10 Terrifying Video Game Truths You Never Noticed

9. Black Soul Gems - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Anyone who has played Skyrim won’t have any trouble telling you what soul trapping is. Kill off a creature or human with the spell and you can trap their soul in a soul gem which you can use to enchant or charge weapons.

It’s all very useful and given there’s a lot going on in Skyrim, you’d be forgiven for not thinking too much about it beyond the basics. For those that dug a little deeper or sunk time into the Dawnguard expansion, though, it’s hard to look at soul trapping the same way. Especially if you’re roleplaying a good character. In short, it’s very, very not cool.

In Dawnguard you can venture to a place called The Soul Cairn, a plane of Oblivion inhabited by souls that have been trapped in black soul gems. These gems are unique as they can contain the souls of sentient, humanoid beings and said beings are really not having a good time in the horrible prison realm you sent them to.

Not to mention, these poor unfortunate souls are denied the afterlife and doomed to eventually be eaten by the rulers of the Soul Cairn, the Ideal Masters.

As you can imagine this is all pretty unethical and you might start to feel a bit guilty about forcing said souls to endure eternal torture just so you can keep your cool sword charged. Unless it’s Nazeem, then we can all agree you’re good to go.