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Flarp
2010-02-19, 10:56 PM
I've been flipping through the Manual of the Planes lately, and I've come to realize that it is remarkably vague on the subject of the ultimate fate of petitioners.

Though several options are given for what happens just after death, these are composed entirely of choices that prevent resurrection, making them rather unsuitable for PCs, and none refer to what happens to petitioners after the eons they spend in their plane.

The Beastlands entry seems to suggest that its petitioners become celestial beasts after a time, but no other plane has any sort of information on this.

I've met many a person of the belief that petitioners eventually become Outsiders relative to their plane, but this is never really explained in the MotP.

I suppose what I'm asking here is this: is there any ultimate fate for petitioners that doesn't involve being directly absorbed into their afterlife plane?

Optimystik
2010-02-19, 11:58 PM
According to Complete Divine, petitioners have four main outcomes.

1) Planar/Deity assimilation, as you mentioned. (The book considers these separate outcomes, but I see little functional distinction.)

2) Get resurrected.

3) Climb the ranks (start as an archon and earn your wings, or get slapped around as a lemure until you become an imp.)

4) Answer divinations - That's right, petitioners sometimes man the phones for Contact Other Plane, Commune etc. So you can sometimes speak to an old mentor/dead parent/famous ancestor when you cast your questions upward... or downward. Because staffing an extraplanar call center is my idea of heaven...

Zeta Kai
2010-02-20, 12:44 AM
WotC always seemed a little coy on certain issues (like how one becomes a lich, as treated in another current thread). I think that they did that under the assumption that the DM/campaign setting would have its own system for how things work, in a metaphysical sense. So, IMO, there would be no point in elaborating on something that was extremely likely to be changed to the DM/setting's tastes.

Devils_Advocate
2010-02-20, 02:08 AM
I think that some questions are left without clear answers under the theory that they're more interesting that way. Instead of officially being some particular way, certain things are left mysterious and unknown.

In Planescape, planars had various theories about the afterlife. The Dustmen thought that everyone's dead, and doomed to be reborn into a horrid afterlife until they let go of the world so they can truly die. The Godsmen figured that each life is a test that determines where you go next. So that's two votes for some sort of cycle of reincarnation. Makes enough sense, don't it? Mortals go on to become petitioners, so why shouldn't petitioners go on to become something, too?


I've met many a person of the belief that petitioners eventually become Outsiders relative to their plane, but this is never really explained in the MotP.
It mentions it, though. Lantern archons, lemures, and manes are petitioners of Celestia, Baator, and the Abyss respectively, and may be promoted into higher forms of archon, devil, and demon.


I suppose what I'm asking here is this: is there any ultimate fate for petitioners that doesn't involve being directly absorbed into their afterlife plane?
Well, supposedly if they're killed off of their planes, they just get obliviated instead. They prefer to avoid this, though.

In any case, any ultimate fate would have to be an end to one's personal existence, correct? Otherwise it would hardly be ultimate.


Because staffing an extraplanar call center is my idea of heaven...
"Well, the hours are good."

Flarp
2010-02-20, 10:56 AM
Actually, I've been reading the Fiendish Codex on Devils, and it does seem to provide some information on the subject.

Souls bound for Baator are boiled down into raw divine energy that is then used to shape devils, power diabolic devices, or grant existing devils raw power.

Especially evil souls sometimes get directly transformed into a high-ranking devil, instead of having their soul destroyed and remade.

bosssmiley
2010-02-20, 11:00 AM
I've been flipping through the Manual of the Planes lately, and I've come to realize that it is remarkably vague on the subject of the ultimate fate of petitioners.

The souls of the dead become petitioners. Some of these get converted into planar magic items, others into building materials, still others are absorbed into the plane itself, and others become food for soul-eating creatures. Petitioner form varies by alignment, destination plane, and godly realm.
(source: Planescape and the BoVD, not MotP 3E)

According to the (non-canon) Tome of Fiends (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828), petitioner souls are also used as a medium of exchange on the Lower Planes (there's precedent here; Night Hags have traded souls for favours since 1E). The 'neutral ground' city of Finality in Acheron is the centre of the planar soul trade.

Flarp
2010-02-20, 12:48 PM
According to the (non-canon) Tome of Fiends (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828), petitioner souls are also used as a medium of exchange on the Lower Planes (there's precedent here; Night Hags have traded souls for favours since 1E). The 'neutral ground' city of Finality in Acheron is the centre of the planar soul trade.

Actually, this is confirmed in several other sources, namely the Fiendish Codices.

Starbuck_II
2010-02-20, 01:35 PM
Canon, souls of unclaimed people are taken by Wee Jas. She doesn't take all (not evil ones), but if you aren't evil and no god claims you: she owns you.

Starscream
2010-02-20, 01:59 PM
A few of the planes have more specific fates. Souls in Elysium eventually forget who they are and exist as blissfully happy spirits. Those in Gehenna do the same but are miserable.

Even some of the "bad" afterlives aren't so terrible. I remember reading that when kobolds who worship Kurtlemak (or however it is spelled) die they basically live with him in a big cave, packed in like sardines. It sounds lousy, but apparently they are happy to be out of danger and never hungry. Heaven if your life consisted of scrounging for food and being kicked around by level 1 adventurers.

Oslecamo
2010-02-20, 02:00 PM
Actually, this is confirmed in several other sources, namely the Fiendish Codices.

However, it's also limited to the most evil planes, since manipulating souls is considered a quite evil thing in D&D. You won't see archons trading souls between each other.

Harperfan7
2010-02-20, 02:07 PM
Shouldn't guardinals, eladrins, and angels have low level starts for petitioners?

bosssmiley
2010-02-20, 02:16 PM
However, it's also limited to the most evil planes, since manipulating souls is considered a quite evil thing in D&D. You won't see archons trading souls between each other.

Two words: ransom, redemption. :smallwink:

If you're not involved in the soul trade, then someone on Team Evil might be using those captured/stolen/traded -G aligned souls against you.

KillianHawkeye
2010-02-20, 02:21 PM
Canon, souls of unclaimed people are taken by Wee Jas. She doesn't take all (not evil ones), but if you aren't evil and no god claims you: she owns you.

Well I guess this answers the question someone posed in another thread about what the point of Wee Jas was. :smallamused:

Devils_Advocate
2010-02-20, 09:56 PM
Canon, souls of unclaimed people are taken by Wee Jas. She doesn't take all (not evil ones), but if you aren't evil and no god claims you: she owns you.
Eh? Where does it say that?

Over the years, several sources have discussed D&D's afterlife, and they don't all agree with each other. Which is kind of nice, since it provides DMs with several ideas to choose from or borrow from.

Souls that don't go to a particular deity (or devil, or whatever) just go to the planes corresponding to their alignments in Planescape and in core 3E.

Faces of Evil: The Fiends, a Planescape supplement, describes Evil souls all appearing in the Lower Planes as larvae, and then being transformed by baatezu and tanar'ri into low-ranking devils and demons. If left alone long enough, they'll eventually evolve into different sorts of fiends: the original inhabitants of their planes that the baatezu and tanar'ri supplanted eons ago.

Starbuck_II
2010-02-20, 10:11 PM
Eh? Where does it say that?

Over the years, several sources have discussed D&D's afterlife, and they don't all agree with each other. Which is kind of nice, since it provides DMs with several ideas to choose from or borrow from.

Souls that don't go to a particular deity (or devil, or whatever) just go to the planes corresponding to their alignments in Planescape and in core 3E.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wee_Jas

The Godless Dead. According to this tradition, those who don't worship any single deity with any particular devotion go to Wee Jas by default after they die. She keeps them in her realm for a time before reincarnating some of them, memories of their former lives wiped clean.

Nai_Calus
2010-02-20, 11:26 PM
I don't even remotely consider one of Wee Jas' myths, sourced from a wikipedia page, to be canon. It would at best apply to Greyhawk. It certainly wouldn't hold true for every world.

And you'd think you'd have petitioners becoming Coure Eladrin and working their way up the ranks, but Eladrin are a gods-awful pathetic excuse for 'CG', and have a rigid social structure that they do not and apparently cannot advance in, and apparently do not source from petitioners. But my opinion of Eladrin is best left for another thread.

I've always gone with the default Planescape 'you go to your god's realm if you didn't piss him off, or the plane that matches your alignment if you did or just didn't have a god, become a petitioner and sit around doing whatever it is people in your neck of the planes do until you reach your final understanding of your god/alignment and merge with your god/plane'.

I often ditch the whole 'you lose your memories' thing, though, because I despise it as it makes the entire point of an afterlife fraking pointless. What use is a reward/punishment if you don't even remember what led you to it in the first place?

Devils_Advocate
2010-02-21, 01:39 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wee_Jas

The Godless Dead. According to this tradition, those who don't worship any single deity with any particular devotion go to Wee Jas by default after they die. She keeps them in her realm for a time before reincarnating some of them, memories of their former lives wiped clean.
That's part of a list of "myths and legends". As in, dubious stories that some people in the setting think are true. That's not "canon".

Still, if she reincarnated them as petitioners on various planes, it would fit with the canon.


I've always gone with the default Planescape 'you go to your god's realm if you didn't piss him off, or the plane that matches your alignment if you did or just didn't have a god, become a petitioner and sit around doing whatever it is people in your neck of the planes do until you reach your final understanding of your god/alignment and merge with your god/plane'.
What happens if you get killed before then? Do you just respawn, since you're in the afterlife already?

What do petitioners do? Do they develop into powerful outsiders, or do the alignment exemplars not originate as mortal souls?


I often ditch the whole 'you lose your memories' thing, though, because I despise it as it makes the entire point of an afterlife fraking pointless. What use is a reward/punishment if you don't even remember what led you to it in the first place?
Who are you proposing established the afterlife in D&D, and to what end? What do you think the intended purpose of the afterlife is that amnesia interferes with?

What prevents the deceased from seeking out and returning to the lives they had before they were killed, if not amnesia? The "Planar Commitment" thing where it's impossible for you to leave your plane because you've essentially become an inherent part of it? That still leaves them able to communicate with the living, and thus considerably less dead than they might otherwise be. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but, like resurrection spells, it has far-reaching implications that should not be disregarded.

Planescape: Torment discussed this issue.

"Why do petitioners lose their memories?"
"Many pardons? What?"
"I said, why do petitioners lose their memories when they die?"
"Eh... well, you know, who wishes to be burdened with such things as memories?"
"I do."
"Looking at you sir, I cannot begin to wonder why!"
"So why do they lose their memories?"
"I... I imagine that it is because you must start afresh, your petitioner soul pure when you arrive on your new Plane."
"That's... awful. Like a sick joke."
"But compared to the life that awaits you on the new Plane, it is trivial!"
"And why should you have to do that, when all your life experiences have determined what Plane you end up on?"
"Well... I... Hmm. I don't know."
"That's no answer."
"Do you have a better answer, my friend? Perhaps one you can share?"
"I don't remember where or when, but I seem to recall having heard that memories drift on the Astral Plane, as 'memory cores'."
"Well, then, the question becomes: Is a lifetime of memories more important than living life again?"
"Yes, it is."
"Then it's simple enough: don't die, friend."

Harperfan7
2010-02-21, 01:59 AM
And you'd think you'd have petitioners becoming Coure Eladrin and working their way up the ranks, but Eladrin are a gods-awful pathetic excuse for 'CG', and have a rigid social structure that they do not and apparently cannot advance in, and apparently do not source from petitioners. But my opinion of Eladrin is best left for another thread.


Would you consider making that thread?