No need to make it so complex- perhaps it's the easiest explaination: Morrolan told Blackwand not to do anything to Loraan's soul in the first place. Perhaps Morrolan just killed Loraan normally, allowing him to undergo whatever he needed to do to become undead. I would assume that he needed to go through the Halls of Judgement to do so- after all, that's how Sethra became undead. Alex --Previous Message from davids at kithrup.com------ Another question that arose from "Taltos" in "Athyra": How did Loraan come to be undead when his soul was presumably consumed by Blackwand? When Vlad and Morrolan killed Loraan, I think Morrolan must have thought, "We may need him to undo whatever was done to Aliera", and told Blackwand "Hold his soul but don't shred it". That seems sort of obvious, but what happens next? Well, here's a few ideas: 1) Loraan, being a necromancer, has sorcerous machinations in place which are meant to pull his soul in if it ever became detached from his body. Those mechanisms came into play, and slowly reeled Loraan's soul back to its body. Of course, more than 3 days had passed, so either the soul or the body or both had changed to the point where he could no longer go in living as a "normal" entity. 2) Morrolan took Blackwand to the Paths of the Dead, which has its own pull on souls. Perhaps Blackwand would have been able to hold on to Loraan's soul indefinitely in most cases, but was unable to do so in the Paths of the Dead, which are by definition where souls go to anyway. From there, Loraan's hypothetical necromantic soul retrieval routines took effect, or he had his own little adventure with the Lords of Judgment. 3) While in the Paths of the Dead, Morrolan fought the a Dragon and killed her, but (presumably) didn't shred her soul because "[Blackwand] does what he tells her to". Then he fights several other Dragons at once because Vlad has bollixed things up. Perhaps Blackwand couldn't juggle 2 sets of instructions for multiple different souls, and lost hold of Loraan at that point. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx