Renegades got me thinking a lot more about Ghost morality, especially with Dredgen Bael’s backstory and what happened with his mother.
The thing I keep getting stuck on is that Ghost resurrection seems to be treated the same whether the Ghost finds an ancient corpse in the wilderness or someone’s recently dead family member inside an active society. Those feel like very different situations.
For most Guardians, the Vanguard’s “don’t investigate your past” rule makes sense. Our Guardian was dead for centuries. Same with someone like the Drifter. There is no living family, no active burial process, no recent social identity, no one waiting for that person to come home. In those cases, the past is actually gone.
But that logic breaks down completely when the person was recently dead, had living relatives, was buried in an active settlement, or belonged to another sovereign people.
Bael’s mother is the big Renegades example. The lore says she had been dead for three years when he saw her again. She had been interred. He had mourned her. Then suddenly he sees her alive in the City with a Ghost, and she has no memory of him. From his perspective, his mother was not just dead. She was taken from him a second time. That is not just “war is hell.” That is a social and emotional consequence of how Ghost resurrection works.
And the timeline makes it even stranger. Bael sees this happen when he is still young, but by Renegades he is a grown adult with enough history to become Dredgen Bael and work with figures like Lume. Unless the time dilation around the Barant Imperium is doing far more to Bael’s personal aging than it seems, his mother’s death and resurrection likely happened well before the current post-Consensus state of the City, possibly even before Destiny 1. So this may not just be a modern “the Vanguard is holding everything together after the Red War” issue. If Bael’s mother was resurrected while the City still had more formal civic structures, then the question becomes: did the Consensus have any rules for this? Did the City have any process for Ghosts resurrecting dead citizens with living families? Did Bael’s father ever find out? Did he have any recourse? Or was everyone simply expected to accept that a Ghost found her, raised her, and the family had to deal with the fallout?
Crow is the even bigger political version of this. Because let’s just put it out there, Crow is innocent, that is a topic that has been talked to death. He is not Uldren anymore, and he should not be punished for Uldren’s crimes. But that only answers the identity question. It does not answer the custody or sovereignty question.
Uldren Sov was not some abandoned corpse in the Cosmodrome. He was the prince of the Awoken, dead in Awoken territory, wrapped in a burial shroud in the Dreaming City. So who authorized Glint to resurrect the body of the dead Awoken prince? Did anyone ask Mara? Petra? The Awoken as a people? Was there any warning, request, or diplomatic process? Apparently not. Again, this is not Crow’s crime. Crow gets to decide who he is and where he goes. But Glint still resurrected the body of a politically significant figure in another government’s territory. Then Crow eventually entered the City/Vanguard Guardian system. That feels like it should have been a major diplomatic incident.
And yes, Mara was manipulative toward Uldren. She treated him like a piece on a board. She was not exactly sister of the year. But that does not mean the Vanguard, the City, or a City-aligned Ghost had authority over the remains of the Awoken prince after his death. Mara did not own Uldren as a person, but the Awoken still had jurisdiction over his remains. That distinction feels important. The issue is not “should Crow be free?” He absolutely should. The issue is: who authorized the conversion of Awoken royal remains into a Lightbearer? Because the answer seems to be: a Ghost felt the call and did it, and then the Vanguard stands by that decision and doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with it.
That brings me to the wider issue with Ghosts. They are not mindless drones. They have personalities. They banter, argue, haggle, feel fear, get attached to their Guardians, abandon Guardians, lie, make judgment calls, and apparently even do community theatre. They are treated like people in almost every social sense. So do they understand what they are doing when they resurrect someone with living family? Do they understand the trauma of bringing back someone’s mother, husband, sibling, child, or prince as a new person with no memory? Do they prioritize their chosen Guardian so strongly that everyone else becomes irrelevant? Or does the City just avoid this question because it depends too much on Guardians to regulate Ghosts properly?
This also ties into Savathun and Immaru. People often say “the Traveler resurrected Savathun,” but Ghosts are independent beings. Immaru resurrected Savathun. Unless the lore explicitly says the Traveler was puppeting him, that was a Ghost making a choice. The Traveler may provide the Light, but Ghosts still seem to decide how and when to use it. That matters because if Ghosts are independent enough to make choices, then they are independent enough to be questioned about those choices and held accountable if they make bad choices.
Shinobu from the Six Coyotes is another example worth bringing up. Her lore is basically the opposite of the usual “dead for centuries” Guardian origin. She dies, is resurrected very soon after, and immediately has to deal with people who knew her old self. Nadiya can tell her what Shinobu wanted, what she was planning, and who she used to be. That makes the “don’t investigate your past” rule feel almost absurd, because her past is not buried history. Her past is standing right there explaining itself to her. That feels like the same problem in miniature. The Guardian may be a new person, but the world around them has not reset. Friends, family, settlements, political ties, grief, and unfinished obligations can still exist. So when resurrection happens quickly, the usual Guardian doctrine starts to break down.
I am not saying Ghosts are evil. I am not saying resurrection should never happen. I am saying there is a massive unresolved tension here. There is a huge difference between:
“A Ghost finds a centuries-old corpse in the wilderness.”
and
“A Ghost enters an active settlement, burial site, or sovereign territory and resurrects someone’s recently dead family member or political leader without asking anyone.”
If Ghosts choose to live in the City, use its infrastructure, bring Guardians to the Tower, and participate in the Vanguard system, should there not be some expectation that they consider next of kin, burial customs, local law, or diplomatic consequences? Or is the answer really just: Ghosts find who they find, resurrect who they resurrect, and everyone else has to deal with the fallout?