>Finally, of course, in a society where the killer is fully aware that
>the soul of the dead may be called back to testify, a pre-meditated
>murderer is likely to take more precautions to ensure his victim
>doesn't finger him after the fact!
This is interesting to me through a similar problem in Live RPG. There is a spell called Speak With Dead which (surprisingly enough...) lets you speak with a dead soul/spirit - 3 questions, in traditional form.
There are still frequent cases where headless bodies are found (in-character headless, that is... nobody has so far REALLY decapitated anyone...) thinking that if they took the mouth (or brain) with them the spell wouldn't work...
Now, that actually has no more effect in LARP than it would in Glorantha, but the fact that it DOESN'T is just as well known - yet it still happens! The real reason some, better informed, types do it is that the spell only works once, so they take the head off to a safe spot, and get someone to cast Speak With Dead, so no-one else could later. Others less informed make the assumption it's the head that matters. More reason for head taking?
Incidently, the best set of questions I ever heard for this purpose (where the entire body was questioned) were
"What's your favourite colour?" "Are you comfortable?" "Have you any idea of the repulsive acts we're about to perform onyou?"
Wulf
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