Early in the game when you reach the Elven Ruins you'll find that poor professor James had been killed by some terrible terrible dark elf thieves. I tried using the summon spirit spell to talk with him and he tells a pretty interesting tale of how they had cut his troath.

Then I tough that only speaking to his dead soul wasn't enough, I wanted to see him alive and free, reading all those dusty books he loved so much.

So I cast a Ressurection spell on him.

It was quite disapointing that he would only say that he needs to go back to town asap. No thank you, no interesting tale. Anyway, after ressurecting him, can he be found at Tarant or somewhere else?

There are a lot of npcs you can ressurect like that and sadly nothing comes of it :/

I really need to play through as a Necromancer so I can go around killing people and talking to their spirits. It's a shame Resurrection doesn't do much, though.

You can play has anything, just spend 2 points in magick to unlock summon spirit (and a little willpower). Btw, I tried killing almost every single NPC I found just to summon it's soul back to chat, but most of them were saying the same scheduled phrases like "Release me!" and "Oh! Demons!", just a few key npc are really worth calling their soul back and listening to their tales.

Well yeah, but it's more flavorful to go full Sold Your Soul Necromancer. :)

The chilling thing about reading the journals of Kerghan was that my necromancer hadn't sold her soul or any such nonsense; she saw it as a skill, a trade, a valuable asset and even a worthy line of research.
Just like Kerghan in his journals.
That was probably the same character who simply Resurrected everybody she saw, even when she found the site of an absolute massacre late in the game. The ground was littered with bodies. I spent, oh, an hour perhaps, occasionally clicking the Resurrection button?
It wasn't that I expected a reward at that point. I think I was just trying to feel good about myself by doing all I could.

I still maintain that Kerghan is one of the best video game villains (and one of my favorites in general). He manages to be a profoundly sympathetic and sad character, that last conversation with him is great.

And the possibilities of that conversation. How many games can say they offered that.... :)

It really touched on a lot of important stuff. About how people take their perceptions and fool themselves into thinking its objective truth. Agh, now I want to replay Arcanum. :D

You are lucky. You just want to replay the game.
I remembered I heard a speaker at a conference years ago (the Learning Conference 2002) speaking about his virtual self as a female half-elf in Arcanum, and I have been googling for extracts from his book ...

For example:
[...]A game like Arcanum allows me, the player, certain degrees of freedom (choices) in forming my virtual character and developing her throughout the game. In my projective identity I worry about what sort of "person" I want her to be [...]
[...]But this person and history also reflect what I have learned from playing the game and being Bead Bead in the land of Arcanum. A good role-playing video game makes me think new thoughts about what I value and what I do not. [...]


"Bead Bead" being his half elf sword fighting, persuasive pickpocket ;)

Did this guy actually write a whole book about Arcanum? What's it called?

"What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. "
by James Paul Gee.
It is about gaming in general, but back then Arcanum was a big focus for him as I understand. I never got round to reading the book, got too busy trying to finish my degree, running after girls... you know the drill ;) I only heard a half hour keynote speech in 2002 where he presented an insight into the research he was doing - which to me back then sounded mostly like an excuse to play an awesome game :)

Now there is a 2007 revised and updated edition where he also has played WoW and Half Life 2 ;)

Ooh, cool. I'm going to look that up. And yeah, that's the advantage to researching something like movies or games that's also fun. You get to play or watch all day and feel totally justified doing so. xD