintermoot]

isn't surrendering a option?

"if fighting is not to result in victory then you must not fight even if your lord wants you to"​

-Tsun Zu​

otherwise help the necromancer but have him under some kind of kill switch also the raised army must wear masks to maintain morality.
PS after the battle he zombies must be undone

 

[Versuvius]

Fuck yeah necromancy. I love me some dread necromancers. I also accept them prestiged as cancer mages, lich'd and bloat mage.

 

[Biosophilogical]

I think you shouldn't do the necromancy thing unless there is some practical way to discriminate between corpses of people who would have been fine with it and people who wouldn't. I don't really care about the living people's views. If I want my body to be donated to science when I die, or to be an organ donor, or whatever, then that should be my choice to make/my view to be maintained/respected after my death.

As it stands, I'd be okay with MY body being resurrected (provided there wasn't some weird, re-installation of my mind where I'm trapped in my own body while a necromancer goes all puppet-master on me), because after I die, I see it as just a lump of flesh, but I also understand that other people view it differently, so I think their wishes should be respected.

So evacuation. Alternatively, I'd recruit the help of the remnants of the Grey Wardens, and stand our ground such that we might defend our town and take back the castle, ultimately killing the demon in control of a small mage-child ... oh wait, that's a game. But evacuation, because without a reasonable way to distinguish the wishes of the dead, and only raise those who would have agreed, it would be quite unethical to do so, and I'm not one to go breaking my own ethical code if I have a choice (I would consider it someone's right to decide what happens to their body after their death, and the thing about rights is that they shouldn't be violated except when they are done so to stop said person from violating the rights of another).

It's more unethical to disrespect the wishes of some corpses who don't feel like helping you out than it is to disrespect the wishes of an entire town of living people who don't feel like being forced from their home and/or murdered? Sounds silly to me.

OT: I've pretty much summed up my opinion above. While it would be nice to not have to violate the rights of the dead, I consider the rights of the living to be quite a bit more important, and that's what this choice boils down to. There's no way to not violate anyone's rights, so 1 seems like the clear choice to me.

(This is assuming the necromancer is 100% trustworthy, these are the only possible choices and are guaranteed with 100% certainty, etc...)

Yeah, but the corpse-people aren't (/weren't) the ones violating the rights to life of the townsfolk. If the dead people had somehow been responsible for the invading army, then it would be fair to violate their rights to right the wrongs they had committed. But because they presumably didn't, it's like enslaving an innocent passerby to stop an unrelated mugging.

 

[DEAD34345]

It's more unethical to disrespect the wishes of some corpses who don't feel like helping you out than it is to disrespect the wishes of an entire town of living people who don't feel like being forced from their home and/or murdered? Sounds silly to me.

OT: I've pretty much summed up my opinion above. While it would be nice to not have to violate the rights of the dead, I consider the rights of the living to be quite a bit more important, and that's what this choice boils down to. There's no way to not violate anyone's rights, so 1 seems like the clear choice to me.

(This is assuming the necromancer is 100% trustworthy, these are the only possible choices and are guaranteed with 100% certainty, etc...)

Yeah, but the corpse-people aren't (/weren't) the ones violating the rights to life of the townsfolk. If the dead people had somehow been responsible for the invading army, then it would be fair to violate their rights to right the wrongs they had committed. But because they presumably didn't, it's like enslaving an innocent passerby to stop an unrelated mugging.

Indeed, and your choice to not use necromancy is like killing an innocent passer-by in order to stop an unrelated temporary inconvenience for a corpse. You're allowing someone's rights to be violated either way, but one right is far more important than the other.

If you just boil down the choices, what you really get is this:

1. Enslave some corpses temporarily without permission.

2. Kill 75% of an entire innocent town and yourself.

3. Kill a small amount of innocents, and force the other 99% (or whatever percentage) of the town to leave their homes and possessions for good, and become refugees on the run from an army.

Just because you're committing one atrocity more indirectly than another doesn't make it any different in effect. I can't personally see how any rational being could choose anything but the first choice, as while it's certainly bad, it's by far the lesser evil of the choices you are presented with.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Hello Escapist people. I have a morality question for you.

Let's say there is a large city somewhere in a fantasy setting that's about to be attacked
by something far more powerful than it can fully defend against and you are the one in charge of defending it.

The town has a rather extensive graveyard which a wandering Necromancer suggests raising corpses from to help defend against the enemy or enemies attacking the town. Of course, this graveyard contains the deceased former citizens and families of the city including some of your deceased family.

As the person in charge of defending the city, You have 3 options here along with the best case scenario of choosing each option.

1. Accept the help of the necromancer: He or She raises an army from the graveyard and
catacombs to successfully defend the town. The enemy is destroyed and the town is safe, but not all of its citizens were willing to accept the desecration of their dead as a necessary sacrifice and that has its own consequences which must be faced later.

Plus, you don't really know what the Necromancer's motives are.

2. Refuse the necromancer's help and attempt to defend the town: You die defending the town while about half of the citizens successfully flee the city and roughly half of the city is destroyed, leaving the remaining population at around 25% of the former population.

3. Refuse the necromancer's help and attempt to organize a full evacuation of the city: this results in most of the citizens hesitantly fleeing the town with a few stubborn fools staying to defend it before it gets destroyed.

Of course, both options 2 and 3 have the consequence of forcing everyone that flees to find a new life elsewhere.

EDIT: option 2 has been changed.

Have you been looking at my current Dread Necromancer character from the D&D game I am currently playing!?!?

Because that is exactly what he would do!!!

He would offer help to the one in charge of the town. I would explain the logistics of the battle and that this is the most tactically sound option.

If they question my intent I would show them the rules I abide by, which if people are interested in reading I can post in this thread.

-Edit- I would also offer to rebury those raised and (without an ironic smirk) offer to resanctify the grounds if it would put their mind at ease. I would also dig those graves myself. It would be possible by dismissing the energies that allow them to move.

I would also ask if I could raise those that tried to destroy this town and get them to fight in defense of others.

 

[Raognerrrm]

Seeing as necromancy's actually possible, I'd most likely be a necromancer. So I wouldn't need his help to raise the army of undead.

If I wasn't, however, I'd accept his help. Of course, I'd keep him under guard to protect him from the citizens if they got cross, plus they could kill him if he got out of hand.
And once the battle was over, I'd want to become his apprentice.

 

[Daverson]

Evacuate.

Ok, so, here's the way I see it, Necromancers are usually pretty dubious, now I'm sure there's loads of nice necromancers out there, but the general image is tarnished, you know? Even if we have full assurance they're not at all evil and planning to wander off, how do we know the enemy aren't capable of pulling some trick out of their arses, like some kind of anti-necromancy mummified cheese-slab? These things are more common than you'd think!

But, hey, let's assume that we've somehow beaten off the Menacing Hobgoblins with or without the necromancers help, what then? Will the necromancer stay? I wouldn't expect it. Even so, we aren't able to defend ourselves against the inevitable next attack, sure, the Menacing Hobgoblins are defeated, but now the Irate Kobolds are capitalizing on the sudden power vacuum to become the dominant force in the region, if we didn't accept the necromancers help,we've lost most of our townsfolk, and couldn't survive another attack. If we accept the necromancer help, then they leave, we're back at square one, and if the necromancer stays... well, there's a finite number of serviceable corpses in the graveyard, and only one way to get more of them.

It's a no-win situation, cutting your losses and getting out with what you can is the best option here. (Well, actually, no, the best option is appealing to the Lord of the Land for military aid, you know, that guy you pay Tithes to for exactly this reason? Surprised that wasn't one of the options tbh!)

...of course, it's kind of a moot point, I find I'm usually the one doing the raidin' and lootin' in these sorts of situations. Remember folks, pillage then burn!

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Hell I'd take option 1, is not as if they are actually people any more.

 

[Risingblade]

I'm sure their dead relatives would want to save their living ones

 

[Torrasque]

Assuming that the Necromancer is a chill guy, of course I'd accept his help and raise those bodies. I'll deal with the townspeople later (probably by telling them that if I hadn't raised granny smith from the grave, he'd have joined her) but choice #1 is obviously the best choice.

If the necromancer is a bad guy, then I'd just kill him. Necromancers are pretty weak wizards in my mind, unless they have golems or large constructs.

 

[Laser Priest]

*Cracks Knuckles*

Well, the dead aren't doing much down there. More bodies - possibly bodies immune to pain and fear - are always helpful. At the cost of offending a few people, I see no reason not to go for it.

Blatently option 3. The ends never justify the means and you'd just end up with zombie plauge and camp vampires everywhere; a fate worse than death.

You confuse undead for zombies, Vampires are not necromancer's slaves and you just flat out have no faith in Necromancers. Maybe you're from out east, and I'd understand, there are no good necromancers there, but you've gotta assume that you've got a competent necromancer on your side.

Everyone knows that the undead spread disease and undermine the native, living, populaces' employment oppurtunities.

Before you know where you've got zombies (I refuse to use the ridiculous politically correct term "reanimated persons") hanging around the town square intimidating the children of native, living, good people. Now I don't know how you do things in the West, Mr, but I ask the other people of this forum; would you want one of those undead things slobbering all over your daughter?

You eastern folk are ridiculous. Clearly, medicine is not your strong suit if you are still catching diseases from the dead. And the dead are meant to be properly enslaved, not allowed into the workforce.

And Zombies are the feral beasts that seek nothing more than to feast on living flesh. I work with undead. Nice folk, if you can get their attention, very obedient; but I digress. And my daughter is one of those "things", so I say you watch your mouth.

 

[Biosophilogical]

It's more unethical to disrespect the wishes of some corpses who don't feel like helping you out than it is to disrespect the wishes of an entire town of living people who don't feel like being forced from their home and/or murdered? Sounds silly to me.

OT: I've pretty much summed up my opinion above. While it would be nice to not have to violate the rights of the dead, I consider the rights of the living to be quite a bit more important, and that's what this choice boils down to. There's no way to not violate anyone's rights, so 1 seems like the clear choice to me.

(This is assuming the necromancer is 100% trustworthy, these are the only possible choices and are guaranteed with 100% certainty, etc...)

Yeah, but the corpse-people aren't (/weren't) the ones violating the rights to life of the townsfolk. If the dead people had somehow been responsible for the invading army, then it would be fair to violate their rights to right the wrongs they had committed. But because they presumably didn't, it's like enslaving an innocent passerby to stop an unrelated mugging.

Indeed, and your choice to not use necromancy is like killing an innocent passer-by in order to stop an unrelated temporary inconvenience for a corpse. You're allowing someone's rights to be violated either way, but one right is far more important than the other.

If you just boil down the choices, what you really get is this:

1. Enslave some corpses temporarily without permission.

2. Kill 75% of an entire innocent town and yourself.

3. Kill a small amount of innocents, and force the other 99% (or whatever percentage) of the town to leave their homes and possessions for good, and become refugees on the run from an army.

Just because you're committing one atrocity more indirectly than another doesn't make it any different in effect. I can't personally see how any rational being could choose anything but the first choice, as while it's certainly bad, it's by far the lesser evil of the choices you are presented with.

You are over-simplifying the situation, which takes out the complicated bits, which is what makes it a moral dilemma in the first place.

Okay, let's boil it down to 3 groups. You have the invading army, let's call them A, you have the townsfolk, let's call them T, and you have the corpse-people, let's call them C. As it stands, T's rights are being threatened/violated by A. Therefore, it is well within T's rights to violate the rights of A to prevent them from continuing to violate/threaten T's rights (but only insofar as their actions do so. You can't stop them, and then go ahead and torture the captured survivors, because at that point A no longer poses a threat to T). But what T can't do (and be justified in doing so), is violate the rights of C to stop A. If they were to do so, C (and any group that isn't T, really) is entirely justified in acting in such a way that prevents T from violating C, even if it requires violating T to do so.

Short version, corpse-people have nothing to do with this, so leave them out of it. The townsfolk's problems are their own, and they have no right to violate the rights of others (except the original rights-threatening group) as a means of protection.

 

[GoldenFish]

I would go with option 1
However as others have already said I would only agree once the Necromancer has made a contract (magically binding if possible). I would also order the undead to be stationed outside the town walls (or boundaries), or for them to straight up attack the invaders. If possible I would also incorporate the necromancer into the town by offering him a job as teacher of the necromantic arts to potential townsfolk in case of future attack (and if that did happen I would make sure there would be more than one taught necromancy in case one gets ambitious).

Another thing: What if instead of animating the already dead I got the necromancer to animate those who die in the attack/defence of the town. So that everyone who dies would just get back up and keep fighting. That way only those who consent (or were attacking the town) would be animated and we would pretty much be guaranteed victory with no civilian (not counting militia volunteers) casualties.

 

[Sean Steele]

Use zombies to save innocent lives? Yep I'm down.

 

[spartan231490]

Option 3. Understand, I don't do option one more out of concern over the necromancers motives than any moral reservations. Though, if I can choose my own plan, I would evacuate the civilians and use ambushes and guerrilla tactics to destroy the enemy as they tried to take the city. It would be much easier to destroy the enemy in this fashion, but I would still have an evacuation plan in place for the soldiers to slip out of the city in small groups as well.

 

[Faux Furry]

Wouldn't option 2 just give the Necromancer an even more substantial potential army for later use, one including our own viewpoint character in this scenario?

Even if the Necromancer kept the corpses, isn't that a small price to pay to save all of those living in the village? What are they going to do but rot away eventually, anyway? I'd rather see my dead loved ones do something productive with their undeath than push up daisies.

 

[DEAD34345]

Indeed, and your choice to not use necromancy is like killing an innocent passer-by in order to stop an unrelated temporary inconvenience for a corpse. You're allowing someone's rights to be violated either way, but one right is far more important than the other.

If you just boil down the choices, what you really get is this:

1. Enslave some corpses temporarily without permission.

2. Kill 75% of an entire innocent town and yourself.

3. Kill a small amount of innocents, and force the other 99% (or whatever percentage) of the town to leave their homes and possessions for good, and become refugees on the run from an army.

Just because you're committing one atrocity more indirectly than another doesn't make it any different in effect. I can't personally see how any rational being could choose anything but the first choice, as while it's certainly bad, it's by far the lesser evil of the choices you are presented with.

You are over-simplifying the situation, which takes out the complicated bits, which is what makes it a moral dilemma in the first place.

Okay, let's boil it down to 3 groups. You have the invading army, let's call them A, you have the townsfolk, let's call them T, and you have the corpse-people, let's call them C. As it stands, T's rights are being threatened/violated by A. Therefore, it is well within T's rights to violate the rights of A to prevent them from continuing to violate/threaten T's rights (but only insofar as their actions do so. You can't stop them, and then go ahead and torture the captured survivors, because at that point A no longer poses a threat to T). But what T can't do (and be justified in doing so), is violate the rights of C to stop A. If they were to do so, C (and any group that isn't T, really) is entirely justified in acting in such a way that prevents T from violating C, even if it requires violating T to do so.

Short version, corpse-people have nothing to do with this, so leave them out of it. The townsfolk's problems are their own, and they have no right to violate the rights of others (except the original rights-threatening group) as a means of protection.

I'd bet the innocent people had nothing to do with it, but now they've got an invading army on their hands. Just because you are driving them out of their home indirectly (i.e. by not stopping the invading army) doesn't mean you are not violating their rights. Sure, it might let you have less of a guilty conscience if you do it that way, but it's still wrong.

You're right, in that the townsfolk shouldn't have the right to to violate the rights of the corpses, but the invading army shouldn't have the right to drive the townsfolk out of their homes either. No matter what you do someone's rights get trampled on unjustly (because presumably, they did not bring this invasion upon themselves), and you have been given the ability to decide exactly which right is violated. Why wouldn't you choose to violate the right that has by far the least importance?

It's not fair that the corpses have to be animated without permission, but it's a hell of a lot more fair than the town of innocent people being killed or driven from their homes.