Charname escaped the area, leaving Gorion's body in the wilderness. In the game when a party member dies, I believe the party supposedly carries his/her corpse around to get a raise. If you drop the dead member from the party, his corpse stays there forever.
This may be the best explanation I've seen so far.
Plot fiat, that's why. Now, about that Deathbringer Assault chunking the body and making it impossible to raise....unfortunately, that would be incorrect. The spells Raise Dead and Resurrection do not require the body to be whole but Raise Dead has a time limit of (if I recall) one day per level of the caster so after a month then I wish you luck on finding a 30th-level cleric. Resurrection, on the other hand, had a time limit--in pencil/paper, at least--of 10 years per caster level; bringing him back that way would be simple.
That being said, Gorion's death is there to move the plot. Here you are, still wet behind the ears, and now your foster father is dead at the hands of some murderous fiend who is out to kill you, as well. Starting your adventure with only the bare minimum of equipment, in the woods, friendless, and without a way to get back into the place you knew as your home. An inauspicious beginning, indeed, but how many timeless stories begin with the death of a parent?
I am Sarevok. I just slaughtered Gorion, a major personality and close associate of Elminster [who may have been in Beregost or High Hedge at that moment], in an attempt to abduct Protagonist who is really, ahem.... Is there any chance at all that I am going to leave Gorion's body in a Ressurectable condition??
This is, from my [Sarevok's] perspective, a World-Historical moment and I am not about to leave open the possibility of Elminster and Gorion showing up at the Ducal Palace to press charges with a few hundred Flaming Fists, etc. to back them up.
That the game does not show Sarevok ritually beheading Gorion is not a compelling objection because the game also does not show Sarevok resurrecting one of his ogres to help him carry away the bodies of his fallen comrades in crime.
I am Sarevok. I just slaughtered Gorion, a major personality and close associate of Elminster [who may have been in Beregost or High Hedge at that moment], in an attempt to abduct Protagonist who is really, ahem.... Is there any chance at all that I am going to leave Gorion's body in a Ressurectable condition??
This is, from my [Sarevok's] perspective, a World-Historical moment and I am not about to leave open the possibility of Elminster and Gorion showing up at the Ducal Palace to press charges with a few hundred Flaming Fists, etc. to back them up.
That the game does not show Sarevok ritually beheading Gorion is not a compelling objection because the game also does not show Sarevok resurrecting one of his ogres to help him carry away the bodies of his fallen comrades in crime.
Good analysis. I would add that Sarevok has a female accomplice (who I believe is a cleric) in the assault on Gorion/Charname. Even if Sarevok doesn't have the power to sever the connection between Gorion's soul & his dead body, it is reasonable to suppose that a high-level cleric might.
I kind of gravitate towards the Steven Brust/Vlad Taltos theory. In the Jhereg books by Steven Brust, resurrection is a common occurrence. However, if the assassin damages the head or the brain, resurrection is impossible. This is reserved only for the very few special circumstances where you actually want someone DEAD instead of merely out of the way. there were also certain spells that could be cast on the body that would prevent resurrection (which don't exist in D&D, but 'Could' conceptually).
Alternately, packing out Gorion's body while on the run, might have (a) been very difficult, cumbersome and dangerous and (b) raised questions such as how was he killed and by whom. Questions that Charname may not have wanted to answer.
Finally, there are wolves in the forest. In the time between the battle and when Charname goes back to the grove, any number of critters could have made a meal of the corpse. You find his robes and some items, but there is nothing that says you ACTUALLY find an intact corpse.
Or maybe in another life, Gorion's name was Obiwan Kenobi.
Personally, I believe Sarevok messed Gorion up enough that as Raise Dead wouldn't work. Deathbringer Assault is one way, but all he'd need to do is cut up the body a bit. Morbid, but Sarevok has smarts. He certainly would know he didn't want Gorion raised and causing him trouble again, and Sarevok could do a fair bit of damage.
Technically, by the rules, resurrection works forever. And it'll work on a pretty messed up body: as long as you took fingernail clippings, a lock of hair, a single bone... you could resurrect Gorion with that. (Though if done in the field, resurrection still required a check, one that got harder the longer the character was dead).
However, I'm going to say that most priests that you meet in Baldur's Gate don't know resurrection. I mean, it's a pretty high level spell. Maybe the Temple of Umberlee in Baldur's Gate could do it, or the High Hall of Wonders of Gond, but they'd probably demand something of you first- if the Temple of Umberlee consented to doing it at all. It wouldn't be easy to resurrect him, and it takes a while from Gorion's death to get to Baldur's Gate unless you're speed-running.
Which leaves Wish.
Which leaves Elminister, who surely knows the stupid spell and has been wandering around the Sword Coast right after Gorion died.
Now I want to make a mod where you, in BG2, use Wish to bring back Gorion. He's too old to actively adventure with you, but he gives you good advice, warm hugs, and generally fumes about that horrible Irenicus with you. Then in ToB you summon him to your pocketplane where he hangs around doing the same thing. And then you totally get to confront him about his lying in his letter back in BG1 about your mum.
Only it would make the turnabout mod sort of useless, huh.
I feel it might break to many things if he were resurrectable. If he came back for BG1, he could easily lay out the entire plot because he clearly knows all about Saravok and Charname's history. In BG2, he would likewise know more than the plot is ready to reveal. Maybe by the time you reach ToB, it would be different, but it seems to me that the body would be awfully molted by then, don't you think? And where exactly was Charname keeping it all this time? Was he being carried around in your Backpack?
As for resurrection without the entire body, I don't know the rules per say, but I think that's gotta be wrong. All resurrection is doing is returning the soul (or whatever) back to the body and resuscitating it. If all that's left are some hair and fingernails, there's nothing to sustain life and the soul would simply depart again. It's like filling a glass with water. If all you have is a shard of glass, the water won't stay 'In' it. All my personal opinion.
As for resurrection without the entire body, I don't know the rules per say, but I think that's gotta be wrong. All resurrection is doing is returning the soul (or whatever) back to the body and resuscitating it. If all that's left are some hair and fingernails, there's nothing to sustain life and the soul would simply depart again. It's like filling a glass with water. If all you have is a shard of glass, the water won't stay 'In' it. All my personal opinion.
Your opinion appears to be correct. ;-)
In BG2, Jaheira explicitly says that resurrection is impossible if the body has been too badly damaged - she explains that this is why she is unable to resurrect Khalid when she finds him. And Khalid's body hasn't been visibly chunked either, just like Gorion's hasn't.
I am Sarevok. I just slaughtered Gorion, a major personality and close associate of Elminster [who may have been in Beregost or High Hedge at that moment], in an attempt to abduct Protagonist who is really, ahem.... Is there any chance at all that I am going to leave Gorion's body in a Ressurectable condition??
This is, from my [Sarevok's] perspective, a World-Historical moment and I am not about to leave open the possibility of Elminster and Gorion showing up at the Ducal Palace to press charges with a few hundred Flaming Fists, etc. to back them up.
That the game does not show Sarevok ritually beheading Gorion is not a compelling objection because the game also does not show Sarevok resurrecting one of his ogres to help him carry away the bodies of his fallen comrades in crime.
I agree with the OP - in fact, I dislike raise dead mechanics/plot contrivances so much that I headcannon them right out of my playthroughs. If a party member dies, I either accept the death or use power word: reload - never in all my years of playing this game have i resurrected anyone at a temple. Totally kills the sense of urgency/danger for me, so in *my* forgotten realms resurrection simply doesn't exist (except in special cases eg everyone's favorite ToB NPC).
Neither dismembering a corpse nor beheading it will make Raise Dead or Resurrection impossible; I am uncertain where people have gotten these ideas. With Raise Dead as long as you have most of the major pieces roughly in place then the spell will work; without them the newly-brought-back subject might be missing some limbs but other spells could be used to regrow the limbs. Resurrection doesn't even need the entire corpse, only a small piece of it.
Now...if Gorion were playing on Hard or Insane mode then being chunked would have removed his icon from the party list, making him impossible to raise from the party's point of view. Perhaps Gorion saw his chance for a clean break and it wasn't actually Gorion who was sneaking you out of Candlekeep; instead, it was Gorion's simulacrum while the real Gorion had cast flight on himself and headed west out over the water then north towards Waterdeep.
As for resurrection without the entire body, I don't know the rules per say, but I think that's gotta be wrong. All resurrection is doing is returning the soul (or whatever) back to the body and resuscitating it. If all that's left are some hair and fingernails, there's nothing to sustain life and the soul would simply depart again. It's like filling a glass with water. If all you have is a shard of glass, the water won't stay 'In' it. All my personal opinion.
Your opinion appears to be correct. ;-)
In BG2, Jaheira explicitly says that resurrection is impossible if the body has been too badly damaged - she explains that this is why she is unable to resurrect Khalid when she finds him. And Khalid's body hasn't been visibly chunked either, just like Gorion's hasn't.
Although, to be fair. She may have merely been looking for a way to dump him and being "Unable" to bring him back was as good a way as any. ;-)
By the 2E rules, Jaheira was wrong about that not being able to resurrect Khalid. She probably couldn't have Harper Called/Raised Dead him, with the damage Irenicus did, but all she'd need to take was a bone and he could have been resurrected.
Having said that, this isn't the first time BG hasn't exactly followed the 2E rules. So maybe in the world of Baldur's Gate, you do need the full body. Though I don't imagine my characters carrying the broken bodies of their companions back to temples (that's a lot of weight!), just taking bones and the like to bring them back.
Jaheira's always been a bit iffy about resurrection/raise dead, anyway, due to her druid beliefs. And Khalid, being a good guy, would have been at peace in the afterlife. Maybe she didn't see any reason to drag him back in to a fight with the man who tortured and killed him when he was now at eternal peace somewhere beautiful.
(Or maybe she wanted to dump him, as @the_spyder says, but I like thinking of them as a lovey couple.)
LOL. When Jaheira had Charname in her sites, it's easy to see how Khalid just wasn't going to measure up.
And again with the rules, I can't quote chapter and verse. I just know that the rules have to have a certain internal consistency in order for them to be used in my world. I see resurrection as patching up the body enough so that life can be restored and then bringing in the soul. But that only goes so far. If, for example, the skull is caved in or missing, there ain't much that can be done.
Admittedly the writers took creative license. But here's the other side of things. In the books (the ones that I have read) death is both common and VERY permanent. You don't often read about resurrection taking place for the characters. Therefore, even for the most powerful out there, it's probably a pretty rare occurrence. In the Game, it probably happens far more often than it should. Therefore, i am comfortable with "There are circumstances beyond which resurrection can not happen." as explanation enough for why neither Gorion nor Khalid (nor Yoshimo for that matter) can not be brought back.
As "The Doctor" said "there are certain fixed events in time that can not be altered. This is one of them."
If nothing else, though- even if he would be beyond resurrection, he wouldn't be beyond a Wish spell. Sure, it couldn't be cast immediately, but there should be nothing stopping a more experienced CHARNAME (with some wisdom) from going "Hey, you know what, I miss Dyna and Khalid (or Yoshimo). Let's bring them back to life."
Of course, that ruins a lot of character arcs and would require a lot of modding to be possible (and nothing would be done about the compatibility with the five hundred mods released that refer to those characters as dead as a doornail.
(Having said that, I'm pretty sure there's a mod that adds a version of Dyna to the game. Someone, somewhere, is probably working on one that brings Khalid back. And I know someone's working on a 'keep Yoshimo' mod.)
And I know someone's working on a 'keep Yoshimo' mod.)
I had built one of those some years ago. Keep the heart, turn it in to the Temple of Ilmater, then get a dialog option to resurrect him and keep playing from there.
fun fact. the d&D wiki says this about the raise dead spell: You return a dead creature you touch to life, provided that it has been dead no longer than 10 days. If the creature's soul is both willing and at liberty to rejoin the body, the creature returns to life with 1 hit point.
and the baldurs gate wiki says gorion level is 9 you need 100 gold each level to resurrect someone. that makes 900 gold to resurrect him. i got 900 gold at day 5 started saving money at day 4. this is to show how easy it would be to resurrect him. even if you follow the D&D rules you need a diamond worth only 500 gold, no matter the level of the person to resurrect. the priests obiously have diamonds as they can resurrect people location but if you go by the BG rules you can resurrect him no problem. this would make this game far too short. but this plot hole could be fixed had they at least chunked his body. this is what bothers me in all these plot holes. they are made for the sake of the story working but they dont need to exist if you do just a minor change
fun fact. the d&D wiki says this about the raise dead spell: You return a dead creature you touch to life, provided that it has been dead no longer than 10 days. If the creature's soul is both willing and at liberty to rejoin the body, the creature returns to life with 1 hit point.
and the baldurs gate wiki says gorion level is 9 you need 100 gold each level to resurrect someone. that makes 900 gold to resurrect him. i got 900 gold at day 5 started saving money at day 4. this is to show how easy it would be to resurrect him. even if you follow the D&D rules you need a diamond worth only 500 gold, no matter the level of the person to resurrect. the priests obiously have diamonds as they can resurrect people location but if you go by the BG rules you can resurrect him no problem. this would make this game far too short. but this plot hole could be fixed had they at least chunked his body. this is what bothers me in all these plot holes. they are made for the sake of the story working but they dont need to exist if you do just a minor change
If he were chunked then there would be no body on the ground for you to find the scroll/items he's carrying.
It's because Sarevok didn't kill Gorion, actually. You see, Gorion simply died of old age seconds before Deathbringer Assault connected. Unfortunate timing, 'tis all. On the more serious note - maybe Gorion's soul doesn't want to be raised?
1: Gorion is an extremely old, single classed mage who has a history of adventure and harpsong. 2: His current con at time of death is 12. As a long term adventure, he's probably tomed that up a few times. 3: Any lifeform can only be raised once per initial constitution point.
Chances are he's already already died and been raised a few times, and either failed his revive roll when the Oghmites tried it, was already raised too many times and couldn't raise no more, or the priest of Oghma that tried to raise him was actually a doppelganger and sabotaged the action before claiming one of the previous two.
Resurrection in temples is made for convenience rather than to be right lore-wise. It takes a level 9 priest to raise dead and level 9 adventurers are already really quite powerful, so not just the average priest you meet in a random temple in a small town, and it represents a lot more money than what it costs you. The game showers you with experience just to increase the power level and make the game satisfying. Add to that that Gorion probably got chunked and need a more powerful spell than a normal raise dead, the fact that you know so very little of the world and start off totally broke, and that makes it easy to understand why you can't do that.
Why does everyone in the game act like someone dying is a serious matter, when there are clearly people capable of reviving them? Why did they just leave Gorion to decompose when there's a Priest of Oghma in Candlekeep who could have brought him back?
According to FR sourcebooks, Raise Dead is a necromancy spell (in 2nd and 5th edition) that was limited to creatures that had been dead for no longer than one day per level of the caster. Plus, the corpse of the deceased had to have enough constitution and be intact enough to sustain life. If Gorion had low Constitution points (he's an old man in his middle or late 60's), or if it took them a day or more to find his body, raising him from the dead is not an option.
There are rules and limitations to resurrecting people that must be acknowledged, it is not a simple feat. Raise Dead is ineffective to people who have died from natural causes like old age, or killed by a death effect. That or the monks of Candlekeep do not dabble in Necromancy spells since the majority of them favor Oghma, Gond and Deneir.
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That being said, Gorion's death is there to move the plot. Here you are, still wet behind the ears, and now your foster father is dead at the hands of some murderous fiend who is out to kill you, as well. Starting your adventure with only the bare minimum of equipment, in the woods, friendless, and without a way to get back into the place you knew as your home. An inauspicious beginning, indeed, but how many timeless stories begin with the death of a parent?
This is, from my [Sarevok's] perspective, a World-Historical moment and I am not about to leave open the possibility of Elminster and Gorion showing up at the Ducal Palace to press charges with a few hundred Flaming Fists, etc. to back them up.
That the game does not show Sarevok ritually beheading Gorion is not a compelling objection because the game also does not show Sarevok resurrecting one of his ogres to help him carry away the bodies of his fallen comrades in crime.
Alternately, packing out Gorion's body while on the run, might have (a) been very difficult, cumbersome and dangerous and (b) raised questions such as how was he killed and by whom. Questions that Charname may not have wanted to answer.
Finally, there are wolves in the forest. In the time between the battle and when Charname goes back to the grove, any number of critters could have made a meal of the corpse. You find his robes and some items, but there is nothing that says you ACTUALLY find an intact corpse.
Or maybe in another life, Gorion's name was Obiwan Kenobi.
Personally, I believe Sarevok messed Gorion up enough that as Raise Dead wouldn't work. Deathbringer Assault is one way, but all he'd need to do is cut up the body a bit. Morbid, but Sarevok has smarts. He certainly would know he didn't want Gorion raised and causing him trouble again, and Sarevok could do a fair bit of damage.
Technically, by the rules, resurrection works forever. And it'll work on a pretty messed up body: as long as you took fingernail clippings, a lock of hair, a single bone... you could resurrect Gorion with that. (Though if done in the field, resurrection still required a check, one that got harder the longer the character was dead).
However, I'm going to say that most priests that you meet in Baldur's Gate don't know resurrection. I mean, it's a pretty high level spell. Maybe the Temple of Umberlee in Baldur's Gate could do it, or the High Hall of Wonders of Gond, but they'd probably demand something of you first- if the Temple of Umberlee consented to doing it at all. It wouldn't be easy to resurrect him, and it takes a while from Gorion's death to get to Baldur's Gate unless you're speed-running.
Which leaves Wish.
Which leaves Elminister, who surely knows the stupid spell and has been wandering around the Sword Coast right after Gorion died.
Which means Elminister is a jerk.
Only it would make the turnabout mod sort of useless, huh.
As for resurrection without the entire body, I don't know the rules per say, but I think that's gotta be wrong. All resurrection is doing is returning the soul (or whatever) back to the body and resuscitating it. If all that's left are some hair and fingernails, there's nothing to sustain life and the soul would simply depart again. It's like filling a glass with water. If all you have is a shard of glass, the water won't stay 'In' it. All my personal opinion.
In BG2, Jaheira explicitly says that resurrection is impossible if the body has been too badly damaged - she explains that this is why she is unable to resurrect Khalid when she finds him. And Khalid's body hasn't been visibly chunked either, just like Gorion's hasn't.
Now...if Gorion were playing on Hard or Insane mode then being chunked would have removed his icon from the party list, making him impossible to raise from the party's point of view. Perhaps Gorion saw his chance for a clean break and it wasn't actually Gorion who was sneaking you out of Candlekeep; instead, it was Gorion's simulacrum while the real Gorion had cast flight on himself and headed west out over the water then north towards Waterdeep.
Having said that, this isn't the first time BG hasn't exactly followed the 2E rules. So maybe in the world of Baldur's Gate, you do need the full body. Though I don't imagine my characters carrying the broken bodies of their companions back to temples (that's a lot of weight!), just taking bones and the like to bring them back.
Jaheira's always been a bit iffy about resurrection/raise dead, anyway, due to her druid beliefs. And Khalid, being a good guy, would have been at peace in the afterlife. Maybe she didn't see any reason to drag him back in to a fight with the man who tortured and killed him when he was now at eternal peace somewhere beautiful.
(Or maybe she wanted to dump him, as @the_spyder says, but I like thinking of them as a lovey couple.)
And again with the rules, I can't quote chapter and verse. I just know that the rules have to have a certain internal consistency in order for them to be used in my world. I see resurrection as patching up the body enough so that life can be restored and then bringing in the soul. But that only goes so far. If, for example, the skull is caved in or missing, there ain't much that can be done.
Admittedly the writers took creative license. But here's the other side of things. In the books (the ones that I have read) death is both common and VERY permanent. You don't often read about resurrection taking place for the characters. Therefore, even for the most powerful out there, it's probably a pretty rare occurrence. In the Game, it probably happens far more often than it should. Therefore, i am comfortable with "There are circumstances beyond which resurrection can not happen." as explanation enough for why neither Gorion nor Khalid (nor Yoshimo for that matter) can not be brought back.
As "The Doctor" said "there are certain fixed events in time that can not be altered. This is one of them."
Of course, that ruins a lot of character arcs and would require a lot of modding to be possible (and nothing would be done about the compatibility with the five hundred mods released that refer to those characters as dead as a doornail.
(Having said that, I'm pretty sure there's a mod that adds a version of Dyna to the game. Someone, somewhere, is probably working on one that brings Khalid back. And I know someone's working on a 'keep Yoshimo' mod.)
You return a dead creature you touch to life, provided that it has been dead no longer than 10 days. If the creature's soul is both willing and at liberty to rejoin the body, the creature returns to life with 1 hit point.
and the baldurs gate wiki says gorion level is 9 you need 100 gold each level to resurrect someone. that makes 900 gold to resurrect him. i got 900 gold at day 5 started saving money at day 4. this is to show how easy it would be to resurrect him.
even if you follow the D&D rules you need a diamond worth only 500 gold, no matter the level of the person to resurrect.
the priests obiously have diamonds as they can resurrect people
location but if you go by the BG rules you can resurrect him no problem. this would make this game far too short.
but this plot hole could be fixed had they at least chunked his body.
this is what bothers me in all these plot holes. they are made for the sake of the story working but they dont need to exist if you do just a minor change
Gorion is OLD. Why spend thousands of gold resurrecting somebody who's just gonna die soon anyway?
I'd spend that money on wine and wenches. And I don't even drink wine.
On the more serious note - maybe Gorion's soul doesn't want to be raised?
2: His current con at time of death is 12. As a long term adventure, he's probably tomed that up a few times.
3: Any lifeform can only be raised once per initial constitution point.
Chances are he's already already died and been raised a few times, and either failed his revive roll when the Oghmites tried it, was already raised too many times and couldn't raise no more, or the priest of Oghma that tried to raise him was actually a doppelganger and sabotaged the action before claiming one of the previous two.
Gorion is old and weary. Why would he want to return?
Alternatively, he did some pretty dodgy things during his time as an adventurer, who knows who had the rights to his soul?
It takes a level 9 priest to raise dead and level 9 adventurers are already really quite powerful, so not just the average priest you meet in a random temple in a small town, and it represents a lot more money than what it costs you.
The game showers you with experience just to increase the power level and make the game satisfying.
Add to that that Gorion probably got chunked and need a more powerful spell than a normal raise dead, the fact that you know so very little of the world and start off totally broke, and that makes it easy to understand why you can't do that.
There are rules and limitations to resurrecting people that must be acknowledged, it is not a simple feat. Raise Dead is ineffective to people who have died from natural causes like old age, or killed by a death effect. That or the monks of Candlekeep do not dabble in Necromancy spells since the majority of them favor Oghma, Gond and Deneir.