Speak with Dead

Necromancy [Language-Dependent]
Level: Death 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: 10 ft.
Target: One dead creature
Duration: 1 min./level
Saving Throw: Will negates; see text
Spell Resistance: No
Spell points: 5

“Tell us who killed you.”

You grant the semblance of life and intellect to a corpse, allowing it to answer several questions that you put to it. You may ask three questions. Unasked questions are wasted if the duration expires. The corpse’s knowledge is limited to what the creature knew during life, including the languages it spoke (if any). Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive. If the creature’s alignment was different from yours, the corpse gets a Will save to resist the spell as if it were alive.

If the corpse has been subject to speak with dead within the past week, the new spell fails. You can cast this spell on a corpse that has been deceased for any amount of time, but the body must be mostly intact to be able to respond, it must at least have a mouth in order to speak at all.

This spell does not let you actually speak to the person (whose soul has departed). It instead draws on the imprinted knowledge stored in the corpse. The partially animated body retains the imprint of the soul that once inhabited it, and thus it can speak with all the knowledge that the creature had while alive. The corpse, however, cannot learn new information.

Indeed, it can’t even remember being questioned.

This spell does not affect a corpse that has been turned into an undead creature, even if the undead creature has since been destroyed (unless the creature has since been raised from the dead and then died again).

Augment: You can augment this spell in one or more of the following ways:

  1. For every 2 additional spell points you spend, you can ask an additional question.

  2. If you spend 4 additional spell points, you can target a corpse that has been turned into an undead creture and then destroyed.

  3. If you spend 10 additional spell points, the dead creature does not get a saving throw, even if it is of an alignment different from your own.