Mages of Skyrim, explain to me about Soul Gems!

[VeryOddGamer]

Yeah, there's a reason why people don't like black soul gems, because normal ones can only trap souls of animals and the like.
And yeah, there's a reason why I named my soul-trapping Daedric Battleaxe "Torment".

 

[thiosk]

You're damn right its evil.

Why do you think I do it?

Once I collect just a few more black souls, I am going to begin killing each and every citizen of skyrim. I will then build a cathedral of skulls and black soul gems, held together with daedra hearts and human flesh.

 

[MHR]

Yeah, I agree that the whole thing is pretty evil and worse than actually killing something, but I have to say that soul trapping some bad guy, while BAD, is not as bad as burning up some innocent mudcrab souls.

That's why I try to buy as many black soul gems as I can. If I need enchanted junk, the bad guys are going to be my first line of supply. I don't know how I justify any of it from a roleplaying perspective... but I suppose my character gets by knowing he's doing more to correct it than all the mages are. That's what I'm going with. 1% better is enough. If everyone chipped in some efforts to rid the world of atrocities like I'm doing, everything would be much better

But yeah, presumably burning up all the essence of what something is or ever will be again is pretty bad. You could go around killing 100 people but at least you aren't causing "permanent" damage robbing a soul of the afterlife and its overall existence.

Anyway, I consider soul trapping daedra to fuel my life drain bow in oblivion to be a pretty efficient way of permanently dealing with daedra that otherwise just get sent back to oblivion with a slap on the wrist. What if they just come back? Pretty dumb.

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

I know four things about Soul Gems.
-When I shoot mages between the eyes from the shadows 900 yards away, sometimes they have Soul Gems crammed someplace horrible as 'loot'.
-Sometimes those crafty mages leave Soul Gems as traps for me. I steal them, and cram them someplace horrible for safekeeping.
-If I cram enough Soul Gems into my bow, somehow that prolongs its ability to freeze people in place when I hit them with arrows. This both amuses and perplexes me to no end.
-If I shoot someone with my other bow or stab them with my "special dagger", I can steal their soul, cram it into one of these rocks, and then cram that rock into my bow. See the point above.

Hell, I'm the dragonborn. I eat dragon souls, destroying the life essence of aeons-old god-creatures. Compared to that, stuffing the odd bandit or undead skeleton into a Soul Gem is barely even rude, much less evil.

 

[Scrustle]

Yeah I've always thought capturing souls, especially those of humans, and using them to make an enchanted weapon is pretty sinister. Although I think there's something kind of sinister about the souls of humans themselves in the series. Animals all have "white" souls, while humans have "black" souls. I don't think there's anything in the lore pointing to humans' souls being intrinsically evil, the fact they're called "black" and involved in the dark art of necromancy does make it look suspicious. Although, as you stated necromancy isn't really particularly evil in comparison in the games. It even used to be a legitimate school of study before it was outlawed.

Also, when you use a soul you don't obliterate them. As was revealed in the Dawnguard DLC, once a soul has been used up it goes to the Soul Cairn and exists in eternal purgatory, always being watched by the Ideal Masters, left to go insane over time.

Hmm, but does the Soul Cairn apply to Daedric souls? I figured Daedra would eventually return to Oblivion.

I didn't see any Daedra while I was there. All humans and one horse. There's a dragon too, but he's not a soul. There's also zombie-skeleton type creatures and some massive human looking things that wear dragon armour. No idea what those are, but they turn to dust when you kill them.

 

[MHR]

Ah yes, forgot to mention, one book I read in oblivion that I forget the name of and refuse to look up said that daedra that visit nirn and are killed just get sent back to oblivion. Ones that inhabit ruins and dungeons and are not summoned are most likely permanent residents and killing them actually kills them.

Daedra killed in the planes of oblivion actually die since that's where they live.

 

[mental_looney]

Being a mage and always forgetting to use Soul Trap there are a hell of a lot of already full soul gems that can be stolen or permanently borrowed seeing as they seem to get left around, even black ones. Does it still make you a bad person if you are using them unsure of what souls are in there or what happened to them before hand or should you be personally trapping any souls to ensure it's only animals or like murders?

 

[MHR]

Being a mage and always forgetting to use Soul Trap there are a hell of a lot of already full soul gems that can be stolen or permanently borrowed seeing as they seem to get left around, even black ones. Does it still make you a bad person if you are using them unsure of what souls are in there or what happened to them before hand or should you be personally trapping any souls to ensure it's only animals or like murders?

Presumably a truly righteous person should avoid trapping any souls and retain any soul gems they "find" looking for a way to release them rather than burning away the contents forever powering some frivolous garbage.

Trapping animals and people are probably both just as bad with the only difference being perspective and how much juice you can get out of the particular soul.

 

[Daveman]

Standard soul gems use animal and beast souls, not human ones I thought. In oblivion you didn't even have useable black soul gems because they were evil.

Besides, I have never once used soul trap because there are so many filled soul gems already out there.

 

[MHR]

Standard gems do only use non-person souls.

Black soul gems were in oblivion, but it seems a necromancer's person were the only place you could find them for obvious reasons.

 

[Bato]

Yes, soul gems are morally questionable.
Which makes Black Soul gems stupid to me, yeah as someone said they were introduced in Oblivion.
But they weren't in Morrowind, in there a soul is a soul no matter who from. I think the only restriction was you couldn't fully contain a God's soul(Vivec and Almalexia) without Azura's star.

But after Oblivion, some of the greatest immortal Daedra souls pale in comparison to the lowliest peasant who has accomplished nothing soul. Which is stupid to me.
Also in Skyrim Falmer are elves, they are driven mad by their mushroom diet maybe, but they still are elves. Their soul is nothing in comparison to the Altmer, who they both stemmed from.

 

[Trasch17]

I thought the same thing and didn't use soul gems because of that. My dragonborn was a good guy and harvesting the souls of poor animals just didn't fit him.

Spoiler: comic

 

[Mr Pantomime]

Theres a mission in Skyrim where you go into a soul gem , and straight up kill the inhabitant. According to the guy you did it for, his soul was obliterated, wiped from existence. But, the greater good and all that.

Then again, that guy also summons Daedra inside the Gem, and when you kill them you can take their hearts and other possessions. You even keep them in the real world. So maybe you shouldn't take the whole Soul Gem thing too seriously, because the developers clearly don't.

It's this quest, I spoilered it in case you don't want to know.

Spoiler

[link]http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Black_Star_(Quest)[/link]

Can someone confirm whether you can trap the guy's soul while in his soul gem? Because that wouldn't make a lot of sense.

 

[Versuvius]

Soul Gems when used by the Dwemer were not seen as souls, rather, they create an electrochromatic imprint within the gem that drew power from whatever plane of oblivion it comes from to power their steam deelies boilers using the 'soul trap' spell.

Who're you asking if it's amoral?

Personally i don't give a rats ass. I steal the soul of things that are trying to kill me, they had it coming.

 

[Doclector]

I had thought about it, but apparantly, it's covered in dawnguard. And besides, falmer are my main soul trap targets, and fuck those guys.

Though that brings up an interesting point. To trap a man, mer, or beast race, you need a black soul gem. Falmer were once a fully fledged mer race (personally I think they were the dremer) who fell from grace somehow, and ended up living in caves and stuff preumably until they degenerated into the falmer.

The fact you can soul trap them without a black soul gem would suggest that somehow, their souls degenerated as well as their bodies and culture. At some point, the falmer's eyeless bodies became unsuitable for "proper" souls.

And now I go into my trademark overthinking.

 

[DoPo]

Which makes Black Soul gems stupid to me, yeah as someone said they were introduced in Oblivion.
But they weren't in Morrowind, in there a soul is a soul no matter who from. I think the only restriction was you couldn't fully contain a God's soul(Vivec and Almalexia) without Azura's star.

Wait, I though you couldn't trap human/mer (i.e., "black") souls in Morrowind? Am I misremembering? The gods don't really count as black souls, I suppose, due to mystical mumbo jumbo somethingm.

 

[Bestival]

A tiny part of someone's soul being being in my weapon shouldn't really bother you, seeing that I'm burning down entire towns with my mighty fiery balls of... fire...

Besides, soul gems are big business, just look at the npc prices on grand gems, you can't ban those, you'll dismantle the economy!

 

[lSHaDoW-FoXl]

So basically, we've got approximately four possibilities on how soul gems work:

Theory number one is kind of like recycling, where we trap a soul, use it, and it goes to whatever plane it was meant for. Well, that sounds pretty inconvenient but not too bad. I can imagine it must suck though if the person never really gets around to using it. This theory isn't canon.

Theory number two is basically that the soul is completely used up until it's nothing. In short, fucking evil.

Theory number three is that soul gems doesn't take souls, it just takes a portion of a beings essence and releases it. This is the best option.

Then there's soul cairn,the canonical answer to this question. Which in my opinion, is probably the worst. It just doesn't seem right to me that someone can get sent to purgatory because some stupid prick decided to absorb their soul. Even to an animal I wouldn't think this is justified (which raises the question, where does an animals soul go, anyway?) My only question now is whether the writers of the Elder Scrolls series thought this much into how soul gems work.

As for the falmer, morally even taking their souls would be a morally abhorrent act. Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate the falmer and they ruined an entire game for me once (I found an area that I couldn't just exit when I was a low level and they raped me) but if you think about it, you can't really blame them for their evil. They were twisted into the creatures that they are now because they were killed off, enslaved, and poisoned. If anything, the Dwemer and the Nords deserve to suffer for these crimes, not the falmer. As for the fellow that proposed the theory that the falmer's soul degraded with their fall from grace; I find it makes sense.

So, looking back at the crimes of man and at the purity of an animal *Really, do you think a Wolf attacks you for anything other than food?* I would actually argue that entrapping the soul of man or mer is far more justified than that of an animal. I mean, a Fox definitely didn't create the falmer.

 

[the abyss gazes also]

I play my mage as a knowledge is power. Soul gems are a tool. Even if I'm damning the soul of a mammoth to power my ring of mana awesome... I don't think I would loose sleep over it.

If it were real and we could prove that soul gems were trapping the actual soul, I'd probably be very wigged out about it.