Ice to Flesh spell (Frostburn) Clarification

[Jesuitman]

So I DM for probably the worlds most backstabby group, and the spell caster has been looking through various spell books. He discovered the spell Ice to Flesh in the Frostburn handbook, and he asked me if he could cast it onto an ice sculpture. I read up on it and came across this phrase "Such flesh is inert and lacking a vital life force unless a life force or magical energy is available."

I know the next step of my party will be to cast a resurrection spell on the new frosty corpse, so I need to know what would happen if a corpse that never possessed a soul and was not birthed and was suddenly given life. Would it be a sort of just blank slate person? What would happen?

[Irrelephant]

IMO, the corpse gains "hit points, vigor, and vitality" but none of the other stuff. It just becomes a comatose, living body instead of a corpse.

[Jesuitman]

So when I told my group about this, they asked if they could use a spell to animate the flesh and put it to work in a mine, seeing as that is basically a body they can enslave. I need a rule that says they cannot do that. I suppose the spells per day limit would work, but they will invariably find a way around that too.

[THEChanger]

Well, the text of Resurrection reads as follows:

This spell functions like raise dead, except that you are able to restore life and complete strength to any deceased creature.

Strictly speaking, the fleshy mass conjured from ice is not a deceased creature. For a creature to be deceased, it must first have been alive. From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:

no longer living

Since your fleshy mass is not in fact a deceased person, as it was never alive to begin with, my ruling would be that a Resurrection spell would fail, vis a vis lacking a soul to stick in the body. Giving this fleshy mass life would require a Wish or Miracle spell. And if your players want to waste a Wish or Miracle on creating slaves...their loss, I suppose.

[Blackhawk748]

Do note that they could probably cast animate dead on it as it does have a skeletal system and thats really all you need.

[AtlasSniperman]

Imagine if an icecube was turned into a flesh cube; no bones, no skin, just a pile of meat. Now give it life, oh its a living pile of meat... with no organs or blood, it dies.