Meh, I never bothered trapping souls much. Tended to find enough soul gems already containing souls and varla stones to meet my recharging needs. In Skyrim my character will naturally and automatically harvest dragon souls so he's unlikely to consider harvesting other souls to be any different should the need arise. After all, he's the product of a culture that doesn't seem to see the practices involved in the creation of the enchantments that abound everywhere as any sort of atrocities.

I'm not going to vote in the poll because I have my own ideas of what "soul-trapping" really is. I don't really accept the game's definition of soul trapping, with one exception.

Soul trapping and Soul Gems are, to me, actually a misnomer. What you are actually doing is harnessing the magical energies of a dying foe. Upon death, Magicka leaves the individual's body to return to the Void. "Soul-trapping" instead redirects this flow of Magicka into a material vessel: the Soul Gem. The stronger and/or more intelligent the creature, the more Magicka they exhume upon death, thus the Gems must be fashioned to be able to contain certain amounts of energy. This energy can then be bound to other material objects to grant them magical enhancements, AKA: enchantments. But this process does not touch the soul of the being; it simply interacts with the Magicka exiting their body.

Black Soul Gems, on the other hand, really do rob your opponent of their soul, along with the Magicka they harness. To create them is to practice Necromancy, as they are needed to fuel Reanimation and they steal souls away from the Afterlife which are needed for just that.

All things considered, I feel that makes good enough sense to me.

The Oblivion game: I put the soul of the girl who called herself "Umbra" in a black soul gem. That line she used about "men, women and children having bled for her and fed her sword Umbra"... I thought it was a very fitting end for her.

Otherwise, the ethics don't concern me. If anyone in the game attacks me first, their soul is fair game.

I see it more as their life force as well. They still die and travel onward as normal, just instead of their life dispersing, I am capturing it.

There are no ethics to me here, it's a gameplay mechanic, and I use it when I need it.

Soul trapping captures the soul within the gem. If the soul has no consciousness in this state, then I'm doing nothing wrong. If the soul has a consciousness in that state, then I'm extending the time before the soul's identity is ripped away by the dreamsleave. Either I'm doing nothing wrong or I'm doing good. I thus have no problems with soul trapping anything given the rules of the Elder Scrolls universe.

I do like how daggerfall handled soul trapping and enchanting.

Over time your enchanted item had a chance of breaking down and the soul would escape. When this happened, it'd obviously attack the item's wielder. Seems fitting that they get a chance to break free and fight back.

This thread makes people who soultrap sound like assh*les. "no they're only animals"

ill trap the souls of animals and evil doers... or any of the non human races.

Didn't look to see if it was mentioned before... but if you soul trap an evil person, do you save them from hell?

Not sure there is such a thing in TES lore anyway.

But even if there was, and assuming the soul retained some kind of consciousness, who knows what that would feel like. It might be a hellish experience of its own: disembodied and claustrophobic with no sleep nor rest nor feeling. Just constant conscious cramped wakefulness.

I just use it to enchant my stuff, I don't really think about it from an ethical point of view

I didn't vote, as not all the options I wanter were there. plus it's more of a morally grey area, to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Overall however, there are some rules i follow. Firstly, never soul trap humans (with one exception, on one of my playthroughs in Oblivion I soul trapped mannimarco because seriously, he had it coming). Secondly, i never soul trap animals unless I have to, and if I do, I use the soul gem immediately, which, in my view, frees the creature.

Daedra are a different matter. If i've summoned it, I have a responsibility to it, I'm not gointo harm it, and will try and protect it in battle. If I haven't summoned it, and it's an inherently evil entity roaming and killing at will, then it's free game for soul trapping.

/this


I was considering writing my own explanation but thankfully I read the whole thread. Perfect

Well said. I've been replaying the main quest of OB with a Paladin and this is exactly his perspective. Of course the fact that he's mainly soul-trapping Daedra (and using them to kill more Daedra) probably helps. :thumbsup:

First of all, I'd like to point out that it's "they're" and "you're". Secondly, I've never really used soul gems. But since I'm such a nice, polite person, I find it really difficult to be evil in video games. So when I do use them, I only use it on the malevolent supernatural creatures.

Well you gotta do a few evil things to save the world I guess.

has anyone else heard M'aiq The Liar say this?

"M'aiq was soul trapped once. Not very pleasant. You should think about that once in a while."

i assume that line is based off this thread

I think of "souls" in elderscrolls as more of a life energy. The last bit of whatever they have to give life, is svcked into the gem. not to mention, souls aren't real in the first place... so does it really matter how you think of them in the game?

They should feel honored to have become a part of my arsenal.

Animals are not sentient beings, they are devoid of perception beyond their immediate senses. They cannot reflect or consider or reason.

I can see the issue with soul trapping humans, but at the end of the day there's no consequence so I'd do it anyway.

They are perfectly sentient beings and they are conscious that they exist, they just don't ponder about it. Their sense of "reason" is just oversimplified, they use it amongst themselves and some even use it with humans. But i don't personally care, the end justifies the means they say

The way I see it the TES game world sets forth a clear practical morality for this (practical as opposed to religious). Trapping human souls is evil and trapping other souls is fine.

You are told that using black soul gems is evil. And necromancers live outside of city in caves, as they are shunned by society.

But enchanted items are common – bought and sold in stores like any goods. And regular conjurers do not have the same stigma as necromancers.

Interesting read, especially Merari's commnets.

My good mage character doesn't trap souls due to the ethical questions (nor does she practice conjuration, read "A Tragedy in Black" for a good reason why), however she does use pre-filled ones, it's too late for those already. Also if she gets her hands on Black Soul Gems she hides them in places where no one will find them.

Still, as has been said, trapping of "White" souls is endorsed by Arkay, one of the Divines, so it can't be inherently evil? :shrug:

And maybe this forum has hope yet ^_^

It's interesting how many people who play 'good' characters say they're willing to soul-trap 'evil' people because "they deserve it."

I'm afraid you can't have your cake and eat it too. Hypocrisy has caused far more evil in the world than both avarice and bloodlust combined.

@OP, this is a totally geeky, but fantastic poll idea and discussion. I don't remember this topic ever being brought up, at least not to this extent, and I've been on these forums since the Morrowind days (despite my new account). Cheers!

@Stormchild, very thoughtful post.

In my opinion, soul trapping is an extremely evil, possibly the absolutely most evil, action that can be taken in the game. This depends on what exactly you think a soul is**, and what you think a soul trap actually does. So how bad it is depends on what those 2 beliefs are. But I think most interpretations imply that soul trapping is a very, very bad thing to do.

Most characters could easily bypass the fact that it's extremely evil just because it's an abstract evil, and many residents of Nirn have probably never taken time to think through the implications. And some people are just sociapaths, or downright evil. But you'd think that there would be some religious groups, scholars, and thoughtful paladin types that would absolutely refuse to make or use anything that related to soul trapping--definitely for any human, and mostly for beast races, and/or animals and daedra. (Though there would of course by racists or daedra-bigots that reject the idea of beast people souls or whatever.)


**Some cultures believe that all beings have more than 1 soul. For example, some Indian beliefs state that there is a higher soul and a lower soul, each of which have different behaviors/destinations after death