She actually working on a way of diverting bits of spells’ energy into bits of healing.  And not just necromancy spells, any spell.  She’s not getting the feeling the lawyer is interested in productive conversation, so she’ll keep quiet and let her bully the other ‘working wizard’.

That’s a lawyer mocking him, right?  At least his soul isn’t sold to Mephistopheles, so he has a chance at not burning in hell for eternity.

"I thought Nex and Geb made themselves ghosts so they could fight forever. And turning yourself undead for a minute obviously isn't the worst thing you could do. I bet you'd rather that than - what was it, killing dryads?"

It's impossible to tell whether Lluïsa is being mocking or serious. Her affect is too weird.

Everyone's affect is equally weird to an archon who was never human, though.

"Even if it may be so in theory, undeath bears far too many risks for this to be possible at all ethically."

"Just because something isn't literally the worst thing you could possibly do doesn't mean it isn't bad."

"Turning yourself undead 'for a minute' is the path to figuring out during that minute how to stay undead and then you're on a short road to killing dryads while laughing maniacally as the forest burns in the background. And I heard Nex and Geb were archmages so they don't count for what is or isn't possible."

...Huh.

Liushna doesn't really think of zombies as evil, generally; they're not smart enough. But...they are pretty violent. This is usually fine, you can just keep them corralled until there's someone who needs violence done to them and then point them at the enemy, and zombies don't happen that often anyways. But, uh, if zombies are more typical of undead than ghosts, even intelligent undead...that would actually explain a lot of things that had been confusing her about how humans were talking about undead. 

But also, Feather, what. 

"Sorry, I'm confused, why would being a ghost be bad? I mean, if someone would rather go to an afterlife, then sure," she's still not great at automatically incorporating the afterlives into her model of the world but humans mostly do not have this problem she thinks, "but if you're a ghost, then you can still help your kin, by sharing knowledge or keeping a lookout or being a messenger or basically anything that doesn't require, like, hands."

"Just because people call something bad doesn't mean you should never do it"

"If only there were Magic to Alter the Fixed Obsessive Mind of a Lich, it might prove Simpler than Annihilating their Phylactery to simply Alter a Captured Lich like the Infamous Tar-Baphon into a Second Badger-Lich," muses Lluïsa. "Though Lichdom would remain Ill-Advised."

“Threnodic metamagic and a full array of high level enchantments wouldn’t do it?  I assume no one has tried because the overlap between ‘trying to redeem evil’ and ‘master of undeath metamagic and enchantment spells’ have very little overlap.”

"There is actually a spell to take on the appearance of the undead- [Undead Anatomy], but it's not a very useful spell, on the whole. It makes you look undead, and take negative channels. I never bothered getting it, but my friend Vie, in the Necromancy department has it."

Glancing at Estella. 

"First circle is absolutely sufficient to be a research wizard. The key is to have the right mindset. You said the flavor was bad? Instantly detectable on the tongue? I'd sooner expect students to use it for pranks. I wonder if it could be made merciful."

"I do suspect that any Truly Great Necromancer is Not Unlikely to be Himself a Lich, alas."

"Do your people know how to turn into ghosts on purpose? Or does it just happen a lot? I thought people became ghosts when they died in some really horrible way or something else very bad happened, and then only rarely and unpredictably. And they might not be evil but they are generally sad or angry about the thing that happened and want to fix or avenge it somehow. Being a ghost might not have to be bad - if a ghost told me it was happy I suppose I'd believe it - but ghosts happily staying around to help their descendants sounds like... maybe we're talking about a different thing after all?"

"...Well, obviously you shouldn't not do things just because someone said they're bad, the Asmodeans said it was bad not to worship Asmodeus, but you shouldn't do things that are actually bad just because there's other things that are worse. Like raising people as skeletons."

The eavesdropping quality at this job is top notch so far, wow.

"I don't know if I would say often? It does happen more often when someone gets murdered than when they die of natural causes, but some of them stick around for a long time, so they tend to accumulate. When I got murdered I was hoping I would be a ghost so I could continue to work on the convention, but instead I got raised and that's even better." 

"Something bad has happened to everyone, there's no way that's what makes you a ghost or there'd be a lot more ghosts around." And sure, yeah, the whore knows what's Good. Uh huh. "I don't trust anyone other than Abadar to tell me what's right or wrong, you included."

“The taste and smell of food subject to the spell is blatantly, pungently bad, only a creature with no taste or smell like a Lich could fail to notice.  So no risk of it being used for poisonings.  I do think I have the mindset for research, yes.”

And addressing the other topic that has branched off…

“I think Infernal Cheliax had a few necromancers investigating inducing circumstances of death that together with a create undead could manage ghosts consistently… but their ideas for inducing such circumstances were very evil.  I wonder if any Good mindsets could induce ghosts more frequently?  Like wistful regretful atonement?”

A ghost vengefully showing up and voting is a very bizarre image! Feather isn't sure they're talking about the same thing at all!

"I guess there are different types of ghost? All the more reason not to think of them as undead, they sound completely different."

To Leo: "priests of Pharasma spend a lot of time dealing with ghosts, otherwise there would be a lot more of them!" Pharasmins are one of the few semi-institutions shared by the Forest and the Outsiders.

To Estella: "if that's true there should be a lot of ghost paladins!"

"That's a good question. It might be possible to interview a lot of Itarii ghosts...my tribe only has the one, right now, but we're a smallish tribe. If anyone but me did the interviewing, though, they would need a guide to vouch for them, since humans who come up the mountain usually aren't friendly." 

He wishes she mentioned his idea was valid sooner… but better yet opportunity for a topic change!

“I think the Good Gods are competent to tell us what is Good… although their less powerful clerics can certainly get awfully confused.” He makes a pointed glance at the Calistrian 

“And I’ve read some interesting treatises by some gnome moral philosophers on deriving Goodness from first principles and basic axioms.”

Ghost Paladins… Iomedae has been short on newly empowered followers recently, right?  Maybe she can get some research funding and some progress away from hell in one move!

"It seems neither good nor Good to induce ghosthood. And it might prove a moral hazard for paladins if it were."

(Victòria is pretty confused about why Liushna keeps defending ghosts but maybe it's like she said before and they aren't actually undead, they just look undead? If they're not actually undead maybe they're fine.)

"I don't know why you'd listen to the god of getting rich about what's right and wrong," she says to the Abadaran, whose name she still doesn't know. "Iomedae knows it's wrong to raise people as skeletons, even if you can make a lot of money from it." She's pretty sure that's true. Iomedae fought Geb, that's what her holy book is about, she's probably even more against turning people into undead than most Good gods.