Oh right I thought about it yesterday and its only artificial limbs that vanish once removed.
My bad.

Ok so I tested in 0.50 and LIVAN.
In 0.50, your limbs vanish if cut off by valpurium.
In LIVAN they do not vanish.

Strange, no?

Last I checked, valpurium bear traps cause limbs to "vanish" after being cut off. I tested this whilst trying to get my artificial limbs thing to work. This was of course in 0.50 so I dunno about any other versions.

EDIT: Found out corpses make pretty decent weapons. A large spider corpse can easily 1 hit kill most of the starting UT enemies. Unfortunately, you will almost certainly have to use them with both hands because every one I tried using one-handed said I needed 1000+ arm strength...

Wow. Found a SoCM in UT2 just laying there on the ground. Not even in wizmode!

Thanks.

Even a kobold with artificial limbs can come in handy even outside of WM if you have the SoCM and wand.
Of course, the hardest part is getting the limbs off in the first place, which may pose a problem with Shererax...

By "near the start of the game" I mean the first time through the UT.
The best I ever found was the Helmet Of Understanding (AV 24 iirc).

What about you?

I was happily levitating around the dwarven minefield, when the levitation suddenly ran out. Luckily I didn't land on a mine, so I spent a few turns pressing s incase any mines were around, which it seemed there weren't, so I took one step towards the side of the room and... BOOM!! blown into little bits... but all was not lost! My wand of resurrection broke shortly after I died and resurrected me! So I made my way around the now empty mine field, when kenny the large rat (yes i polymorphed him) ran over to one of my blown-off arms and started eating it. After he was done and I was just about to get to the door, he ran over to me and stepped on a mine that had miraculously not been set off by the chain reaction earlier, and blew both me and him sky-high.

So a tip for you folks: Don't take pets into the minefield. Lock the door behind you if you can.

Sorry about the double post, but the other one was getting a little big...

So anyways, I have found that:
*Either: 1)Zombies won't attach artificial limbs to themselves or 2) They won't attach fallen limbs from the player.
*Also, if you place a limb or two onto a zombie's corpse that the zombie was missing when it died, it is not resurrected with those limbs attached. However I have only tested this with artificial (adamant to be precise) limbs.

Will edit once more testing has been done.

EDIT: SUCCESS!!
*Any monster that had its limbs cut off in battle and died can be resurrected with that limb using the wand of resurrection. Since it uses THAT LIMB instead of growing a new one when it is resurrected, you can successfully SoCM the limb and place it back on the body to resurrected, say, a kobold with a adamantine arm! This is still to be tested with a wand of necromancy.
*Zombies only attach flesh limbs
*You can also SoCM heads for some reason and place them back on the body and resurrect. Unfortunately, you cannot SoCM the torso or groin of the monster. The scroll also does not work if you try to change the material of the corpse.

...to attach to other zombies! And of course to sell for lots of money

The only monsters I know that can SoCM their torsos and heads are golems.

God I wish the golem torsos wouldn't disappear... you could try making a golem body with zombie head monster with all sorts of limbs, but I still have to test if the head works on a different body first... and it's harder than you think to behead 2 enemies close to each other, let alone behead 2 when you've just started off, and WM hasn't helped.

EDIT: Just found out you can use a wand of resurrection to grow new limbs if they fall off.
EDIT2: Also found out you can use a scroll of repair to heal artificial limbs

Zombies attach limbs (and heads) to themselves if they come across them. This has a few advantages and disadvantages:

ADVANTAGES:
1: If you get an artificial limb cut off and a zombie attaches it to the appropriate place instead of its chest, and then you tame the zombie, you have a killing machine right there.
2: If the limb had leprosy, the zombies limbs start falling off

DISADVANTAGES:
1: If you don't tame the zombie and they attach a particularly powerful limb to themselves, you're screwed.
2: Artificial limbs make whoever's using them slower, so a tamed zombie with artificial limbs is very slow.

Also, theorically (spelling?) if a humanoid is beheaded and you place a head on its corpse, it should be able to be resurrected again. I will test this and report back later.