Could a ghost possess a zombie created from its own body? Could this ghost-zombie hybrid, hypothetically, continue their career in law?
Szeth-son-son-Vallano, truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to become a magical flying ghost cop possessing his own corpse
But lawyers have no soul
Devils are LE, and work with lawyers frequently enough that they manage to buy their souls rather frequently. They had souls, they just have probably sold their soul. The lawyer one should be terrified of isn’t the LE lawyer, it’s the CG lawyer
Dying is no excuse to stop working, after all.
It’s called a Lich, isn’t it?
I knew lawyers had to be into some dark magic
In at least two campaigns I’ve been in, the wizards college’s law department was always on fire and smelled of burning sulfur. Apparently they just like it that way?
Both times we ended up down there to summon an Arch devil so they could properly word a Wish for us.
I’d watch it.
Depends entirely on the limitations of the ghost’s possession ability, but if the ghost can possess a living person and control them, then an animated corpse should work as well. The problem with continuing the career is that the body would continue to decay until the ghost wouldn’t be able to move it any more.
The problem with continuing the career is that the body would continue to decay until the ghost wouldn’t be able to move it any more.
Just like a living body 🙁
Indeed, but much faster.
Does it count if the ghost is bound to a suit of armour and the zombie is animated by some random lab animal’s soul…?
This honestly fits the prompt almost perfectly
One of the characters in the “what we do in the shadows” show is a vampire whose ghost inhabits a doll.
This is essentially one* of the Kingdom Hearts plot threads. Sora sacrifices himself and becomes a Heartless (ghost) in KH1, but since he has such a strong heart, the husk he leaves behind becomes the Nobody Roxas (zombie).
The I, Zombie comic was so much weirder than the tv show.
There’s a Wattpad Novel, “Running with Scissor”, where the mc’s body and soul are separated by some sort of spell and he has to recover his body before midnight or the spell becomes permanent. It’s pretty good absurdist humour reminescent of The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.
They definitely could in D&D lore. You die. Your soul goes to whatever plane of existence. Your body gets left behind and a necromancer raises it as a zombie for menial labor. Your soul comes back as a ghost to complain to a party of adventurers about how a necromancer has defiled your body and you wish to put an end to it. The bard says something stupid like “well it doesn’t sound like you were using it anymore. You know what they say: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
Running out of movie ideas? Just crowdsource from the public!
Yeah, that’s what they do now. Adaptations and remakes, Hollywood’s last resort.
Don’t forget straight up sequels to 30-year old movies. Nostalgia grabs.
I’m going to say yes. In order to become a zombie a body must be dead, and generally the soul becomes a ghost after death. Zombies aren’t related to the person they were, they’re just a corpse that’s been animated.
Unless they’re the original Romero zombie, which are corpses animated by souls from an overflowing Hell, which might imply they went back to their original body.
I don’t believe there is objective official lore on the cosmology of Romero. (Romero seems distinctly uninterested in that sort of approach to storytelling). I know it says so on the poster of Dawn Of The Dead, but that seems more like poetic ominous tone setting rather than a literal lore dump. Everything inside the movie is speculation by characters who don’t have answers.
I don’t think the above issue really matters too much, though. I’d say that if we accept that souls exist in the Romero zombie universe, then the fact that zombies can retain memories and habits from their lives shows the soul is retained.
I’d say, as a baseline, any setting where zombies can retain some of their personality/memories means that if a soul exists, it is in the body and shouldn’t be able to become a ghost.
I can accept a setting where zombies only exist as reanimated husks being puppeted in some way as also having ghosts of those people.
How about a setting where emotions are part of the soul but the body can keep memories?
So a zombie like that could recite stuff and respond, but would otherwise be instinct/reflex driven since there’s nothing in it that makes it want stuff, it just looks for food. It wouldn’t react to anything you say unless you convince it that it has to listen to get fed
Sure anyone could make any setting. If the creator explicitly make that split, then that’s how it is. I just don’t think most settings intentionally make such a split.
Kingdom Hearts kinda had this with the Heartless (from a person’s heart) and the Nobodies (from a person’s body).
Kingdom Hearts
Edit: looking at the other comments I’m glad I’m not the only one with that brainrot.
I want an anime of this. haha.
It’d be great; the main plot will be the ghost possessing his zombie body, so now he’s the only intelligent, reasonable zombie in a zombie apocalypse world. Obviously the living are going to be skeptical, and there’ll be issues with him occasionally losing control of the body…this has the makings of a great anime
Then eventually the original zombie body is too decayed and he’s pissed he has to start switching bodies, probably because it takes so long to get used to each and get control
“The Unwanted Undead Adventurer” is a pretty close approximation of this.
Can’t remember the author or title.
Young American woman goes to London and gets invited to a wild party a a huge mansion. The first level is music, celebs, drugs, and sex. Slowly she realizes two things; she used to live in this mansion, and that her hostess is a vampire. She’s the reincarnation of the soul that used to inhabit the vampire’s body.
Duuuuuuuuuude. I want this movie.
A good short story keeps you amused for about a half hour.
A great one lingers in your mind forever.
Ok, I’d read that. Let me know if you ever remember the title!
Don’t hold your breath. My brain is like Swiss cheese and there are more mice everyday
For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether.
- Hali, the Philosopher, from “Can Such Things Be?” By Ambrose Bierce in “The Death of Halpin Frayser”
For there be divers sorts of death—some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God’s will) and, none seeing the end, we say that man is lost, or gone on a long journey—which indeed he hath; but sometimes it hath happened in the sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.woops, wrong Hali Qoute“ooooveerrruuuulllleeeed”
/eats brains
