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Kikon9
2012-11-19, 09:41 PM
I've recently been going through the process of overhauling my group's setting and I got to the subject of good and evil gods, and that brought me to the subject of the evil afterlife. In almost every setting I've seen that prominently features gods, evil aligned people are often punished by devils or demons. But what if that wasn't the case? What if, say, worshiping Lolth and following her evil rules could net you a place in spider-heaven when you die? I'm trying to figure out how this would affect society in a world where Evil-Heaven actually exists, and evil people could reasonably do what they do without fear of punishment after death.

What do you guys think?

LibraryOgre
2012-11-19, 10:06 PM
To my mind, that's how the D&D system already works.

When a CE person dies, they don't go to the Abyss as punishment... they go to a place where the world makes sense. Where might makes right. Where if you want a thing, you take it, and anyone who couldn't keep it didn't deserve it. They may wind up in pain as a result... they may have things others want, and others may torture them because they can. But a CE person isn't sent to the Abyss as punishment, anymore than a LG person is sent to the Seven Heavens as a punishment.

awa
2012-11-19, 10:11 PM
I always thought that was how it worked anyways if you worship loth and serve her well when you die your rewarded by her.

navar100
2012-11-19, 10:23 PM
Try another take.

Devils do punish, but they do it as divine agents not sadism. They are non-fallen angels tasked with punishing evildoers. It's the Atonement of Last Resort to cleanse the soul before it it ready to enter Heaven. Some people were just so evil they remain in Hell forever. Other people, while not saints, nevertheless did commit some grievous sin to be cleansed but doesn't necessarily require pain of torture.

KillianHawkeye
2012-11-19, 10:45 PM
To my mind, that's how the D&D system already works.

When a CE person dies, they don't go to the Abyss as punishment... they go to a place where the world makes sense. Where might makes right. Where if you want a thing, you take it, and anyone who couldn't keep it didn't deserve it. They may wind up in pain as a result... they may have things others want, and others may torture them because they can. But a CE person isn't sent to the Abyss as punishment, anymore than a LG person is sent to the Seven Heavens as a punishment.

I completely agree with this.

The whole idea of "punishment" was just a big lie Asmodeus told to get the LG gods to let him set up his own shop. It's pretty clear from the story of the Pact Primeval that he really did it to secure his own base of power.

Arthurian
2012-11-19, 10:50 PM
And to be fair, worshipers of Asmodues go to hell and can become devils. My guess is, if you did good enough, he might nudge you into becoming a stronger one so you can continue serving him. That is, you know, if you aren't already extremely powerful.

1dominator
2012-11-19, 10:54 PM
It'l be just like real life where evil is its own reward, except that some people might not want to go to spider heaven...

vasharanpaladin
2012-11-19, 11:12 PM
To my mind, that's how the D&D system already works.

When a CE person dies, they don't go to the Abyss as punishment... they go to a place where the world makes sense. Where might makes right. Where if you want a thing, you take it, and anyone who couldn't keep it didn't deserve it. They may wind up in pain as a result... they may have things others want, and others may torture them because they can. But a CE person isn't sent to the Abyss as punishment, anymore than a LG person is sent to the Seven Heavens as a punishment.

To expand on this, Fiendish Codex II has the answer from Hell's side: An LE character assumes that he will skyrocket to his "rightful" place as a powerful or unique devil when he comes to his eternal reward. When he looks at a lemure, he sees an object of scorn, not his eventual fate.

Medic!
2012-11-19, 11:19 PM
A real-world way to think of it would be like this:

To a beach-bunny happy go lucky surfer type of person, Aculpoco would be heaven.

To a pasty ginger, Ontario would be heaven.

Now you send that ginger to Aculpoco, or that tanned olympiad to Ontario...ain't nobody gonna be happy.

Neither place is bad, neither is good, it's just a matter of where you stand at your core.

Not to imply that either the freckled folk are divinity incarnate or that Mexico is a hell on earth, mind you...

Ravens_cry
2012-11-20, 12:15 AM
How about this?
The evil afterlife is just as much a punishment to the devils and demons as it is to the souls that get sent there. If they attack and torture said souls, it is only their sadism and rage at their imprisonment, not because it is their job in any way.

DontEatRawHagis
2012-11-20, 12:58 AM
An idea I once had was that Devils were the guards and police of the afterlife. While the head Evil God or Devil would like more souls in hell, the Devils would be testing humanity. In actuality they are not actually evil, but just a system of control created by God or whichever deity is in the setting.

The devils would never actually punish or entrap anyone they just place bait out and if you eat it your dragged under. The people they usually go after are the worst of the worst and since normal humans think otherwise it brings up a good point. If a human ever infiltrated the realm and saw the people tortured, they would want to save them. Think of it the same as escaped convicts.

Kitten Champion
2012-11-20, 02:31 AM
In the setting I've been in for the last couple of months Devils and Angels are psychopomps who are given a certain degree of free reign -- unlike Reapers who represent a neutral absolute. They've got prescience on the multitude of potential futures every sentient has open to them, and actively seek to direct their paths toward their own ends. They strike deals, give forewarning, cajole, terrify, and just generally influence mortals.

Devils represent the forces of chaos and Angels the authority of law. Whereas their purposes are seemingly crossed, they are essentially the same entities. The connotations regarding them are based largely on the limited perceptions of mortals who can only see the consequences of such beings in the good or ill they've created in their own lives. The capacity to see the endless ripples of causality spanning outward throughout time is beyond them. That these beings care nothing at all about individual mortals, neither expressing malevolence or benevolence, is something few seem to understand.

Most sentients are ferried into death by Reapers, which are something like divine machines. Angels, Devils, certain spirits, and some mortal magic users (necromancers, for instance) can obscure themselves or others from the Reapers' sight for a time, but death is inevitable. The undead, for instance, simply register so weakly that Reapers can take centuries to find them

So, Devils aren't truly punishing anyone, it simply appears that way people in the tales told about them. They're more intermediaries between death and life, and couldn't be bothered with anyone who're no longer mortal and thus largely out of the game, such as the souls of the dead.

Although the concept of punishing souls does exists in this setting to a degree -- but it represents itself in manner which people plummet into the Deth. When a spirit first arrives it is weighed down by the chains of its sins, the more loaded with chains the spirit is the lower the ring they'll sink into. Like Dante's Inferno, the Deth is established in rings, each ring ruled by a god or goddess of specific proclivities. The spirit can either confront the cause of the chain and dissipate it through an earnest desire for redemption, tear itself apart in order to escape the chain -- leaving parts of their soul behind for the ring's god to eat, become a maligned spirit incapable of leaving Deth completely but that can be half-summoned to corporeality through wizardry, or simply give up and sink into the endless abyss.

Andreaz
2012-11-20, 05:57 AM
The best setting I ever played was absolutely unfair: There are 20 godly realms to pass on to in the afterlife...and there was no pattern to it, nor did the gods care to force their hand on the matter unless it was a particularly unique person (high-priest levels of unique).
You could serve the god of elves and find yourself...in the Great Ocean. A high priest of goblinoids would pop in the realm of Justice. A cleric of Peace could end in Betrayal.

Devils and Angels exist, but their origin resembles elementals more than divine agents: overflowing aligned energies popping them into existence.
They are nasty or goodly regardless of affiliation, and they do that out of simple nature. Fiends feed and get off on screwing with people. Angelics feed and get off on righteous causes and helping people.

Clistenes
2012-11-20, 07:46 AM
I've always assumed that the Outer Planes are neither punishment nor reward: Souls just get attracted towards all the other souls that share their alignment, and the interaction between accumulated souls creates the alignment planes.

Good people are generally OK regardless of their power level, since good folk are nice and help each other; evil folk do great as long as they are the biggest fish of the pond, and suffer horribly when they are the weak newcomer everybody prey on. In the Good Planes they reward good actions and scorn evil actions; in the Evil Planes they reward power and punish weakness.

Your average jerkass who enjoyed taking advantage of those who were weaker and/or nicer than themselves suffer horribly when they die and go to a place were everybody is as mean or meaner than they are, most folk is more powerful than they are (they are "veterans"), and there aren't any good people to take pity and help them. The archfiends that have accumulated power for eons, on the other hand, love their position and would never leave their cozy torture park.

Some fiends and celestials may be promoted to godhood, but, in general, the gods inhabit their own Realms that even more remote and mystical than the Outer Planes (however, they still have influence over the Outer Planes, the same way they have influence over the Prime Material).

Traab
2012-11-20, 09:02 AM
Punishment is saved for the afterlife of those who ticked off their gods. If you are evil, and worship an evil god, then of course your afterlife wont involve eternal torment, you lived your life making your god happy. If, on the other hand, you worshiped some god of light and laughter, and spent one weekend every month burning down orphanages, you might not enjoy your afterlife as much. That might be where the eternal torment comes in, people who didnt do what the god they worshiped wanted get to suffer, evil people who worship evil gods get to spend eternity tormenting those screw ups.

Saidoro
2012-11-20, 10:26 AM
There is no Salvation or Redemption in D&D
All of the major religions of our world that utilize the concepts of Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil use the concept of Redemption (that people have a state of innocence that they can lose and perhaps regain through atonement) or Salvation (that people have a state of inherent unworthiness that they can overcome). D&D, despite having a spell called atonement actually has neither of those concepts. The atonement spell actually dedicates (or rededicates) a character to any alignment, Good or Evil, Law or Chaos. Baby kobolds are not born into original sin and baby elves are not born in a state of grace, D&D doesn't even have those concepts. Creatures with an alignment subtype (most Fiends, for example) are born into that alignment and are only going to stray from it if subjected to powerful magic or arguments. Everyone else is born neutral.
In D&D, creatures do not "fall" into Evil. Being Evil is a valid choice that is fully supported by half the gods just as Good is. Those who follow the tenets of Evil throughout their lives are judged by Evil Gods when they die, and can gain rewards at least as enticing as those offered to those who follow the path of Good (who, after all, are judged by Good Gods after they die). So when sahuagin run around on land snatching children to use as slaves or sacrifices to Baatorians, they aren't putting their soul in danger. They are actually keeping their soul safe. Once you step down the path of villainy, you get a better deal in the afterlife by being more evil.
The only people who get screwed in the D&D afterlife are traitors and failures. A traitor gets a bad deal in the afterlife because whichever side of the fence they ended up on is going to remember their deeds on the other side of the fence. A failure gets a bad deal because they end up judged by gods who wanted them to succeed. As such, it is really hard to get people to change alignment in D&D. Unless you can otherwise assure that someone will die as a failure to their alignment, there's absolutely no incentive you could possibly give them that would entice them to betray it.

Read more here. (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Tome_of_Fiends_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Morality_and_Fiends#There_is_no_Salvation_or_Redem ption_in_D.26D)

kieza
2012-11-20, 11:44 PM
In my setting, angels and demons are just divine energy constructs churned out by heavenly engines in the Astral Plane. (Something tampered with the demon-machine, hence the moral difference.) They don't have free will, and except for archangels and their fiendish counterparts, they aren't even sentient, in the sense that they have no identity except that which mortals impose on them; this is what leads to the impression that there are angels serving different gods. When a mortal summons an angel, their desires shape the resulting angel's form and goals.

The demons are vastly outnumbered by the angels, but the tampering permits them to draw vast power from souls, leveling the playing field. Selling your soul, however, doesn't mean your afterlife is one of endless torment; it means you don't get the normal afterlife. In fact, when you die, you're gone, completely and permanently.

However, because of the nature of the afterlife, some people still sell their souls. See, the afterlife starts in the Shaed (aka Shadowfell, or Negative Energy Plane). While most of the Shaed is a rough echo of the normal world, just darker and bleaker, there is a broad river which is not an analogue of any real-world geography. When you die, your soul passes into the Shaed and begins an inexorable journey towards and along the banks of the river. No living person knows what's at the end of the river, or even if there is an end, because the further along the river a live person goes, the harder it is for them to turn back, and once you go past the point of no return, your body and mind fade away and you become just one more forlorn soul.

So, some people sell their souls as an alternative to what they fear will be an eternity trudging along the banks of a dreary black river. Of course, they might be passing up on the eternal paradise at the eventual end. A handful of the dead, who were especially devoted to the gods or useful to the demons, are instead pulled out of the ranks of dead and granted a sort of eternal life in order to serve as auxiliaries to the immortal armies, since they can do things that the angels and demons are prohibited from.

Dimers
2012-11-21, 11:40 AM
Devils don't punish people. People punish themselves, using devils as a visible externalized focus for what's really an internal psychological process.

Mewtarthio
2012-11-21, 04:13 PM
Devils don't punish people. People punish themselves, using devils as a visible externalized focus for what's really an internal psychological process.

So, basically, you are the demons?

Jeff the Green
2012-11-21, 06:07 PM
Back to the original question, I think having an evil heaven might cause a slight increase in dastardly deeds, but not much. I suspect (based on my experience with real-life believers and atheists), that people are good because being good makes them happy in the here and now, not because they expect an eternal reward or punishment.

To follow the crowd in describing how angels and demons work in my setting, they're literally made of good or evil. They have some degree of free will and a demon can want to do good but they can't help doing it in an evil way. One powerful demon runs a soup kitchen that encourages its beneficiaries to glut themselves to a degree that would be horribly evil if they weren't literally starving and there's a group of succubi that act as marriage counselors, thereby inspiring lust.

It goes the other way too. Some angels are tyrants, mindraping their subjects to be blissfully happy under their rule.

Traab
2012-11-21, 11:34 PM
I actually kind of like the idea of there being an eternal reward for being evil. It removes punishment from the equation and leaves the choice as to what path we want to follow up to ourselves. Do we WANT to be good or evil? Not, do we HAVE to be good or risk eternal damnation and suffering in the fires of whatever hell there may be in D&D.

Winter_Wolf
2012-11-23, 07:22 PM
I'll echo the evil afterlife as reward for evil beings. But really it's only the achievers who get the "good" jobs: devils, demons, yugoloths. The petty evil folk end up as lemures, larvae, or whatever happens to be the yugoloth equivalent; basically those were the slackers in the evil group. Kind of like how the real slackers in high school end up with the thankless menial jobs when they graduate/drop out.