Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-25941257-20170825174215/@comment-32166397-20170918174905

DukeLeto7 wrote: IIRC, the distinction was between people who are "defeated", that is sufficiently injured that they are unable to continue fighting, and genuinely dead. Dead is dead in TLS, whereas the defeated can be healed with sufficiently advanced magic.

Wendis was killed instantly, so nothing could be done.

Put another way, defeat  in TLS is only mostly dead. This is the section from Sierra's post I'm talking about.

"No one really knows exactly what happens to the soul after it fades. Some say it merely dissolves, religions claim it goes to another realm. What's certain is that when the soul is gone, the person is dead. Their body could be restored to functioning, but there is no magic anywhere in the world that can revive the person. Necromancy is the art of playing with these rules. Some just revive bodies to health, getting mindless zombies controlled by magic. Others trap the soul in a stable form so it can't fade, though this is harder and tends to have major negative effects. Though it's technically necromancy, medical magic that tries to do this to heal gets a free pass from society.

So there are rare cases of revival. Say someone got decapitated on the battlefield. If mages arrived fast enough (the time limit would depend on the person's life force, as in the case of Stark) they could shelter the person's soul in a special structure, heal their body, then complete a special ritual to restore them to full life. But it's the equivalent of a top notch medical team saving someone after technical death but before brain death - it's not an easy or common thing."

Edit: Also Duke regarding your questions about Hilstara's age when she served with Simon and Wendis, I think she could have enlisted at 16. It is a medieval/feudal style society, and ages of majority/enlistment are probably lower, Janine marrying at 16 being an example.