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View Full Version : The Right to an Evil Existence? (Or, Eating People Out of Necessity, Not Sport)



Remedy
2015-09-07, 02:45 AM
So, I'm including ghouls in a setting as a major element. Whole society of 'em.

Unlike most forms of undead, ghouls in fact do need to sustain themselves on the flesh of (intelligent) mortals. Those mortals very well can be already dead, so it wouldn't be hard to sustain oneself on buried corpses, at least as long as there are enough pre-existing buried dead people, you can get to said already-dead people, and the people watching over those dead have a sudden change of heart and abandon the reason they were buried in the first place so you can eat them. Needless to say, these conditions are unlikely at best and entirely outside the realm of plausibility in most places.

Leaving aside the apparently inherent Evil of being undead in the first place, is choosing not to starve to (re)death in this circumstance Evil?

Forum Explorer
2015-09-07, 03:00 AM
So, I'm including ghouls in a setting as a major element. Whole society of 'em.

Unlike most forms of undead, ghouls in fact do need to sustain themselves on the flesh of (intelligent) mortals. Those mortals very well can be already dead, so it wouldn't be hard to sustain oneself on buried corpses, at least as long as there are enough pre-existing buried dead people, you can get to said already-dead people, and the people watching over those dead have a sudden change of heart and abandon the reason they were buried in the first place so you can eat them. Needless to say, these conditions are unlikely at best and entirely outside the realm of plausibility in most places.

Leaving aside the apparently inherent Evil of being undead in the first place, is choosing not to starve to (re)death in this circumstance Evil?

By standard fluff, I think ghouls tend to eat corpses, but will attack and eat ordinary people if the opportunity presents itself. If your ghouls are intelligent enough to bargain for the right to eat corpses, or moral enough to not attack living beings, then I don't think they'd be evil for eating corpses. (Unless eating the corpses effects the afterlives of the souls. Some societies did believe that). Assuming that's true, a corpse is just a pile of rotting meat,

Quild
2015-09-07, 03:11 AM
Reminds me some audio-humor thing that says:

- What are these things?
- Ghouls! They're scavengers!
- Oh. What a relief.
- ... How do you figure?
- Well, they only eat deads... We're alive. Nothing to be afraid of.


More in subject, your plot reminds me the "Daybreakers" movie. But in this one, Vampires rule the society, so they can do basically how they want.


I would say that chosing not to starve to re-death isn't evil. However, even if that act isn't evil, it doesn't mean at all that the living ones will be willing to let ghouls have they way of unlife.

NichG
2015-09-07, 03:24 AM
On the one hand, there are certainly non-evil ways to satisfy this particular need. Most involve being conscientious about restricting one's diet to 'natural' dead, hanging around battlefields and execution grounds and hospitals and so on.

However, more generally, an entity is never guaranteed that there is a non-evil way to achieve something they want, be it continued survival or happiness or wealth or anything. Someone can be in the situation where the choice comes down to 'death or do something evil', and that doesn't make the evil thing any less evil. It just makes it more understandable. That is to say, there are situations where someone might do evil, but where it would not be right to punish them for that choice or even to hold them very accountable for it. That doesn't change what they did (and in a system with objective morality, it wouldn't change the alignment consequences), but it could certainly change how their family, friends, and society should react. A soldier might be forgiven things in the service of their country that wouldn't be forgiven of a merchant or craftsman - because the society recognizes that the soldier's circumstances are different, and that the soldier is necessary.

Or to put it another way, its important to be able to coexist with people who have done evil things at some point too. A society based on everyone staying squeaky clean its a lot more brittle, and is actually an environment where evil will tend to compound upon itself because those who violate the standards once are pushed to the edges and are more often placed in situations of choosing between doing evil or dying.

goto124
2015-09-07, 03:52 AM
Does the alignment system help here at all? Or could you make it a case of Evil =/= evil?

Ninja_Prawn
2015-09-07, 04:56 AM
Standard ghouls are aggressive monsters who kill at random, right? If you're changing that, I would think there is scope to revise the 'always evil' alignment (unless it's an undead thing).

Eating corpses is not evil. Eating the corpses of sentient beings is a grey area, but when it's necessary for survival, it's surely a lighter shade of grey.

hymer
2015-09-07, 05:09 AM
I'd say that eating corpses against the wishes of the dead person and/or the people left behind is morally iffy at best, if understandable if it's an uncontrollable urge (or even for survival). But it'd be quite culturally contextual. In a society where eating the dead is honouring them, obviously it's not evil to do so (as seen IRL). Nobody's hurt, so there's nothing wrong with it, ethically speaking. Unless, of course, there's a supernatural thing going on, and the dead spirit is tormented by being eaten. And this, of course, may be unknowable, and people could have various interpretations.

I think you can twist it into anything you want, and it's rife with potential drama in almost any configuration. There's also the possibility that ghouls, as undead, can live without eating, but have a powerful urge to consume the flesh of formerly intelligent beings. It may even be more pleasurable for them if it's against the social mores and inflicts pain on those who see it (a sufficiently despicable CE ghoul fluff). In some fluff, ghouls come about from cannibals (which is pretty damning/judgmental, but could be intentional values dissonance).

The_Tentacle
2015-09-07, 05:30 AM
There are definitely ways you could make this work. The first one that springs to mind is that the ghouls are performing some important service for whatever non-ghoul society they are integrated with, that only they can do safely or easily. No idea what that could be at moment, but there are possibilities. That service could even actually be the act of eating the corpses itself. Perhaps the society worships ghouls, or venerates them, or just thinks that being eaten by ghouls is the traditional way to dispose of the dead. Or maybe some dead rise as unthinking undead (a la ASoIaF) and burning every body is impractical for some reason.

Something that I just thought of is that it seems very difficult to make the ghouls their own standalone society. That is, they must be closely coexisting with non-ghouls, because otherwise they have to "import" dead bodies, and that just seems weird. The others have to make up a significant portion of the population (at least compared to that of the ghouls) so that there are enough bodies to go around.

That's all I can think of for now. Good luck!

Ninja_Prawn
2015-09-07, 05:33 AM
Something that I just thought of is that it seems very difficult to make the ghouls their own standalone society. That is, they must be closely coexisting with non-ghouls, because otherwise they have to "import" dead bodies, and that just seems weird. The others have to make up a significant portion of the population (at least compared to that of the ghouls) so that there are enough bodies to go around.

At least ghouls don't reproduce!

...right?

goto124
2015-09-07, 06:14 AM
That service could even actually be the act of eating the corpses itself. Perhaps the society worships ghouls, or venerates them, or just thinks that being eaten by ghouls is the traditional way to dispose of the dead. Or maybe some dead rise as unthinking undead (a la ASoIaF) and burning every body is impractical for some reason.

Undead fire spirits that arise when the corpses are burnt.

More mundane reasons: living in an area full of material that can catch fire and start huge forest fires.

Or the ghouls have been around, helping clear up the corpses and preventing diseases/bad smells/etc, so why the heck not.

The community living with the ghouls is unlikely to actually know about the diseases. They'll probably think of curses, or undead (which can be true).

What sort of relationships could such a community build with the ghouls?

'Oh, that ghoul? She's Sally. She comes to this clearing every evening. We feed her scraps, and chase her around the lake. She's so cute...'

It could help with portraying ghouls as non-evil.

(Did I just turn ghouls into dogs?)

Milo v3
2015-09-07, 09:16 AM
To be completely honest, the only reason humanity has taboos against canibalism is the diseases such practices can spread. Ghouls are immune to disease thus it is irrelevant. To a ghoul, eating the corpse of a human wouldn't be evil in my opinion. Though "hunting for supplies" may be evil.

hymer
2015-09-07, 09:22 AM
To be completely honest, the only reason humanity has taboos against canibalism is the diseases such practices can spread.

That's... quite a claim.

smcmike
2015-09-07, 09:26 AM
You can certainly construct a society with a different view of how the dead should be treated. Ghouls could be the equivalent of corpse vultures or ancestor spirits. But even in those scenarios there is something abhorrent about them, I think.

In terms of "evil," well, that's a different question. Vampire fiction sometimes really bothers me when folks who want to rid the world of vampires are portrayed as bogots. Vampires eat people. That's what they do. Regardless of whether they are forced to do so by their nature or make a free decision to do so, the proper response is a stake.

Milo v3
2015-09-07, 09:29 AM
That's... quite a claim.

Ancient humans or their ancestors got sick if they did it, so the ones that didn't (either because they were predisposed not to or noticed the results of the practices) survived and passed on the lessons in the form of morales and taboo. Even then the taboo doesn't even exist in all human cultures. Scientifically, aside from the horrendous and numerous number of diseases that can occur from such practices, human meat isn't really any different from any other animals meat.

goto124
2015-09-07, 09:30 AM
the only reason humanity has taboos against canibalism is the diseases such practices can spread.

Did they know about the diseases, or was it more along the lines of 'communities that weren't afraid of and avoided the dead, contracted illnesses and thus died before those communities who did avoid the dead'?

EDIT: Ninja'd

While we're at it, might as well link to this (https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/).

hymer
2015-09-07, 09:51 AM
Ancient humans or their ancestors got sick if they did it, so the ones that didn't (either because they were predisposed not to or noticed the results of the practices) survived and passed on the lessons in the form of morales and taboo. Even then the taboo doesn't even exist in all human cultures. Scientifically, aside from the horrendous and numerous number of diseases that can occur from such practices, human meat isn't really any different from any other animals meat.

Two objections spring to mind: At such an early stage, hunger is a killer on par with disease, to the point where minute energy savings drive natural selection. The difference, whichever direction it went in, is a lot smaller than it would be today. Add to that how meat of all stripes would be potentially disease-carrying. Prion disease takes decades to develop. It can also be contracted from eating bone marrow (as hominids no doubt did) of any mammal, I believe. Possibly many other kinds of prey, too. The problem with prion disease is that it tends to build up in isolated groups of cannibals (or in cows that get fed each other's remains), but only to the point where cannibalism has survived until today.
If the taboo was as accurate as you suppose, it might as well keep people from eating the brains and marrow of humans, not the 'good cuts', if you will.
The second objection is the social and psychological impact of eating someone you know. It has importance well beyond that of a taboo. It seems to me much more likely that the taboo is part of the early rise of burial traditions, which emphasize tenderness and preservation. It arises out of the herd instinct, and it helps with absorbing the shock and sadness of losing a loved one. It helps put structure on a point of frightening change. These rituals should not be brushed aside so lightly.

goto124
2015-09-07, 09:59 AM
Also, people killing each other to eat... doesn't sound like a great way for a population to survive, really. Got to have some limitations on that, at least.

Strigon
2015-09-07, 10:34 AM
I agree; it seems far more likely to have come from a social/religious standpoint than a medical one. Otherwise, there really wouldn't be any cannibalistic societies at all.
But there really is no way to know.

Beleriphon
2015-09-07, 01:09 PM
Here's a thought ghouls are actually people that ate dead humanoids and turned into ghouls. As I recall this is how the original ghoul story worked according to D&D.

MrConsideration
2015-09-07, 02:28 PM
How much choice do Ghouls really have? They're cursed abominations. I don't think they really ponder the ethics of eating anything - they just get on with it. Their consciousness can't really even be compared to a human's.

Is it 'evil', or even negative, for a ghoul to die? They don't enjoy life, or give joy to others - they are endlessly tormented by their hunger and cause nothing but fear, death and misery. There is no positive from leaving such a creature alive.

Their lives are literally worthless. They don't even possess a Soul - something with objective existence in D&D - because that ascended to its deserved plane when the body's original inhabitant died.

Even if your Ghoul only lived off dead Nazi pedophiles there would be no actual value to its existence.

The post-modern/post-colonial critique of D&D can't really apply to the Undead in the same way it can to Orcs.

TheOOB
2015-09-07, 03:01 PM
If you define evil as willfully harming innocents(which is think is about the best definition your going to get), Ghouls in such a setting would not necessarily be evil at all. That said, they'd be unsettling at best, and actively hunted at worse, and I'd be willing to bet the local religion has a problem with their actions.

Shadowrun is a post modern cyberpunk setting, but has ghouls much like OP describes(their not undead though, just the product of a supernatural disease), and they do manage to exist, there are even whole societies of them, but in most parts of the world they are to put things lightly not well liked. I suggest reading up on them.

Beleriphon
2015-09-07, 04:40 PM
If you define evil as willfully harming innocents(which is think is about the best definition your going to get), Ghouls in such a setting would not necessarily be evil at all. That said, they'd be unsettling at best, and actively hunted at worse, and I'd be willing to bet the local religion has a problem with their actions.

Shadowrun is a post modern cyberpunk setting, but has ghouls much like OP describes(their not undead though, just the product of a supernatural disease), and they do manage to exist, there are even whole societies of them, but in most parts of the world they are to put things lightly not well liked. I suggest reading up on them.

Lets not forget there are two kinds of Ghouls in Shadowrun, the ones that need to feed on flesh but aren't rampaging monsters (in fact they make a good disposal system for body banks and chop shops), and the ones that need to feed on flesh but have lost any sense of humanity or self and are really Shadowrun's answer to zombies.

Steampunkette
2015-09-07, 04:50 PM
Definitely not evil by default.

Eating meat, regardless of where it came from, is not evil in and of itself. When you're looking at human meat you get into a gray area because of ownership and method of acquisition.


Method of Acquisition: Killing. Murder is flatly evil. That is killing for personal gain. There is a gray area where survival of two individuals may result in a conflict that isn't by default evil, but when it will require continued killing to sustain yourself the lesser of two evils is clearly your own demise. After all, you'll need another meal after this one. And the next. And the next.


Ownership: We typically think of bodies of the dead as owned by the family of the dead, or closest friends. A passing on of responsibility to the body. The inheritance of flesh, usually with a request for how to handle said meat. However regardless of the request we, as a society, recognize that the ownership of the corpse is the family's, and against the deceased's wishes cremation, burial, or any other number of disposal methods are widely accepted as the bereaved's prerogative. To take the body from the bereaved without permission is, therefore, theft, and evil.


With that said, it is entirely possible to create a society where feeding of a body to ghouls is culturally acceptable. There is also the question of how -much- flesh a ghoul requires to sustain itself. Let's say, for example, that they need the same 2,000 calories that an active and healthy human does with a high activity level. Using Pork as our fill-in the ghoul would need about 3.2 pounds of meat per day to survive.

Considering the average human weighs about 100lbs, that's a fairly nice set of meals, so long as the ghoul can also eat internal organs and non-muscular tissues (For the sake of argument let's assume they can). Roughly 30% by volume would be considered waste (bones, sinew, cartillage, and other inedible bits) leaving us with a bit less than 70lbs of usable meat.

One corpse would be enough to feed 23 ghouls per day. Which means you'd either need a stockpile of corpses, or a much higher people to ghoul ratio in any given society. Perhaps even one which directly imports the dead, expending resources for corpses in much the same way a store or merchant would purchase flour to sell.

Which leads us to the question of how widespread the practice, or at least social acceptance of the practice, is. If the culture is widely accepted (I.E. it's been around for a very long time) then other societies might see the sale of corpses to ghoulish merchants a perfectly reasonable option, with some measure of unscrupulous folk providing murder victims, or robbed graves, to unethical merchants trying to make a living.

However it would likely be viewed no differently than purchasing the meat of stolen cattle, or grain taken from a silo by bandits. While the bandits and murderers themselves would bear the greater moral burden for their actions.

So yes. It is possible to make a completely ethical society of cannibal corpses. You just need to try and keep logistics in mind. And remember: Wars would lead to a -rapid- price drop on basic foodstuffs, rather than increasing the costs. At least for ghouls.

Vrock_Summoner
2015-09-07, 05:25 PM
Steampunkette pretty much knows what she's talking about; if you have a question and she answers, you can assume in good faith that she'll be right.

I would contest the thievery being always Evil, though. I'd accept an argument that somebody who stole bodies from the relatives of the deceased would probably be somewhere south of Good on that count, but I don't think it'd necessarily be Evil to steal the corpses for purely consumptive purposes (assuming such doesn't affect the deceased's afterlife). I'll admit that this is sort of a relative comparison, but a ghoul trying to get a body legitimately and then resorting to stealing it to sustain themselves strikes me as similar to an orphan going around begging and trying to offer the limited work capability they have in exchange for food, being turned down by everyone, and resorting to stealing an apple from a fruit stand to avoid starving in the night. I wouldn't automatically label that child Evil, or even say they're getting closer to Evil through that course of action. From a colder perspective the child is actually the worse of the two examples, since the apple would've fed somebody else and had monetary value to the person where a corpse is neither of these things to the deceased's relatives, but sentimental value is still a form of value so that doesn't actually hold in my view.

Sure, it's non-Good, but there's a whole third of the alignment axis between Good and Evil, no need to declare it a full jump.

As for every other part of the post, well, see the first line; Steampunkette something something pure genius.

Steampunkette
2015-09-07, 05:37 PM
Thank you for the resounding support, Vrock.

That said, I agree. If a man needs bread to survive and steals it then you're dealing with a direct value equation between a human life and ownership of bread. Or corpse. Or any other object required for survival.

However, stealing bread for sale to a third party who needs the bread to live would qualify as evil. A lesser evil, to be sure, but you're combining theft with personal gain. However if it were, say, a person stealing bread to feed someone in need then the questionable aspect would be removed, as the intent is clearly good, even if the act is bad.

Morality is complex and wonderful! Action + intent + result x cultural significance = Moral Judgement.

goto124
2015-09-08, 01:00 AM
Wars would lead to a -rapid- price drop on basic foodstuffs, rather than increasing the costs. At least for ghouls.

I'm now imagining a starving human soldier trying to fend off a ghoul so the she can eat a human corpse.

Ghoul: Let me eaaaaaaaat...
Barely Living Human: No! Let me eat! *swats*

Inevitability
2015-09-08, 01:01 AM
Lizardfolk are described as hunting people when it's necessary to survive, and they are TN. I think eating corpses should be fine.

Alternatively, you could say eating corpses is Chaotic, not Evil, as you are doing something dishonorful, something not accepted by society.

TheOOB
2015-09-08, 01:15 AM
Lets not forget there are two kinds of Ghouls in Shadowrun, the ones that need to feed on flesh but aren't rampaging monsters (in fact they make a good disposal system for body banks and chop shops), and the ones that need to feed on flesh but have lost any sense of humanity or self and are really Shadowrun's answer to zombies.

To note, they are actually the same kind of creature, just the transformation drives many insane. Other forms of "undead" in shadowrun need essence from a living being, which makes them "evil", or at least antithesis to metahumanity.

Reltzik
2015-09-08, 01:26 AM
*sings* People.... people who eat people.... ARE THE LUCKIEST PEOPLE.... in the WOOOOORLD!

*cough*

Here's a few other possibilities.

1) There's a guild of gravekeepers whose job it is to protect the graves from the ghouls and certify that no tombs are being raided. Outward hostility aside, the gravekeepers are quite friendly with the ghouls and have extensive financial arrangements with them.

2) Consumption by ghouls is a traditional funeral arrangement.

3) Consumption by ghouls is a sentence for particularly nasty crimes. A bit of desecration to go with the execution. (Two great flavors, together at last!)

4) The king is a ghoul. We can imagine wars of conquest to bring in more food and slavepens full of livestock.

Honest Tiefling
2015-09-08, 03:52 PM
Is no one else thinking Ghoul army? I mean, most fantasy settings have the societies at war with at least 3 other very clearly evil races. I don't know about you guys, but if my choices were demonic invasion thanks to a demon cult getting out of hand or feeding my dead grandma to a weird looking guy, well, bon appetit! Sure you have problems when the war ends, but I don't think the evil race of humanoids backed by a psychopath of a god are going to listen to reason anytime soon.

braveheart
2015-09-08, 06:14 PM
The way I see it, the ghouls would likely be a kind of life insurance policy (albeit significantly smaller payouts) but families would be able to sell their deceased for a small financial boon, this could lead to more unsavory people killing family members when they come on hard times though. I don't think ghouls could really survive as an independent society, but a handful of ghouls living in a city of say 10,000 would work, that means though that in order to exclusively eat already deceased people they'd need to have a fairly small total population

veti
2015-09-08, 09:16 PM
The way I see it, the ghouls would likely be a kind of life insurance policy (albeit significantly smaller payouts) but families would be able to sell their deceased for a small financial boon, this could lead to more unsavory people killing family members when they come on hard times though. I don't think ghouls could really survive as an independent society, but a handful of ghouls living in a city of say 10,000 would work, that means though that in order to exclusively eat already deceased people they'd need to have a fairly small total population

10,000 people with an average lifespan of (for the sake of argument, let's say) 50 years - means 200 corpses per year. If an average corpse can feed an average ghoul for one week, that community could support four ghouls on a sustainable basis.

It'd be a fragile equilibrium, though. If just one person's relatives cut up nasty and insisted on cremating the body instead of burying/donating it, then a ghoul would be going hungry. Or if just one more ghoul appears in the city. Or if a ghoul decides they're fed up with these emaciated, tumour-ridden corpses, they want something younger and juicier...

If there's a significant community of ghouls - presumably feeding off a much larger community of living people - I would expect there to be evil individuals within the ghoul community who would, depending on their own resourcefulness and imagination, be actively working on schemes:

to enlarge the ghoul community - specifically, the part of it that they personally lead, while simultaneously fostering hatred and distrust between living people and those ghouls who reject their leadership
to increase the murder rate, thereby generating more and fresher corpses
to foster wars between living nations
to hold back or restrict availability of medical advances/treatment for living people
etc.

Lots of potential plot hooks there...

Nifft
2015-09-08, 11:07 PM
Does the alignment system help here at all? Or could you make it a case of Evil =/= evil?

It's my experience that the alignment system is most helpful when the moral and ethical problem is least nuanced.

The alignment system is pretty black-and-white.