If you want a Resurrection spell, it isn't trivial, but it is certainly do-ble, if hard work.
If souls or spirits exist in Fenspace, which seems likely, you're going to want that if you plan to get the same person back. If the soul has "gone onwards" then you may need to negotiate with any guardians of where the soul has gone. There may or may not be guardians of life and death, or fate, who have something to say about recently dead people being restored to life. You may even have to negotiate with a celestial bureaucracy. This may or may not be influenced by the religion the person followed in life, and/or the religion or beliefs of the person doing the resurrection.
Typically there is a 'grace period' of three to ten days while the soul is still around, before leaving, and in this period the soul typically has a useful level of connection to the previous body. There may be ways to extend this period, if rituals are done before the end of it. There are typically forms of death, such as enough fire, which sever the connection of the soul to the body, and there are typically magical attacks which do similar.
There are sometimes ways of ensuring you can't do conventional resurrections, such as rituals which cause the soul to go immediately "onwards", or catching and trapping souls (I'd think this could be too dystopian for Fenspace), or even deliberately reincarnating the soul into a new life (very likely with no memory of the previous one). Souls having reincarnated as part of the natural process of life and death may well mean that they are not available for a (conventional) resurrection.
There don't need to be souls or spirits in a setting for resurrection to take place - in fact a lack of them may make things a lot easier. Without a soul needing to be messed with you just need to worry about the mind and body.
From a magical engineering point of view bodies are easier to manage, you just need a pattern or a link, something like blood or once-living flesh is easiest, or the traditional hair, fluid (spit or blood) and (finger) nail. Sometimes a personal object, important or with long association, is enough. Relatives can be very useful here, or the person who killed the body, or even the weapon which killed the body. Then there is the matter of Names, which is a whole area in itself. Producing an empty body, maybe with all the scars and reflexes the body had in previous life isn't trivial, but it certainly isn't impossible.
Minds are more tricky. They tend to be assumed to be (after death) indivisible units, and 'hooking' a mind becomes a lot easier if you've got something strongly associated with it, like something the mind created in life, such as a book, even a letter - it may well be that once you've got access to any soul or spirit the mind is dragged along automagically. Magically taking copies of minds isn't unknown, though it is more commonly done while the person is still living - doing it after death is much more like hard work, though pulling a copy off a soul or spirit may be do-able. For the really ambitious 'time skrying' may mean they can look back down someone's timeline, and make a copy of how their mind was at some particular date - this normally isn't a fast process, and may well best be done while someone's asleep. Minds can be cooperative in the right circumstances, and might 'jump' into something like a recording crystal or pool.
Putting body, mind and soul or spirit together into something which can live a normal life is often glossed over. There may be issues of fate or destiny that may make the process more difficult. Tricking the world into believing this is a conventional birth might suit some approaches. Or the "still has unfinished work to do" may be used. If the soul or spirit is unwilling to be resurrected then they may get a veto - continuing a resurrection after this (which may not even be possible with the simpler 'packaged' resurrection approaches) may give you the body and mind you want, but a new person, who will likely develop over time their own new purposes and motivations ("free soul with every new incarnation"). Producing an 'instant adult' like this can really upset the natural process of life and death, or the guardians of this, in some settings.
Then there are wonderful issues of AIs and souls or spirits - these are often assumed to be equivalent to biological beings, with a soul or spirit as long as you're dealing with something more than a glorified expert system. Resurrecting an AI may be quite feasible, but need a slightly different approach.
So, resurrection can be a thoroughly explored area of magical engineering! Not like these 'cast and pray' approaches! [grin]
META: You can see from the above that some people have arguably spent far too time thinking about resurrection in tabletop gaming situations or fantasy literature. But, as always, it depends on the sorts of stories you are trying to tell. One reason for posting this is to show an alternative to the 'spell list' approach to magic.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
If souls or spirits exist in Fenspace, which seems likely, you're going to want that if you plan to get the same person back. If the soul has "gone onwards" then you may need to negotiate with any guardians of where the soul has gone. There may or may not be guardians of life and death, or fate, who have something to say about recently dead people being restored to life. You may even have to negotiate with a celestial bureaucracy. This may or may not be influenced by the religion the person followed in life, and/or the religion or beliefs of the person doing the resurrection.
Typically there is a 'grace period' of three to ten days while the soul is still around, before leaving, and in this period the soul typically has a useful level of connection to the previous body. There may be ways to extend this period, if rituals are done before the end of it. There are typically forms of death, such as enough fire, which sever the connection of the soul to the body, and there are typically magical attacks which do similar.
There are sometimes ways of ensuring you can't do conventional resurrections, such as rituals which cause the soul to go immediately "onwards", or catching and trapping souls (I'd think this could be too dystopian for Fenspace), or even deliberately reincarnating the soul into a new life (very likely with no memory of the previous one). Souls having reincarnated as part of the natural process of life and death may well mean that they are not available for a (conventional) resurrection.
There don't need to be souls or spirits in a setting for resurrection to take place - in fact a lack of them may make things a lot easier. Without a soul needing to be messed with you just need to worry about the mind and body.
From a magical engineering point of view bodies are easier to manage, you just need a pattern or a link, something like blood or once-living flesh is easiest, or the traditional hair, fluid (spit or blood) and (finger) nail. Sometimes a personal object, important or with long association, is enough. Relatives can be very useful here, or the person who killed the body, or even the weapon which killed the body. Then there is the matter of Names, which is a whole area in itself. Producing an empty body, maybe with all the scars and reflexes the body had in previous life isn't trivial, but it certainly isn't impossible.
Minds are more tricky. They tend to be assumed to be (after death) indivisible units, and 'hooking' a mind becomes a lot easier if you've got something strongly associated with it, like something the mind created in life, such as a book, even a letter - it may well be that once you've got access to any soul or spirit the mind is dragged along automagically. Magically taking copies of minds isn't unknown, though it is more commonly done while the person is still living - doing it after death is much more like hard work, though pulling a copy off a soul or spirit may be do-able. For the really ambitious 'time skrying' may mean they can look back down someone's timeline, and make a copy of how their mind was at some particular date - this normally isn't a fast process, and may well best be done while someone's asleep. Minds can be cooperative in the right circumstances, and might 'jump' into something like a recording crystal or pool.
Putting body, mind and soul or spirit together into something which can live a normal life is often glossed over. There may be issues of fate or destiny that may make the process more difficult. Tricking the world into believing this is a conventional birth might suit some approaches. Or the "still has unfinished work to do" may be used. If the soul or spirit is unwilling to be resurrected then they may get a veto - continuing a resurrection after this (which may not even be possible with the simpler 'packaged' resurrection approaches) may give you the body and mind you want, but a new person, who will likely develop over time their own new purposes and motivations ("free soul with every new incarnation"). Producing an 'instant adult' like this can really upset the natural process of life and death, or the guardians of this, in some settings.
Then there are wonderful issues of AIs and souls or spirits - these are often assumed to be equivalent to biological beings, with a soul or spirit as long as you're dealing with something more than a glorified expert system. Resurrecting an AI may be quite feasible, but need a slightly different approach.
So, resurrection can be a thoroughly explored area of magical engineering! Not like these 'cast and pray' approaches! [grin]
META: You can see from the above that some people have arguably spent far too time thinking about resurrection in tabletop gaming situations or fantasy literature. But, as always, it depends on the sorts of stories you are trying to tell. One reason for posting this is to show an alternative to the 'spell list' approach to magic.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind