Revision as of 08:07, 5 April 2010

Resurrection is Possible

"Dead is dead. There is no resurrection in the world of Exalted." (Bo3C, p.21)

The Book of Three Circles says that resurrection is impossible. This is a lie. There may not be a way to snap your fingers and bring someone back to life, but there is at least one way to resurrect someone in canon. Of course, it's an involved ritual with multiple parts, which is fitting.

Sorcery + Spirit Charm (Original Method)

For the sake of simplicity, let's call the person you want to resurrect Yui. You will need a spirit who used Memory Mirror on Yui while she still lived. For best results, you should also have a fragment of Yui's body.

1. Aquire a newborn baby of Yui's sex (let's call her Rei).
2. Cast Disguise of the New Face on Rei to give her Yui's appearance.

You now have someone who looks exactly like Yui.

3. Have a high-Essence spirit ally use Memory Transfer to copy Yui's memories from another spirit, who had previously used Memory Mirror on Yui, to Rei.

You now have someone who looks exactly like Yui, and has all of Yui's memories.

4. Use the spell Imbue Amalgam (your focus is portraits, and you have a portrait of Yui) to raise Rei's Abilities and Skills to Yui's level.

You now have someone who looks exactly like Yui, has all of Yui's memories, is exactly as smart, charismatic, and strong as Yui, and who can do everything Yui could do. This is Yui.

(If you wish to go overboard, you can make up a technique to predict where Yui's soul will reincarnate. Then, you can find the baby/goat/whatever that Yui's soul reincarnated in, and apply the above transformation to that. However, in Exalted, souls aren't very important. No personality or memories stay with a reincarnated soul; they're all exactly the same. Insisting that a person needs the same soul to be "really" reincarnated in Exalted would be like insisting that he has to be made out of the same atoms.)

Necromancy + Artifact

This method is more time-sensitive than the above and requires more in the way of preparation. However, you could argue that this method is a genuine resurrection.

1. Within a minute of death, wrap the corpse in Domnica's Mantle.
2. Cast Denying the Call or Barred Tomb to temporarily bring the target back to life.
3. The target activates Domnica's Mantle to instantly reincarnate, cheating death.

Note that this method preserves Dragon-Blooded and Celestial Exaltation. The target initially loses her memories, but will slowly regain them over childhood.

Sidereal Tricks

(Thanks to Antares from the White Wolf forums)

Easily Accepted Proposition Stance can be used to re-write history so someone's death never happened. The example use of the Charm describes resurrecting an entire army by declaring, "They weren't really dead; they were only stunned!")

Bogus Techniques

Some of these techniques aren't resurrection at all. Some just won't work. (Those two catagories may overlap.)

Helm of Heart's Desire
...needs no further explanation. With a good Sail dice-adder, you can sail off into the Wyld and find an island where the dead person is alive, and the butterflies are made out of sugar. However, none of it can exist in Creation, so it doesn't really count. (Also, the person created would probably just be a caricature drawn from your memories. Completely convincing, but not a 'real' person.)

Wyld-Shaping Technique
Might work: I assume this technique can create living beings, but then again, you could decide otherwise. Even if it worked, the person might not be able to exist outside the Wyld, and definitely would be built around your memories of the person, rather than who the person was.

Eye of Autochthon
If there's any legitimate way that resurrection is possible, the Eye could probably do it. Even if it isn't possible, the Eye could probably still do it. At the very least, the Eye could be used to mimic the "legitimate" resurrection technique above.

Comments

I'm pretty sure there must be a way to bind a ghost to a body, then do some wacky stuff to make it look like it's not a ghost possessing a body, then do one of several tricks (Memory Sponge or Spirit and Body Purification Touch) to make it forget it's a ghost. Have to look at the Arcanoi, though. -- Raindoll

A difference in soul means you haven't recaptured the Exaltation state of the original, and you have also not recaptured the Destiny. Worse, the target of Imbue Amalgam is the caster's loyal slave. Such can hardly be said to be a copy of the original. --bts

Unless you give the Amalgam the order: "Do what thou wilt, and feel no more compelled to obey my orders than what your personal desires would make you want to."

HOWEVER, their is some connention raised elsewhere that Imbue Amalgam might not have an indefinite duration. It says "until the end of the story" in the spell description, which a Storyteller could read as a discrete duration. - Epsilon

One of the first characters I ever wrote up was actually the result of something very similar to Raindoll's first scenario. Her patron essentially waited for random chance to produce an individual who looked just like his Solar wife from the First Age (he also probably checked for specific astrological circumstances surrounding the birth, too), then spirited her off and subjected her to a training regimen specifically designed to instill the same values and outlook as were held by the First Age woman. This ended up attracting the predecessor's Exaltation, making the character a de facto reincarnation of her.
This idea sort of came from C.J. Cherryh's excellent novel Cyteen, which revolved around a reincarnation-through-cloning scheme.
_Ikselam

Saying that "in Exalted, souls aren't very important [to reincarnation]" is rather like saying, "in the real world, souls aren't very important to reincarnation". It's not like we have canon on the issue (I sure hope we never do) and I suspect that it'll be a matter of opinion no matter how you slice it.
Personally, I'd be perfectly willing to call Yui II "Yui II", but not "Yui". This is, as I said, opinion and has led to zillions of incredibly boring philosophical treatises. Saying "Resurrection Is Canonically Possible", without acknowledging that whether or not it's an actual resurrection is completely up to the individual ST, is overstating the case.
~ Shataina
PS: Doesn't the "Book of Three Circles" say that resurrection is impossible through sorcery? i.e., not flat-out impossible?

Shataina: Let's say that the ST decides this method isn't 'actual' resurrection. What would the difference be? (PS: The quote is "Dead is dead. There is no resurrection in the world of Exalted.")
(Ikselam: I liked Cyteen, but thought the ending was rushed.) -- Raindoll

It depends on your point of view, I guess. I mean, if you don't think it's "actual" resurrection, are you willing to treat the duplicate as the same person? Should they be treated as the same person? Should they be considered / played as the same person?
Once problem, for example -- can you really remember something properly, if you didn't live through it and were simply grafted the memory like a branch onto a tree? Memories fluctuate, and more importantly, the way we remember things fluctuates too, and would this be captured by a mere transfusion-type thingy? (Like, if I remember one particular ex-boyfriend badly, and this colours both my memories and the things I choose to remember ... would a duplicate get the memory straight, or the memory with my colouring?) Obviously no one's ever tried giving someone all the same memories, appearance, etc, so we can't know what would happen, but I'm a little uncomfortable with automatically calling it "resurrection", you know? It seems like an awfully absolute way to put it when we really don't know.
Thanks for the book quote; my copy is 1000 miles away, which makes me sad.
(And good call on Cyteen. It's such a good series, and then you're like, "What just happened?" I love C.J. Cherryh, but she seriously needs to work on her conclusions.)
~ Shataina
PS: it's Shataina :)

Actually, there's another issue with memory that is even more important: What does it mean to remember? Thsi is another one that has philosophers and spychologists stumped. Is memory a fully holographic event, and some neurological studies indicate, or is there something more to the process? Also, how is memory actually stored? If one follows the holographic model, then the most likely answer is that memory is somewhat distributed throughout the brain (note the if...), though the degree of distribution, like the degree of resolution of the holograph, the number and type of encodable short-cuts (necessary in most, if not all, reasonable accounts of memory), and a number of other factors is open to very much debate. Additionally, the violability and re-usablility of the storage locations, whatever they turn out to be, is an issue. (You remember lots of things, but do you remember all of the details, and if not, is it because they were encoded improperly/insufficiently or were overwritten or just weren't deeply enough engrained when originally encoded?) Next, and this is perhaps even the biggest issue, how does one actually retrieve these memeories, either consciously or unconsciously? Is there a sort of index structure to the brain that contains some sort of relative or absolute "address" for the holograph? Some studies seem to support this, but others seem to indicate that stimuli that induce memory recall sweep the entire brain, sort of like the "search" function of a computer system, but several orders of magnitude faster, and not very visible to the researchers. Once you've dealt with that, then you're somwhat ready to deal with issues like whether or not a transferred memory is really remembered "properly". Of course, having dealt with all of that, one has to model the system in terms of essence flows and swirls and eddies and lattices etc. ^^ It's best, I think, just to leave things at "You can copy and paste memories", and avoid the messy details of how memory actually works. Unless one is a thorough geek, and is determined to work out every last physical law in Creation. (I admit that I have tendencies that way, cf. the Language in Gaming discussion that I started. Oh, I be geek-grrl. ^^; ) -Suzume (directing her comments at this whole memory-related fiber in the larger thread)

AAGH! Corrected. I can't imagine what I could have been thinking of. ;) Anyway, if someone uses a technique like this, it's 'cause he or someone else really, really wants the dead person alive again. I mean, if he just wanted a servant, he could have used Imbue Amalgam. And if he just wanted the person's memories, he could have just read them off the spirit flunky. So, I think that the resurrector would treat Rei as if she were Yui, and pretty much ignore the possibility that she isn't. (The resurrector could also just be trying to fool someone else. Come to think of it, the target doesn't need to be dead for this to work...) -- Raindoll

Heh, I get that a lot (on the name). (Funny thing is, when I first came up with the name Shataina like 10 years ago, it totally had nothing to do with Shaitan -- to be honest, I filched it from the last name of a character in an Agatha Christie mystery :P talk about coincidence ... er, yeah, coincidence, right.)
Anyway. So, yeah, I agree with you, the resurrector would definitely want to fool himself into believing that whatever simulacrum he came up with was the real thing ... but that's a far cry from justifying the actual statement, "resurrection is truly possible".
~ Shataina

Thing is, just what's the point of reincarnation in the setting if there is no significance to the individual soul? - Quendalon

There doesn't appear to be any. Souls have no personality or memories attached to them: once they go through Lethe, they are all literally identical. I'd say souls are recycled because Creation was designed to be a closed ecosystem, but there is no significance to it. (It's like, "What's the point of the Circle of Life if the dirt your corpse decomposes into is the same as any other dirt?") -- Raindoll

I'd say there only "doesn't appear to be any" because White Wolf doesn't want to give us super-hardcore canon on something like reincarnation. Which is right and proper, in my opinion. I suspect that if you asked, say, GCG, he'd say that there is significance, but it depends on the circumstances and the soul and the everything else. In other words, just because they're leaving it up to us doesn't mean there's no significance, it means we're supposed to make our own significance.

~ Shataina

Raindoll: your analogy doesn't hold; it's not that the souls all melt into a single pool, from which new souls are crafted. They're discrete entities that maintain their integrity forever. Shataina: what significance would you ascribe to souls and reincarnation in your own, non-canonical take on the setting? - Quendalon

Oh man, tough question. I haven't thought about it too much, mostly because my favourite character's lover died and I don't even want to consider what awful, awful things the ST might do with his reincarnation :). I do like to think of things like true love lasting through incarnations (although you may have to rediscover both the lover and the love), and I tend to favour certain characteristic tendencies lasting, as well. Like ... I think an especially calm and beatific person would be similar through incarnations, a rebellious and energetic person would manifest similarly, etc.\\

I'd imagine that if it ever came up, my treatment of it would be similar to Tanith Lee's in the last book of the Flat Earth series (which by the way was the "greatest literary influence" on Exalted, and a masterpiece which everyone should read right now), and to Kim Stanley Robinson's treatment of how the souls act from incarnation to incarnation in her book The Years of Rice and Salt (a really interesting book, not one of my favourites but still quite good, and worth checking out). Characters would have similar personalities within the bounds of their upbringing, etc, and they'd also be sort of instinctively drawn to people who were important in their past lives. Personally, I think the soul should define more about a person than, say, the Exalt-shard, although the memories from a shard would be clearer and easier to access.
~ Shataina
PS: You should vote in the Lexicon Discussion turnaround period thingetyboo. :)

KSR = him. (cf. this bio on the fan page.) Btw, I've enjoyed his Mars novels, though I've yet to have an opportunity to read The Martians, the anthology he added on to the series. -Suzume

Falcon - Look at me, contributing. As far as I know, in Exalted, everyone has two souls - higher and lower. The lower, animal soul is kind of generic, but the higher soul is what becomes a ghost when someone who dies becomes a ghost. If you built Yui using your method (nice NGE reference, although it gives away some plot :) ), but she also happened to be hanging around the Underworld as an intelligent ghost, you would have two Yuis. Which would be real? Ghost Yui or clone Yui? Neither? Both?

Isn't the lower soul what becomes a hungry ghost, while the higher soul is what becomes a conscious ghost?

~ Shataina

Ghost Yui wouldn't be the "real" Yui; no ghost is more than a historical re-enactment of the person who formed it. A superego without an id is just as incomplete as the reverse.
We know that souls in Exalted don't carry memories (except in the special case of the Exalted souls of Celestials). They could be nothing more than the little metaphorical blob which differentiates living from dead matter (or humans from other organisms, if we posit that animals don't have souls -- which is neither confirmed nor denied in canon). I'm not sure if they're supposed to have uniquely identifiable serial numbers, or what it would mean if they did. I think it's probably better for the exact nature of souls to remain vague, both in the rules and in the game world.
_Ikselam

Actually, Souls DO carry memories. The higher souls evidently do or else they wouldn't be able to maintain Passions. Lower Souls, too, are shaped by their lives and deaths and while monstrous, may occasionally have something resembling intelligence (See Thrice-Damned Gorol's Po in ToT). Also, the Merits and Flaws in the PG definitely suggest that memories can "stain" a soul deeply enough that even Lethe can't get it out. -- Mockery

Not after they pass through Lethe, they don't. The Past Lives Merit and the Throwback Flaw can only be taken by Celestial Exalts: the memories are in the Exalted shard, not the upper soul of the mortal who was its temporary host. We've known about vestiges of memory retained in Exalted shards since the core book, and this was described in greater detail in Lytek's description in Sidereals. - Raindoll

Actually, the Merit specifically mentions it can be taken even by Dragon-Blooded or Heroic Mortals at its lower levels. It doesn't grant the insight to the First Age that a shard of Exaltation can carry, as the Higher Soul can only recall memories from the most recent life it lived, but evidently it CAN carry at least a handful of memories through death and reincarnation --Mockery

Mm. I don't know if "superego and id" is an accurate way of thinking about "low" and "high" souls, but I may be applying real-world religious beliefs which inspired the Exalted ideas too much to Exalted without cause.

~ Shataina

So here we have a rebuilt body with a copy of the original memories--reminds me of the Ghola from the Dune series...
-- Mapache

The ghola wasn't a rebuilt person, though, it was the same person, healed.
~ Shataina

Yeah, healed from death.
_Ikselam

About souls lacking memories of previous lives, off-hand I would guess that they get "cleaned" like Celestial sparks, but from the implication of Sidereals, you can cut out alot more to get all the memories. It might be damaging to a soul but, "So What?". We've seen that heaven has no problem with Sidereals searing the mind and soul of a person just to get a dragon for an hour or so, why should this be any different? - haren

You can't Heal Death... -- Senji

Yes, and you can't Heal Stilling/Gentling either, but it looks like someone managed to do just that... ^_^ -Suzume (with tongue in cheek.)

You could in LOOM. At the end you heal several dead people to resurrect them.
-- Mapache

In my most humble opinion, I think the Book of Three Circles passage should be altered to read "Dead is dead. There is no ressurection in the world of Exalted, unless, of course, it would be dramatic and appropriate to the story and is difficult and epic, as befits such a blatant defiance of the natural order." -Seraph

The process described at the beginning is very well thought out and should result in a fairly perfect duplicate. However I don't know If I would quite call it resurection per se. Still that is a minor quibble. My favored method for resurection is trying to put humpty-dumpty back together again, i.e. trying to recombine the original body, higher soul, and lower soul. This contains many problems and potentials for heroic role playing. First you have to keep the body from decomposing. Healing charms should do it. The next thing you have to do is get two jars that can contain souls. These are described in Bo3C, page 75 in the description of the spell Soul Seal or you could try to get some from Taru-Han, who is described on page 41 of Exalted: The Sidereals, but more on her in a minute. Next you have to find both the higher and lower souls. The lower soul should be easy to find as it is supposed to stay and protect the body (This is stated cannonically, but I forget where). The higher soul is either a ghost in the underworld, which might be hard to find without an abyssal's help, or is being reincarnated. The souls of the dead are processed by Taru-Han, Lady of Souls, Shogun of the Department of Abstract Matters. She should know exactly where the soul is and might even be able to get it back. Next you have to put the souls in the jars, which probably requires a variant of Soul Seal, then get them out of the jars and back into the body. And everything is restored and the person is alive again after a nice epic side story, which could easily be much harder than my description makes it sound. Of course, unless they are a DB, you still need to find a way to re-exalt the person. It probably goes without saying that I agree with Seraph that ressurection should be an epic "go into the underworld and battle with death for your true love's life" kinda thing, not "Oh. he died. Well there goes another one of the cleric's 8th level spells...." In most cases I'm betting that the player would rather create a new character than deal with this, but it is nice to know that you can pull out this nice mini-epic if needed. --BrilliantRain

I gotta get Sidereals, I keep hearing how the Loom of Fate is transactional, and it's just freaky. Anyway, Resurrection is usually an escape hatch for oopses. (We use the 7th Sea rule about death i.e. you gotta explicitly kill someone, otherwise they are just incapacitated and it's up to the ST.) I also can't help thinking of Planescape :Torment, which had some of the coolest rules on this(some times, you HAD to kill yourself). Anyway, Wyld shaping seems like a reasonable method to create the body for combination with other methods, for example, you could create a body and the ghost could possess it(not exaclty the same, but not to bad). I general, only the last two methods preserve exaltation. (Imbue Amalagam is Celestial and you give charms of the same type as the caster, so dragon blooded are kinda out of luck, unless the resurrector has something like the Mantle of Brigit). Given that the soul divides into two ghosts, and that it's not clear that people could die before the creation of the underworld. It does seem that there could be some way to recombine them, finding the right hungary ghost strikes me as a problem also, they don't seem to differentiated. I agree with BrillianRain, basicly, there's no way to do it without a neat epic, which is as it should be. --FlowsLikeBits

Reading this page has given me a very creepy idea for an at-least-slightly-crazy First Age Eclipse with extensive knowledge of Spirit Charms. He or she went a little crazy when a beloved Golden Child died, so he employed the first method (along with Endowment) to turn a normal mortal baby into a "copy" of the departed Child. Then did the same again when the child died of old age... and again... and again...

Imbue Amalgam and its questionable duration would be unnecessary in that formula, since the Eclipse isn't worried about what dots are where, just about having his or her beloved child back for another century or so.

It would be even creepier if the Eclipse killed the Golden Child and made a new "copy" out of some hapless baby whenever the Golden Child got too old. Especially considering that the Golden Child would never remember the murders, since the memory copy would be made beforehand... -Everyl

Deliciously creepy. Perfect for First-age wierdness. -Suzume

To make it relevant to a modern-day game: imagine how weird it would be to be that Eclipse's modern incarnation, and be haunted by several dozen First Age ghosts - of the same person. That would probably more than thoroughly freak out any young Exalt... -Everyl

Even better, some are actually "helpful" both in their own sights, and in the young Exalt's, and it's hard, if not impossible for her to tell them apart by sight or sound... ^_^ -Suzume

It's worth pointing out that taking Bo3C too seriously at this late date is troublesome at best. The "no resurrection" language was, in my opinion, mainly to prevent the cavalier attitude to character death in certain Other games. Having glanced at some of the ideas presented here for ways to accomplish a resurrection effect, I'd have to say that if one of my players came to me with one of those schemes worked out in as much detail as some of them, I'd be willing to let them try, and maybe even succede.
In a world where there exists the ability to bind whatever array of "souls" a being might have, preserve or recreate its material vessel, or create an entirely new one, and preserve the memories and abilities of the original individual, and to put all of these events toward one such being, resurrection is, in fact, possible by definition. Fulfilling all of these requirements would qualify as true resurrection. Partially meeting some, or even dropping some, might possibly be true resurrection, or it might not. Good luck defining something that philosophers have been having a bit of trouble with for millenia. Stipulating that resurrection is not possible in this given environment is to postulate some new force that actively prevents those events from concurring. In other words, to preserve the few lines of text, which would have been written rather hurriedly in an attempt to get the (much less important) sourcebook out on time is equivalent to creating your own house ruling on the setting, and is just as valid, but only as valid by the same token. Thus is the legacy of truly atrocious formulation and conceptual errors and of typos and misprints in this game which shouldn't be any sort of revelation to any of us that have read the core book, even.
Essentially, I sincerely believe that that "no resurrections allowed" policy was entirely intended to prevent the appearance of that most unwanted of roles, the party band-aid (aka, the "Cleric"; <looks aroud furtively for the WotC Copyright-Enforcement Ninja Squad (tm) to appear>), in what is supposed to be an Heroic character environment. Bones was present for a number of reasons, none of which was to be seen doing what a doctor normally does. He was far more entertaining as the foil for Spock, and more dramatic as the one who confirmed everyone's dread that the redshirt-of-the-week was, in fact, dead, Jim. Giving routine vitamin shots and flu vaccinations, or even performing routine open-heart surgery just wasn't interesting enough. For that matter, Dr. Kovac (spelling not really known) of ER fame is an interesting character, not because he practices emergency medicine for everyone to see, but rather becuase of the way that he does it, and the way that his personal life interferes with or enhances his ability to do it. In the end, it's only about the drama.
Conclusion: if it kicks something's ass, then we'll look at it; otherwise, if the character dies, well, I guess the player should probably get busy making another one.

-Suzume (who is just asking for it, posting somethinglike this... ^^; )

Btw, BrilliantRain: the simplest spell of this sort in D&D is "Raise Dead" a fifth level spell that only works if the individual to be raised died within one day of the spell being cast, and which imposes a level loss. "Resurrection" is a seventh level spell, and also imposes a level loss, but with a much longer (minimum 130 years) absolute time limit. "True Resurrection" is a ninth level spell, with no level loss, and a very long lead time. ^^ - S

It also kind of seems incongruous that there should be something that is hard and fast flat out impossible. To me, Solars killing Primordials in a one-on-one is more implausible than raising the dead. All of those passages in the Abyssal book describing the Abyssal Castes suggests that part of the Unconquered Sun's thing is that he has that whole death/ressurection thing going for him. I think it would make it appropriate if Adamant Circle Sorcery (the Solars' much vaunted uber treat) could perform a ressurection. Though, I like the idea of a Zenith pulling a massive ritual to have the Unconquered Sun do all of the real work (kind of like how Achilles appeals to Zeus for Patroclus to defeat the Trojans at the Greek ships and return alive). White Wolf is always on about how they're giving us all of this freedom and suchlike, that it really gets my craw when they flat out say no. It really gets my craw when they do something for no better reason than to seem better than D&D. Does anyone know if Savant and Sorcerer amends the statement that caused this discussion by simply placing ressurection outside of the level of power Adamant Circle Sorcery is capable of? ~Andrew02

Honestly, a flat out prohibition seems odd, given the type of game Exalted is, especially given there are ghosts and such. For Celestines, I imagine some sort of super-shard imprinting would be possible(you could make a pretty cool characher that way, I imagine there might be some effects from remembering your own death...). I can imagine some bizarre adamanet ritual that requires one to get the correct two ghosts and fuses them into a body in some manner. There might even be a Void circle version that does Pet Cemetary type deals(oohh...that could be fun...). Earthdawn is probably the closest thing to a Western Fantasy exalted, and it had very limited ressurrection(last chance salve), it had to be done within an hour of death, and it had a chance of not working(it basicly healed it...if you were to hurt...). There was a less limited version(Journey to life), but was a 15 circle(hightest POSSIBLE) level spell and required the equivilent of holding open a portal to Malfeas for a fairly long time(through which stuff could come). I think the point is, there should be some fun epic involved. Basicly, even if there is an Adamant Circle spell for it, it's gonna be a ritual with some difficult requirements, not a 2 turns of shaping thing. -FlowsLikeBits

So, in other words, resurrection is a seven-die stunt. - Arafelis

Really, we can think of everything in Exalted in those terms. I really don't see why Ressurection needs to be sneered at with such derision. Personally, I fail to see how it makes death anymore heroic, compelling, or meaningful . . . or anything else that I might consider of utility. Really, the only reason I'm seeing behind no ressurection is to NOT like D&D . . . and that is a piss-poor reason. Permitting some sort of ressurection to take place does a lot less to trivialize loss of life than having Heavenly Guardian Defense does. That charm is so easy to get, and once you do, about all you need to be afraid of is Total Annihilation. ~ Andrew02

Er. Signature Style + Daredevil. &Arafelis

In the "limits of sorcery" section S & S is actually unclear on this. It says there is not coming back from the dead, but then goes on to to talk about sorcery being bad at necromancy. I.e. making ghosts and zombies is hard. I.e. it's not clear that it's talking about ressurection in the normal sense, rather than necromantic stuff. Thus implying that some form of resurrection might could be possible through sorcery(although it would still be hard). It also sort of implies that necromancy might be able to do it then. Actually, HGD stops Total Annihilation easily. Sorcery is not very usefuly versus a single opponent.(which is ok) --FlowsLikeBits

Well... to enter speculation mode... Sorcery manipulates the energies of Creation and Necromancy manipulates the energies of the Underworld. Perhaps neither is, in itself, sufficient for true ressurection. That says nothing of both of them together, though... szilard

As with everything in my Exalted, if it fits with and improves the story, it's all good. I call this the "cool rule". If there was a ressurection spell, I'd require a story component for it, like some epic sacrifice or so. I'd say Orpheus got it right. Well, he didn't really, poor guy (and poor Euridyce, for that matter), but dramatically he did. :P Resplendence

I would have no problem with ressurection as long as it fits the story, its damn cool, it makes sense, and its a complicated process requiring epic adventure - Paladinltd

Agreed. This, after all, goes back to the Golden Rule. If a rule needs changing, then change it. I wouldn't feel bad at all about giving myself as a player or anybody playing in a game I ran huge problems achieving the goal though... - IanPrice

First off, I like the way that the metaphysical discussion is longer than the article.. That's just cool. My two (€)cent: I would be of the opinion (Both in and out of game!) that the soul is more than the memories and knowledge of a life. I agree with the view that a soul re-incarnated might share traits with a past life; someone who had lived a crappy live in the slums of nexus might end up a very cynical dynast, and after a decadent, cynical life without satisfaction, they might be re-incarnated as a depressed introvert, unless something changed their outlook; the patterns of past lives influence the latest edition. As to the method of resurrection here: I think that as a character act of desperation to revive a lost loved one (as I understand it was?), it's really cool and characterful, but the result would ultimately be a different person with the exact same brain, so their take on life and their "virtues" might end up different within a short time as they adapted their soul to someone else's life. At least, that's what I'd do. As to death in Exalted and the possibility of healing, I point you to the level five hearthstone in the corebook and easily the most recognisable: The Gem of Incomparable Wellness. Second only to the hearthstone of the realm defenses in utility, it specifically allows you to regenerate from ash. If that's not D-E-A-D, I don't know what is. /:) - Alaron

Well.. as far as using /necromancy/ to reanimate the body..page 134, Book of Bone and Ebony, second last parapgraph of 'denying the call' (the labyrinth circle ressurection spell.) 'there exists a void circle version of this spel, called Barred tomb, which places a recently departed soul back in it's body for up to an hour with a number of health levels equal to the caster's essence... blah blah... The spells denying the call and barred tomb represent the utmost limit that can be reached in the eternal attempt to deny death. Even the obsidian circle cannot return the dead to life.' I suspect, however, that this is partly because the higher up you go through the necromancy circles, the closer you get to the malfeans, and they are not into keeping things /alive/. I /suspect/ if you could find some way to use the energies of /life/ - sorcery - to controkl the spell, and, in essence, take over from the necromantic energy before the spel lran out, it might be possible. In other words: I find a /void circle necromancer/ and convince him to resurrect you. THen, I perform a very, very drawn out ritual t otransfer the threads that are keeping you alive - the necromantic ones - and repalce them with living ones; this maty well involve fetters, and someone with that nice 'high priest' 7 point merit praying to god for divine intervention, and quite probably killing the necromancer... not to mention deals with the sidereals to have your continued existence written back int othe tapestry.. In other words, an epic, hard-as-hell fight to keep you alive, against all odds, and all comers.. - Molikai

Ignoring the the Book of Bone and Ebony for now, I think the "NO RESURRECTION EVER" blurb in the Book of 3 Circles was simply to prevent single spells from providing renewed life. As in, no Zenith is going to go: "My lover just died! However, as I spend 50 motes and roll my unmodified Essence, she is alive again! Thanks, you snotty old Yozis, for giving Brigid sorcery!" But all the other examples are pefectly valid, since none of them rely on "Okay. Roll your Charisma + Occult. 10 successes? Lazarus, you're good to go." -- OhJames

I’d borrow ideas from Full Metal Alchemist (the anime) if any of my players actually tried to resurrect someone. Pity Exalted already uses the word “Homunculus” because that could be nice and creepy... – Enchantress