Soultrap: Is it evil doing?

[Kelloggs]

What's the current opinion of the community?

Do you consider Soultrapping something a "good" character wouldn't do?

1) Soultrapping is never justified. You're taking away the after life of the victim for your own good... that's always evil.

2) Soultrapping of lesser creatures (like animals and monsters) is justified, but soultrapping conscient beings like Falmers, Humans, Ghosts, ... is evil

3) Soultrapping is always fine, regardless of the victim. After all... people seem to merchandise soulgems everywhere, it's definitely not tabu.


Share your thoughts :)

[Xingkitsu (Xemgoa)]

Hm.... You are willing to accept folks will state an opinion or instigate an arguement?

Personally, I saw it as just outright evil, and never felt great using them for the sake of making myself a over empowered dragon god.

It would be nice if there was a professionally done mod where players with exceptionally high Alteration skill and Mana reserves to try and replicate putting Mana power into soulgems rather then souls, and suffer a penalty of absolutely no mana regeneration through the whole day (Or longer then the norm, depending on the soul gem.)

Souls are basically a Colossal vessel of memories but also a colossal vessel of Magicka as lore states. So why not develop new Soul gems that only accept mana from the owner and inhibit a penalty of no mana regen. Your mana won't even refill for the day if you used potions, magic or other means to refill Magicka.

This opens up new methods of Enchanting. It takes a bit more hard work then just tagging someone to be soul trapped, then taking their life for your own gain.

I will reiterate, I know its a game but for the sake of my sanity and morality I've only gone after animals with grand souls, I won't even soul trap a bandit. Just ain't right, never felt ethically right. I am human after all, sometmes arguing against me simply won't work.

[Kelloggs]

Originally posted by Xemgoa Psycho Dovahbro~♥:

Hm.... You are willing to accept folks will state an opinion or instigate an arguement?

Healthy arguments are always welcomed. Specially in a subject so grey as soultrapping... since there's no absolute answer for it.

I definitely agree with your point, and I too wish for a mod like the one you said... (I know about one that allows you to recharge weapons with mana, but not fill soulgems)

I particularly avoid soultrapping even animals on my playthroughs.... but I allow myself to soultrap draughrs, skeletons and other undeads.... because, the way I see it... they are already tormented souls, so I'm actually doing a favor in obliterating their sore existence, rather them let them stay restless until the end of times.

Like you said, not even bandits should be soultrapped... 5,10,20 years of evil-doing in the mortal realm really shouldn't mean the loss of the entire after-life as punishment.


But then again.... considering how magic pretty much is fueled by the consumtions of other beings' souls, even a good priest in skyrim will consume souls of animals to recharge his weapon.

[Xingkitsu (Xemgoa)]

Originally posted by Sucrilhus:

Originally posted by Xemgoa Psycho Dovahbro~♥:

Hm.... You are willing to accept folks will state an opinion or instigate an arguement?

But then again.... considering how magic pretty much is fueled by the consumtions of other beings' souls, even a good priest in skyrim will consume souls of animals to recharge his weapon.

*nods* I can't develop mods, with our economy going down hill and low cash on my terms, I really wish someone would teach me scripting professionally so it can be done...

Or some well reputable mod developer could get onto something like those, for those who highly value ethics and morality even in video games.

I understand that the game was made for em to play with its rules, but thats no ones business how my singleplayer play goes, and I do not care how upset someone gets over what I do in my bought rights to play the game. If I went against the Lore of Elder scrolls in whatever I do, I still do not care. Worry about how you play Skyrim/oblivion/Marrowind/etc.

Soul trapping just never felt right in general.

I hope the next title would have the player have deity like power and found a way to take down deities. Be nice pace of change if the next title where the new hero can finally decide all of Elder scroll creation to take down the Daedra, or the Aedra... And run things how he likes.

[GothQueenSupreme]

well you can only soul gem humans with a black soul gem and that is considered taboo and not everyone does it but the way I view it is since I only soul gem bandits and not the random farmer on the road they had it coming to them when they chose to kill anyone for the gold in their pockets and I will use their souls to kill more of their kind :)

[Kelloggs]

Originally posted by Xemgoa Psycho Dovahbro~♥:

I understand that the game was made for em to play with its rules, but thats no ones business how my singleplayer play goes, and I do not care how upset someone gets over what I do in my bought rights to play the game. If I went against the Lore of Elder scrolls in whatever I do, I still do not care. Worry about how you play Skyrim/oblivion/Marrowind/etc.

Soul trapping just never felt right in general.

That's exactly how I feel too.

Originally posted by Xemgoa Psycho Dovahbro~♥:

I hope the next title would have the player have deity like power and found a way to take down deities. Be nice pace of change if the next title where the new hero can finally decide all of Elder scroll creation to take down the Daedra, or the Aedra... And run things how he likes.

I kind of think it's pretty hard to happen... I mean... when reading books in skyrim you can learn about the other games... but the books never name the "hero" who closed the oblivion gates and so on....

But it would be extremely hard not to name someone who reached divine status.

Originally posted by Slepomoriy:

well you can only soul gem humans with a black soul gem and that is considered taboo and not everyone does it but the way I view it is since I only soul gem bandits and not the random farmer on the road they had it coming to them when they chose to kill anyone for the gold in their pockets and I will use their souls to kill more of their kind :)

Well... about the bandits I already have a pretty strong view

not even bandits should be soultrapped... 5,10,20 years of evil-doing in the mortal realm really shouldn't mean the loss of the entire after-life as punishment

It doesn't feel fair to destroy the after life of a person just because they chose the life of crime.

Specially because you don't know what their history was.... maybe they had no options in life... maybe they already grew in a bandit camp ever since childhood.

It's not good to take summary judgment under someone you know nothing about. Specially when the punishment is as severe as soul-entrapment

[Alembrik]

I consider a soul-trap to be temporary, sort of like water behind a hydroelectric dam. When you use the ‘power’ in a soul gem, the soul is released to go on its way. No worries!

[Kelloggs]

Originally posted by Alembrik:

I consider a soul-trap to be temporary, sort of like water behind a hydroelectric dam. When you use the ‘power’ in a soul gem, the soul is released to go on its way. No worries!

That's a nice point. I haven't thought about it in that way.

I mean... lets say I use the soul of a bandit to fill my magic sword.

Each swing will release part of his soul.

Doesn't that mean I shattered it?

[Coldhands]

Evil is kinda subjective, but ... yeah I figure sucking someone's soul out after you kill them, and then using it to put a shiny film on your gear is pretty evil. : p

[Xingkitsu (Xemgoa)]

Originally posted by Alembrik:

I consider a soul-trap to be temporary, sort of like water behind a hydroelectric dam. When you use the ‘power’ in a soul gem, the soul is released to go on its way. No worries!

Lore states that the soul is sort of erased of its memories and its magicka all endowed with whatever its been enchanted to. So the soul is destroyed and turned back into Magic.

[Xingkitsu (Xemgoa)]

Originally posted by Coldhands:

Evil is kinda subjective, but ... yeah I figure sucking someone's soul out after you kill them, and then using it to put a shiny film on your gear is pretty evil. : p

Not always, it isn't up for humans to decide. Some things are set in stone in this world.

[Infernal Machine]

I am perfectly fine with soul trapping. Then again, I am somewhat on the evil side. I always like being the bad guy in games. The more heartless and evil, the better.

[Neala]

The trapping of the white souls is fine, but the trapping of the black souls is an evil act, IIRC. Black soul gems are illegal (you will find them in the possession of the wizards living in the dark caves, the one you can buy from the elf whats-his-name at the College are implied to be the black market). And the lovely trip to the Soul Cairn (the place there the black souls leftovers go) give you a lot to think about.

So, my DB do trap white souls (undead mostly), did trap a couple of black as a revenge and do not use enchanted weapons (no recharges policy). After the Soul Cairn, looted filled black soul gems are never used in enchanting. And the stockpiling of the white souls are stopped. Levelling are now done by the training.

I remember, that in Morrowind the concept of soul-trapping did made me feel quite uneasy, so the alternative would be welcome. By the way, it would be interesting to make the magically created soul gems less powerfull... No stronger than great soul for example.

[Knox]

Personally I consider it on a scale sort of. It takes some RPing but if like in real life animals are sometimes valued less, so one could consider killing say a wolf for a soul just fine, but using a black soul gem for a humanoid creature evil. Or your character could be a racist and consider it bad only to do that to elves. Or doing it only to evil humanoid such as bandits could be seen as cleansing the world of 'bad' souls.

Mostly I consider it evil.

[Sovereign]

Well, the lore tells us that this is how it works:

When you trap a soul it, and the magical energy associated with it, goes into a soul gem. Once the gem is used, the energy is transferred into whatever object it's used on, but the soul itself goes to the Soul Cairn which is a plane of Oblivion governed by the Ideal Masters. Essentially, the souls go to a sort of purgatory where they are consumed at will by some powerful and mysterious creatures, presumably as sustenance.

So, at the end of the day the souls are destroyed. Now, in a world where life persists after death and where souls can go to many places including benevolent planes such as Sovngarde, to willfully intercept the soul (no to mention kill the person's body) and literally feed it to the inhabitants of Oblivion for your own person gain is morally objectionable.

However, what about animals or persons who are "evil" themselves? Difficult to say.

It's my impression from the lore, that most people have no idea how soul trapping really works or what they are doing. To most people it's just how you enchant stuff. So it's hard to demonize someone who does it but doesn't understand it.

I'd say that if you are role playing your character and he/she finds out what is really going on with soul trapping in the game, then it should trigger a moral dilemma for your character possibly leading to restricting soul trapping to non-sentient creatures or possibly not at all. Sort of like going vegetarian or even vegan after discovering the environmental harm meat production causes.

[Igor Kozyrev]

You killed your enemy… or a harmless being. You have all rights to trap it's soul.