I don't think I need spoiler space on this one, but... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The individuals we know of who've a) gotten stuck with a Morganti weapon and b) 'survived' are, from what I can remember, only two: Loraan and Aliera. Aliera, of course, has her soul linked to Pathfinder, a Great Weapon, which defended her by taking her soul into itself. Loraan ... well, see, that's the question, isn't it. I think what everyone's forgetting is a single six-letter word, and what it means in Dragaera: wizard. A wizard is someone who takes sorcery, wizardry, and whatever other mystic magical '-y' words there are in Dragaera (yeah, so I forget) and twists them all together. Oh, and in so doing he also creates a staff in which he keeps his soul. So why's this important? Well, a Morganti weapon cannot destroy a soul if it isn't there; you can't destroy the soul of someone who's already dead, for example. The soul, according to the explanation of revivification, hangs around for about 3 days before moving on, but it isn't -in- the body, and thus subject to destruction via Morganti. Loraan's soul at the time of his 'first' death by, apparently, Blackwand, was in his staff -- not in his body. While clearly he was still alive, the mystic details (or 'engineering', as the Necromancer would put it) of being a wizard preserves his soul from being destroyed. As a side thought: this may have been the entire reason wizards came to be -- some paranoid Athyra hated Morganti weapons and figured out a way to defend his soul from them. Voila', wizards. Loraan-the-Dead, however, WAS destroyed by a Morganti weapon, as wielded by Savn; clearly the undead can be so destroyed. It is a theory of mine that after they get sent down Deathsgate Falls, undead can only return -as- a soul, i.e. the 'corpse' they reanimate is more akin to a construct (if at all), since after all those sent over the Falls 'wake up' at the foot of the Falls (apparently creating a form there), take what they can use off their own corpse, and head into the Paths -- leaving their original body behind. Doesn't mean they don't go back after getting permission to become undead and reanimate their own corpse, but that somehow doesn't seem likely. Essentially, the logic chain is such: if you can only return (as a rule, with only four violations that we know of) from the Paths as an Undead, and even undead wizards can be slain by Morganti weapons (after having successfully defended themselves against such destruction previously), therefore for some reason undead wizards cannot put their souls back into staffs, which would prevent them from being destroyed. (Which, since it clearly happened, can't be done. ... you know what I mean.) Anyhow. Regarding those emerging from the Paths: Zerika IV: a special case, the last Phoenix, had to bring back the Orb, yadda yadda. Vlad Taltos: Easterner, didn't belong there, one escape only, next time you'll have to stay. (Your familiar shares your fate, of course.) Aliera e'Kieron: a 'special case', given the ability to leave the Paths by her mom, the goddess Verra. Morollan e'Drien: wasn't supposed to leave. Apparently infused with the blood of a goddess, which permitted him to escape as a real living guy. To our knowledge, no other has been 'allowed' to escape as a living individual from the Paths of the Dead; even Sethra Lavode had to come back as undead. S. Thomas Crain Author-in-Training __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com