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S@tanicoaldo
2017-06-14, 05:02 PM
Think about in most cosmologies you are being tortured by a finite amount of extra dimensional entities, but the amount of human souls who die is always growing, so in some years there are more humans souls than demons\Asuras\efreets, so why don't the humans just... you know rebel and take over?

Even worse they force you to the torture devices, let's say roll a rock or a pit of boiling oil, what happens if a supplicant simply refuses to do it? Refuses to go to the pit or roll the rock? What will they do? Threat you? With what? Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!

Besides people of higher realms are supposed to be perfect right? Well how they can be perfectly Benevolent and merciful if they know there are other humans suffering in the lower realms?

That makes no SENSE! >:@

Lvl 2 Expert
2017-06-14, 05:16 PM
In before the real world religious discussion?

LibraryOgre
2017-06-14, 05:18 PM
In my version, the afterlife isn't a place of punishment, or necessarily reward.

http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2013/07/corpses-and-caches.html

tomandtish
2017-06-14, 05:20 PM
Well, looking at the fictional/gaming ones (since the real ones get us in trouble), there's a lot to consider.

Take D&D for example.

Good and evil are objective and measurable forces. If you died and went there naturally, you DESERVED to go there. And while some good deities may be sad that this was your fate, they accept it because it's part of the cosmic order. There's nothing that says they have to rescue people when their own actions caused them to end up there.

When you die, your soul goes there. And in some of the evil places, it becomes a being of little power (lemure for example). There's no guarantee you even remember who you were.

And even if you do, this isn't a case of numerically superior humans rebelling against better armed but numerically weaker humans. They are up against beings who can literally compel them to do as they are ordered.

Vitruviansquid
2017-06-14, 05:20 PM
Neverminding that gods in most settings are presented as infinite in scope...

I like hells where the torture comes from the dead souls themselves.

In the hell of Paradise Lost, for example, I got the impression that Hell is just like any other place. The demons build up their own buildings, extract their own resources, and even set up their own government. The only thing that makes Hell awful is how evil the demons are themselves.

Nifft
2017-06-14, 05:36 PM
Some tribes say that your spirit lingers only so long as you live in the memory of others, and that's why it's so important to sing and pass on the tales of our great heroes: so our tribal heroes will remain watching over us.

The philosophers of a fallen empire recorded the theory that souls reincarnate, and devils wish to buy your soul specifically to halt the cycle of reincarnation.

In most of my games, nobody knows what the afterlife entails, or if there even is one -- when I run Eberron, for example, Dolurrh is just a waiting room (http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/9p17/), not your final destination.

Psyren
2017-06-14, 05:37 PM
In D&D there are infinite demons, so I'm not sure where the whole "more human souls" thing is coming from. Sure, over time human souls are infinite too, but at any given moment they are finite and many are being converted into lemures/manes/etc themselves.

Also, petitioners are pretty crappy abilities-wise, so even if you look at a more finite plane like Hell, a single devil can manage a pretty decent number of them.

Millstone85
2017-06-14, 05:45 PM
Even worse they force you to the torture devices, let's say roll a rock or a pit of boiling oil, what happens if a supplicant simply refuses to do it? Refuses to go to the pit or roll the rock? What will they do? Threat you? With what? Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!Obviously, they would just throw you into the boiling oil, or threaten to throw you into the boiling oil if you don't roll the rock.

Also, most people fear torture because it is, you know, painful, and many would choose death over it. In Hell, you would wish you could die again.

Amazon
2017-06-14, 06:43 PM
Besides the water of the lethe river still a thing, in most afterlives you forget everything about your past life.

Psyren
2017-06-14, 07:02 PM
Besides the water of the lethe river still a thing, in most afterlives you forget everything about your past life.

In D&D, this is the very purpose of the torture. (Well, that and the various fiends getting pleasure out of it.) Basically the pain is so traumatizing that eventually your soul loses itself and you become twisted into becoming a fiend yourself.

Millstone85
2017-06-14, 07:22 PM
In D&D, this is the very purpose of the torture. (Well, that and the various fiends getting pleasure out of it.) Basically the pain is so traumatizing that eventually your soul loses itself and you become twisted into becoming a fiend yourself.Yeah, and that's probably not a concept unique to D&D. Damned souls becoming evil spirits just like their tormentors, it makes the plane itself look like a big soul-devouring machine or beast.

But then I agree it doesn't make much sense as an afterlife of punishment. It is like a prison entirely run by its mafia. Bad people suffer in there yes, but that's kind of secondary at this point.

Dr_Dinosaur
2017-06-14, 10:51 PM
I always got the impression from D&D/PF that the various aligned afterlives weren't really punishments but a sorting system to get the souls most suited to being specific outsiders to the processing plants. Hell being a bad thing is clearly Good lying to get more people to their side.

If a man spent his whole life manipulating others for power, why wouldn't he enjoy an eternity of playing that game?

Psyren
2017-06-14, 11:03 PM
If a man spent his whole life manipulating others for power, why wouldn't he enjoy an eternity of playing that game?

Because he'd probably enjoy doing it more as himself, with his own sense of identity - not being Bearded Devil #4007B and latest lickspittle to Dispater.

Esprit15
2017-06-14, 11:23 PM
In many game world cosmologies, souls are also used as fuel, so there's always the risk that you just cease to be after a few minutes if you aren't useful as a slave.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-06-14, 11:32 PM
I always got the impression from D&D/PF that the various aligned afterlives weren't really punishments but a sorting system to get the souls most suited to being specific outsiders to the processing plants. Hell being a bad thing is clearly Good lying to get more people to their side.

If a man spent his whole life manipulating others for power, why wouldn't he enjoy an eternity of playing that game?

Because he's not. He's getting tortured to extract his divine essence from him for devils to use as a power source. And then when he's all used up what's left is converted into a mindless lemure. And then maybe if that mindless lemure is very lucky it ends up getting promoted (out of some necessity by a higher ranking devil) and getting an actual sense of self-identity. But that newfound imp or whatever still has no connection to the mortal person it came from. It's a new being.

Spore
2017-06-14, 11:37 PM
Afterlives don't make sense because they don't have to. We are in a realm of mysticism after all. More on that later.

Yora
2017-06-15, 01:48 AM
Weirder is the idea that evil people are being punished by being turned into undead to go murdering innocents who had nothing to do with them. I think in actual mythological stories, it's not a punishment but simply people being so evil that they can't find their way to the afterlife and hang around being evil. Gods didn't intentionally make them even more dangerous to others.

My setting doesn't have afterlives. All undead are animated corpses possessed by evil spriits. I find this to be quite neat for a change.

Lvl 2 Expert
2017-06-15, 02:31 AM
I guess undead could help with the "hell will become full/taken over by mortals" problem though. (Although the mortals taking over thing is one of my favorite afterlive scenario's, it's just so cool to imagine thousands or millions of years worth of mortals rising up, each fighting as they used to in life.) The spirit controlling an undead is one of the lesser offenders currently in the lower domains. Destroying the undead destroys the soul, freeing it from its eternal punishment.

There are at least two problems with that:
1 Everyone gets to live forever, except people that are a little evil, but not evil enough. That seems weird.
2 Hell rapidly becomes a concentrated pit of super villains. Forget taking over by force, if these guys are willing to help each other a little they can start rising up the ranks through merit and virtue alone.

icefractal
2017-06-15, 02:40 AM
I think the torture that happens in Hell or the Abyss isn't a punishment per-se, it's just what happens when you go to a place where everyone is a complete bastard, and some of the other bastards have had centuries to grow their power before you got there. Demons torture lower-ranking demons because that's their idea of fun, and as a newly arrived soul you are at the bottom of the pecking order.

And hey, you could eventually become one of those high-ranking demons yourself, and have fun torturing the newbies! How much the resulting entity will even be "you" by that time is an open question, of course.



Alternately, and this is entering into homebrew cosmology, I had an idea for a setting where it went into why everyone is after souls:
1) The Astral Plane is completely formless. You can, with great effort, impose structure on it while you focus, but the minute you stop it will revert to a void.

2) Gods are like fusion reactors powered by souls. They impose structure on a large area of the plane around them - their divine realm - and the more souls they absorb the larger this will be.

3) Therefore, souls, which can only be generated on the Prime Material Plane, are the most important currency for the gods. No god (including the evil ones) will ever support destroying souls, trapping them permanently, or wiping out all life, as it reduces the total available for all of them.

4) Demons don't even care about souls. They're just very good at imposing temporary form on the plane, and very tolerant of living in a realm where everything changes from minute to minute. They're the enemy of all gods (again, even the evil ones), because they casually damage souls when killing people.

5) Devils, originally created to fight the demons, can't do the god thing nor the demon thing, so they have an alternate solution. Every physical object in Hell is a soul that's been tortured until it unceasingly concentrates on being a door / table / house / fork / whatever. Using more souls is more prestigious, so a simple cottage where every board and nail is a separate soul is considered far more impressive than a grand mansion made of a single soul.

6) The gods don't really like losing souls to the devils, but it was acknowledged they need some for their demon-fighting activities, and so an agreement was made where they're allowed to obtain souls by contract. It's created a bad incentive where they spend more effort tempting people than fighting demons, but the situation is too big a mess to sort out at this point.

Kami2awa
2017-06-15, 06:16 AM
Well, there is your next campaign.

There is no more room in the lower planes. The human souls have staged a revolt and there's a new ruler of hell.

Of course, not every demon, daemon, devil and other synonyms has been exterminated, so they have to find somewhere to go. Fiendish refugees are popping up on the Prime Material Plane, and you can imagine how well that's going. Many of them are recruiting other evil forces (e.g. Rakshasa) for a counter-revolution.

Furthermore, people are still dying, and the disruption of the lower planes means that many more evil people are becoming trapped on the Prime as undead.

Then, some fiends come up with a radical proposition - get the living mortals to help them re-take hell, and restore the status quo. When the alternative is a zombie (or Wight) apocalypse on the Prime, they may have a point...

gkathellar
2017-06-15, 08:01 AM
On the Great Wheel, the Lower Planes are not a punishment. They're miserable and awful unless you have power, but that's exactly the way Evil generally likes it. Petitioners end up on a plane because they are intrinsically suited to it, and with time, it's possible for them to get quite comfortable - Orcus, for instance, was a mortal who worked his way up from a lowly dretch. Even in the Nine Hells, where the baatzeu' hostile takeover is maintained by grinding souls into dust to manufacture lemures, arrangements can be made beforehand with the Pit to jump right into the hierarchy on death.

And if you're a faithful worshipper of a god, you go to their realm instead, where you eventually get to merge with them. So there's that.

As for your other specific example, about Sisyphus, the point is that if he ever got the rock to stay up, he would be free to go. Sisyphus defined himself in part by his opposition to death - hence, he will never give up, because that defies his nature. His punishment is meant to be ironic and at least partially self-inflicted.

Red Fel
2017-06-15, 08:33 AM
I always got the impression from D&D/PF that the various aligned afterlives weren't really punishments but a sorting system to get the souls most suited to being specific outsiders to the processing plants. Hell being a bad thing is clearly Good lying to get more people to their side.

If a man spent his whole life manipulating others for power, why wouldn't he enjoy an eternity of playing that game?


I think the torture that happens in Hell or the Abyss isn't a punishment per-se, it's just what happens when you go to a place where everyone is a complete bastard, and some of the other bastards have had centuries to grow their power before you got there. Demons torture lower-ranking demons because that's their idea of fun, and as a newly arrived soul you are at the bottom of the pecking order.

And hey, you could eventually become one of those high-ranking demons yourself, and have fun torturing the newbies! How much the resulting entity will even be "you" by that time is an open question, of course.

These. My preferred explanation of the aligned planes isn't that petitioners go there to be punished or rewarded, but that petitioners go there because that is the place for which they have rendered their souls suitable. That is the environment where they belong, or profess to belong.


Because he's not. He's getting tortured to extract his divine essence from him for devils to use as a power source. And then when he's all used up what's left is converted into a mindless lemure. And then maybe if that mindless lemure is very lucky it ends up getting promoted (out of some necessity by a higher ranking devil) and getting an actual sense of self-identity. But that newfound imp or whatever still has no connection to the mortal person it came from. It's a new being.

Well, that's the thing. It may be a new being, but it's a new being forged from the actions and desires of the person it once was. If you were conniving and ambitious, your soul fuels the conniving and ambitious plane; if you were honorable and selfless, the honorable and selfless plane. And it takes a form and identity suitable to its new home.

There's another factor. People of very mild alignment - mildly Evil, mildly Lawful, etc. - have a correspondingly tenuous connection to their prior existence. Petitioners are mere shades (no pun intended) of what they were, at most. But every now and then, there are exceptions. Those who are profoundly moral, horrifically cruel, intensely meticulous. Those souls retain something. They may even be made into a new form, identity intact.

That's the promise of the planes. The mediocre simply become grist for the mill. But the exceptional become exceptional. And that's what Evil wants, if it even gives a thought to the afterlife - it wants to be the exceptional. The key point is that not everyone is right. Lots of Evil characters think of themselves as the next Big Bad on the make, the next Demogorgon or Mephistopheles or whomever. Every now and then, one of them is right about that. But for every truly terrifying villain, there are countless thousands of deluded thugs, punks, and one-off villains. Those are the expendable, mediocre masses. Those are the manes and lemures. Those are the ones whose identities aren't worth preserving.

Grist for the mill.

wumpus
2017-06-15, 09:28 AM
If you died and went there naturally, you DESERVED to go there. And while some good deities may be sad that this was your fate, they accept it because it's part of the cosmic order.

Redemption may be a goal of good, but as the man says, its not for everyone.


In many game world cosmologies, souls are also used as fuel, so there's always the risk that you just cease to be after a few minutes if you aren't useful as a slave.

Way, way, way back, TSR published a module called "Q-1 Queen of the Demonweb pits" (this introduced Lloth by the way, and the three earlier adventures introduced the drow). One of the more memorable things about it was that any solid surface (I think, definitely the bricks underfoot) was made up of damned souls. Stare at it long enough and you will see the faces slide past, screaming in pain... Not sure if this was what they had in mind as the "final destination" (also works for good, but less painful).

If you want a D&D setting to make sense, alignments are one of the first things that have to go. They are basically leftovers from the (red/blue) sides of a wargaming tabletop and get repurposed (badly) all over D&D. This isn't nearly as bad as the "nine (and only nine) possible personalities", but you will find endless contradictions as long as you keep alignments in your game.

Lvl 2 Expert
2017-06-15, 10:45 AM
I always got the impression from D&D/PF that the various aligned afterlives weren't really punishments but a sorting system to get the souls most suited to being specific outsiders to the processing plants. Hell being a bad thing is clearly Good lying to get more people to their side.


I think the torture that happens in Hell or the Abyss isn't a punishment per-se, it's just what happens when you go to a place where everyone is a complete bastard, and some of the other bastards have had centuries to grow their power before you got there. Demons torture lower-ranking demons because that's their idea of fun, and as a newly arrived soul you are at the bottom of the pecking order.

And hey, you could eventually become one of those high-ranking demons yourself, and have fun torturing the newbies! How much the resulting entity will even be "you" by that time is an open question, of course.

I also like this idea. The world is what you make of it, you live in the place that you deserve, a prison of your own making. (Well, the making of people who arrived earlier than you, but that's a technicality.) Everyone in the chaotic evil plane has been so busy backstabbing each other and lighting everything on fire that now it is a plane of backstabbing and fire. The plane of lawful evil is a cruel dictatorship where the upper management just won't die to make more room at the top, the plane of exceptionally neutral people is just a bunch of farms with some carefully crafted druid gardens and villages where people play monopoly on rainy Sunday afternoons and the good planes are where good people have build a good world.

In that light, there might be separate afterlives for a lot more groups: prudish or oversexed people, gearheads, party animals, roleplayers, pranksters...

Keltest
2017-06-15, 10:59 AM
I also like this idea. The world is what you make of it, you live in the place that you deserve, a prison of your own making. (Well, the making of people who arrived earlier than you, but that's a technicality.) Everyone in the chaotic evil plane has been so busy backstabbing each other and lighting everything on fire that now it is a plain of backstabbing and fire. The plane of lawful evil is a cruel dictatorship where the upper management just won't die to make more room at the top, the plane of exceptionally neutral people is just a bunch of farms with some carefully crafted druid gardens and villages where people play monopoly on rainy Sunday afternoons and the good planes are where good people have build a good world.

In that light, there might be separate afterlives for a lot more groups: prudish or oversexed people, gearheads, party animals, roleplayers, pranksters...

That's generally been my thought process on D&D afterlives as well. The upper planes are a nice place because all the people there are generally dedicated to the idea of making it a nice place, and they have no opposition. The lower planes suck because everybody there is definitionally an awful person who will put their own interests ahead of everybody and everything else. the neutral planes are kind of boring because nobody there is motivated to rock the boat in either direction.

Bohandas
2017-06-15, 11:40 AM
Think about in most cosmologies you are being tortured by a finite amount of extra dimensional entities, but the amount of human souls who die is always growing, so in some years there are more humans souls than demons\Asuras\efreets, so why don't the humans just... you know rebel and take over?

In the game Afterlife by Lucasarts you could hire additional demons from other dimensions and also conscript the souls of the damned



Even worse they force you to the torture devices, let's say roll a rock or a pit of boiling oil, what happens if a supplicant simply refuses to do it? Refuses to go to the pit or roll the rock? What will they do? Threat you? With what? Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!

http://amultiverse.com/comic/2010/11/02/superhell/


http://amultiverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/2010-11-02-Superhell.png

Koo Rehtorb
2017-06-15, 12:26 PM
Well, that's the thing. It may be a new being, but it's a new being forged from the actions and desires of the person it once was. If you were conniving and ambitious, your soul fuels the conniving and ambitious plane; if you were honorable and selfless, the honorable and selfless plane. And it takes a form and identity suitable to its new home.

Sure? But I don't think the idea that your discarded remains are being used to fuel a new creature is particularly enticing to evil people. Especially when it means horrible torture to get to that point. I mean sure technically paper is made of at least some of the same material as a tree. But I don't think it's a good thing for the tree when it's chopped down and turned into pulp. It's not an incentive.

eru001
2017-06-15, 01:10 PM
suppose instead of a good afterlife vs evil afterlife you got a Lawful afterlife vs a Chaotic afterlife.

One has both paladins and evil dictators as far as the eye can see. (also lawyers lots of lawyers)

The other has Robin hood and his merry men constantly mixing it up with proper criminal scum.

LibraryOgre
2017-06-15, 01:23 PM
suppose instead of a good afterlife vs evil afterlife you got a Lawful afterlife vs a Chaotic afterlife.

One has both paladins and evil dictators as far as the eye can see. (also lawyers lots of lawyers)

The other has Robin hood and his merry men constantly mixing it up with proper criminal scum.

The thing is, you don't get just "good" and evil, but flavors in between. The 7 Heavens are the Lawful and Good afterlife... Arcadia is the "More Lawful than Good" afterlife, while the Twin Paradises in the "More Good than Lawful" afterlife... both of which are distinct from Elysium "Good, but neither Lawful nor Chaotic" and Nirvana "Lawful, but neither Good nor Evil".

Necroticplague
2017-06-15, 01:58 PM
Part that always confused me about "afterlife as punishment" was that the planes were ruled over by related creatures. Evil planes are overseen by Evil gods. So, to this end, people who fundamentally agree are ending up together. The Evil sould are on the same cosmological side as the Evil god(s) that rule over them, so why would they want to punish people who sided with them?

So, at least for the system I normally play in, I personally interpret the two evil afterlives I know a little differently. Evil vs. Good is, at it's center, a conflict about the appropriate treatment of power and resources: Good believes in a more evenly spread distribution (The strong must help the weak), while Evil favors more strongly in uneven distributions (The strong do what they please, the weak either work to become the strong, or survive what they must). So, the Abyss and the Hells are living incarnations of this philosophy: places set up to, by their very nature, create conditions where power and resources are precious for the vast majority of souls, but held in great abundance by those at the top. So going to either isn't a punishment: it's an opportunity to claw your way up to power, at great difficulty. Orcus was once a mane, like so many of the others. And now? He's a Demon Prince of Undeath. All of the Archduke's seats are up for grabs, if you're clever enough.

Mastikator
2017-06-15, 02:25 PM
It's not about punishment or reward, it's just the sum of your life stuck on endless repeat. Which also doesn't make sense lol

LibraryOgre
2017-06-15, 02:36 PM
It's not about punishment or reward, it's just the sum of your life stuck on endless repeat. Which also doesn't make sense lol

Only if you assume that afterlives are unending. If the goal is absorption into the deity or plane, with some diverted to become outer planar beings, then those afterlives are finite.

Alcore
2017-06-15, 03:57 PM
To my understanding, and fading memory of complete divine some years ago, it makes sense because;


When you die one of three things happen;
1. You find such fulfilment in your afterlife that you merge into the vary essence of it. You cease to be you and are one with the plane. Neither angel nor devil may interact with you. The local god can spend you like coin or mana and you'll never know.
2. You become a petitioner. The details vary but in essense the temple boils down to; lose all HD but 1, lose all class, gain fast healing (typically 10), immortality, and a combat ability of a crippled venerable aged commoner.
3. You were so strong and embodied your alignment so well you get to be a low HD outsider in service to your local god. Vary rare.




Mortals can't take over, they already have. The larva petitioners of the abyss do something to each other (eat?, it's unpleasant regardless) and become demons themselves in a few hundred years. Hell, heaven, and anyplace else with petitioners work the same. That archon that is your familiar? He could be Grom the merciful an ancient orc who once proved orcs can be good. That imp your killing? It's a fallen paladin who said all the right words to the wrong being at the right time.


It's a long process but it makes sense.

Psyren
2017-06-15, 05:07 PM
It's not about punishment or reward, it's just the sum of your life stuck on endless repeat. Which also doesn't make sense lol

I don't think so. If you were an evil tyrant like Tarquin who got to live like a king most of his life, you would repeat that with no comeuppance or punishment. Similarly, if you were selfless and sacrificed your life to help others, there'd be no reward. So it couldn't be a repeat.

Bohandas
2017-06-15, 05:11 PM
A repeat from a different person's perspective would work for the tyrant.

Psyren
2017-06-15, 08:11 PM
A repeat from a different person's perspective would work for the tyrant.

That's effectively what happens though, you go to LE-land and you get to be oppressed indefinitely.

dps
2017-06-15, 08:21 PM
Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!



No, people fear torture because they fear pain, not death. Not to say that people don't fear death, too, but torture raises the possibility of suffering terrible pain without the release of death.

Storm_Of_Snow
2017-06-16, 03:29 AM
Old Harry's Game (BBC radio comedy, written by and starring Andy Hamilton as Satan - if you recognise the name, he co-wrote Drop the Dead Donkey and, more recently, Outnumbered, and makes fairly regular appearances on QI) has precisely this situation occur, twice, and Satan defeats the coups both times, at one point reminding the demons that there's a lot more humans than them, and if they get rid of him, they'll wind up the ones being tortured.

Part of the problem with a coup in the evil planes is that Evil Is Not A Big, Happy Family - to overthrow the powers, you'd have to organise across the entire plane, and it would only take one person to betray you (whether accidentally or deliberately for their own profit) and the coup would fail, leaving you facing a much worse afterlife than the one you already were looking at.

At best you might get whichever being's in charge giving you 10 out of 10 for effort.

Pugwampy
2017-06-16, 03:41 AM
Wall of the faithless makes no sense to me . There is probably numerically more good folk than serial killers in that wall . Good guys are punished , and the uber evil guys are escaping their rightful hell or if its as bad as they deserve thats super horrible for the good guys .

The Cleric can "choose" to not worship a diety but a noble concept . DA FEQ ?

Millstone85
2017-06-16, 06:29 AM
In that light, there might be separate afterlives for a lot more groups: prudish or oversexed people, gearheads, party animals, roleplayers, pranksters...
The Cleric can "choose" to not worship a diety but a noble concept. DA FEQ?I like the idea of all kinds of concepts becoming places in the Outer Planes, and in turn power sources for divine spellcasters to tap into.

It can get a bit ridiculous, like a cleric whose magic would come from the region of Caïssavania in the plane of Arcadia, where souls come to play Chess, Janggi, Shogi, Xiangqi and similar strategy board games from all across the multiverse.

And of course, the most powerful of these clerics, ascended to a position of authority in such an astral realm, would effectively be gods themselves. Other clerics might not know these gods exist, or might choose the revere the concept first and the deity second.


Wall of the faithless makes no sense to me. There is probably numerically more good folk than serial killers in that wall. Good guys are punished, and the uber evil guys are escaping their rightful hell or if its as bad as they deserve thats super horrible for the good guys.Yeah, I hate that wall.

It could be reworked into a place where souls who believe death should be the end, or just want to "rest in peace for all eternity", come to lay against the stone and fade into it.

Souls evil enough for the Lower Planes would never find the wall, or be unable to merge with it. Souls good enough for the Upper Planes would get a taste of heaven so they can reconsider.

Darth Ultron
2017-06-16, 07:24 AM
Think about in most cosmologies you are being tortured by a finite amount of extra dimensional entities, but the amount of human souls who die is always growing, so in some years there are more humans souls than demons\Asuras\efreets, so why don't the humans just... you know rebel and take over?

In most cosmologies a new dead soul (or petitioner) is fairly weak in the grand layout of things. So most other beings can over power them.

Also, it's not like ''all the souls'' go to one place....they are spread out.

And to organize a large group of souls is just as hard to do in the afterlife as in real life.



Even worse they force you to the torture devices, let's say roll a rock or a pit of boiling oil, what happens if a supplicant simply refuses to do it? Refuses to go to the pit or roll the rock? What will they do? Threat you? With what? Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!

Besides people of higher realms are supposed to be perfect right? Well how they can be perfectly Benevolent and merciful if they know there are other humans suffering in the lower realms?



There is ''obliteration'' beyond just ''death''. And there are fates worse then ''just being dead''.


Part that always confused me about "afterlife as punishment" was that the planes were ruled over by related creatures. Evil planes are overseen by Evil gods. So, to this end, people who fundamentally agree are ending up together. The Evil sould are on the same cosmological side as the Evil god(s) that rule over them, so why would they want to punish people who sided with them?


Well, of course, evil folks punish any and all people they can...just because they are evil.

''Punishment'' and ''suffering'' and 'torture'' and such are all relative though, depending on who is talking. To some ''sitting on a cloud happily ever after with all their loved ones'' would be punishment, suffering and torture. The same is true of ''rewards'' and ''happiness'' and everything else.


Wall of the faithless makes no sense to me . There is probably numerically more good folk than serial killers in that wall . Good guys are punished , and the uber evil guys are escaping their rightful hell or if its as bad as they deserve thats super horrible for the good guys .

The Cleric can "choose" to not worship a diety but a noble concept . DA FEQ ?

It only makes sense in the Forgotten Realms where the divine law is: Thou Must Follow a True Divine Being or Else. And being Divine Law, the mortals don't get a choice. The wall is no doubt full of a great many good people. Good people who were told many, many, many times over their life time about the Divine Law. And still that person chose to not have faith.

Lord Torath
2017-06-16, 08:01 AM
Regarding the Coup attempts, 2E lore said that millions of Dretch occasionally rebel against the greater demons Tanar'ri, and it always ends in disaster for the poor little wretches. And as others have said, most D&D cosmologies have newly dead evil folks transformed into larva, which are mostly traded or devoured, and occasionally transformed into the lowest form of Fiend on their respective plane - lemure, dretch, hordling, etc.

Millstone85
2017-06-16, 08:34 AM
It only makes sense in the Forgotten Realms where the divine law is: Thou Must Follow a True Divine Being or Else. And being Divine Law, the mortals don't get a choice. The wall is no doubt full of a great many good people. Good people who were told many, many, many times over their life time about the Divine Law. And still that person chose to not have faith.Faith is not something you can choose to have, unless the gods only care about seeing their rituals and taboos obeyed.

Nifft
2017-06-16, 08:37 AM
Faith is not something you can choose to have

Wait, so if I lack faith (e.g. in predestination or in God), that's due entirely to both predestination and God?

LibraryOgre
2017-06-16, 09:08 AM
The Mod Wonder: I would suggest being very careful around real-world religious concepts.

Psyren
2017-06-16, 09:40 AM
Thread nudged!


Regarding the Coup attempts, 2E lore said that millions of Dretch occasionally rebel against the greater demons Tanar'ri, and it always ends in disaster for the poor little wretches. And as others have said, most D&D cosmologies have newly dead evil folks transformed into larva, which are mostly traded or devoured, and occasionally transformed into the lowest form of Fiend on their respective plane - lemure, dretch, hordling, etc.

Well of course they do, it wouldn't be a chaotic plane without some turmoil :smallsmile:

Actually, that would be an interesting source of a vestige - if you had some kind of killer during life, arrived in the Abyss as a petitioner in the middle of one of those uprisings, and had their soul torn to pieces by rampaging dretches, leaving it with nowhere to go.

Cazero
2017-06-16, 10:17 AM
Wait, so if I lack faith (e.g. in predestination or in God), that's due entirely to both predestination and God?
D&D faith is not simply accepting the existence of god X. That's a basic fact about the world. Most people accept the existence of the entire pantheon, that doesn't make everyone a follower of both Bane and Pelor. If you lack faith in D&D, that's less not taking time to go to your church on sundays and more being unable to relate to the interests of any god you know about.

Can you say that someone who only follows god X because he's scared ****less of the Wall has true faith? If I were god X, I'll be a little bit outraged by the hypocrisy.

LibraryOgre
2017-06-16, 10:23 AM
Wall of the faithless makes no sense to me . There is probably numerically more good folk than serial killers in that wall . Good guys are punished , and the uber evil guys are escaping their rightful hell or if its as bad as they deserve thats super horrible for the good guys .

The Cleric can "choose" to not worship a diety but a noble concept . DA FEQ ?

The Wall of the Faithless is exclusively an FR concept, and one that has changed over time. It's not one I'm fond of, but I also think "faith" means something far different in a world where gods are not only demonstrably real, but have visited the planet in living human memory (at least, before 4e's fast forward).

I view the planes as being a place where, from the point of view of that alignment, the world works the way it is supposed to. If you are Lawful Evil, it makes sense that the powerful would oppress the weak for their own advantage, and that someone talented and ruthless could climb that ladder. For most LE people, they expect that they'll come in as something higher on the scale than a lemure (and that's part of why I think people get buried with useful grave goods so often). If you're a LG person who's been living in a CE place, being in the Seven Heavens IS a reward, because now, when you try to help people and build something, they get helped and things get built. A CE person might not find the Abyss such a rewarding place, but at least it makes sense. "I am getting buggered by vrock because I am insufficiently strong to stop it. If I want to stop this, I must become stronger." And then they just have to survive the vrock.

Nifft
2017-06-16, 10:24 AM
D&D faith is not simply accepting the existence of god X. That's a basic fact about the world. Most people accept the existence of the entire pantheon, that doesn't make everyone a follower of both Bane and Pelor. If you lack faith in D&D, that's less not taking time to go to your church on sundays and more being unable to relate to the interests of any god you know about.

Can you say that someone who only follows god X because he's scared ****less of the Wall has true faith? If I were god X, I'll be a little bit outraged by the hypocrisy.

In a highly divine-interventionist world like FR, there's no point in wondering if those gods are real. They are real, and you can go see the indentation on that hill where one of them fell out of bed last week -- there is significant evidence of their reality. At high enough level, you can go visit their realms.

In a setting like Eberron, faith is a more nuanced issue. You can't just go visit the gods. There are pantheonic faiths, and monotheistic faiths. None of them are provably correct.

Greyhawk is in the middle: the gods are real, but mostly hands-off, except a few who have visited the mortal world in person.

I don't think you can talk about "D&D faith" in general, since settings vary so much.

Lord Torath
2017-06-16, 10:47 AM
Athas makes things even more interesting. Fiends can be summoned, but there are no gods, only elemental powers. There's a big gate located under the Black Spine mountains that grants access to the astral plane, if I recall correctly, and Contact Other Plane still works, and can be used to contact extra-planar beings of any alignment. But no mention of what happens to the souls of those who die worshiping the elemental powers. Or even any mention of the afterlife for Athasians, other than Raise Dead and Resurrection still work.

Edit: I should mention that I'm not very familiar with the Revised 2.5 Edition setting. There may be something in that boxed set regarding the afterlife, I don't know.

Bohandas
2017-06-16, 10:54 AM
That's effectively what happens though, you go to LE-land and you get to be oppressed indefinitely.

They said though, repeat from a different perspective wouldn't work for the reward for active good side. The people who were helped were in need of help.

Bohandas
2017-06-16, 10:57 AM
Greyhawk is in the middle: the gods are real, but mostly hands-off, except a few who have visited the mortal world in person.

Perhaps most notably in the "personally visited" field is the demigod Iuz, who personally and directly rules a material empire

Bohandas
2017-06-16, 11:14 AM
''Punishment'' and ''suffering'' and 'torture'' and such are all relative though, depending on who is talking. To some ''sitting on a cloud happily ever after with all their loved ones'' would be punishment, suffering and torture.


Reminds me of that one Lucas Bros. Moving Co bit:

"At aleast if we die we don't gotta go to church"
"Yeah, but if we go to heaven that's kind of like church forever"
"Damn! I hope we go to Hell!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF9TZs_9iLc#t=00m40s (mild coarse language in clip)

EDIT:
oops! Sorry for triple posting

Mastikator
2017-06-16, 11:39 AM
Only if you assume that afterlives are unending. If the goal is absorption into the deity or plane, with some diverted to become outer planar beings, then those afterlives are finite.

Good point. If you're good then you can either slowly fade into eternal peace and happiness until you lose yourself and become one with heaven itself, or retain your will and become one of the angels.
If you're evil then you are burned until there is nothing left.

It's not really about a just reward or punishment, just extending your experience beyond death, on a path that mirrors the one you took in life.

@Psyren not sure what you're objecting to. If justice is not the point then why would lack of comeuppance be a problem? This one is more along the lines of hellraiser: inferno (not the other ones!), that the afterlife is only as bad as you make it through your own actions.

Nifft
2017-06-16, 03:38 PM
Perhaps most notably in the "personally visited" field is the demigod Iuz, who personally and directly rules a material empire

Yeah, and Iuz is going to be a special case for any Greyhawk-related afterlife story: as far as I can tell, Iuz was born here on the Prime, was imprisoned here on the Prime, and has never even had a non-Prime plane of his own.

Where would Iuz send his faithful?

Not his own domain, since that's here on the Prime.

pwykersotz
2017-06-16, 03:58 PM
I view it as reaping what you sow.

If you use your life to do good for others, you spend your afterlife being the recipient of pure goodness.
If you do evil, you are the recipient of evil.
If you insist upon order, you are placed into an orderly system.
If you break all the molds, you are in a place that has nothing but chaos.

It's rather poetic justice. Especially if you go overly meta and view it as your own actions toward others are directly impacting you. You aren't being poked with pitchforks by demons. You're being poked by your own actions while alive.

Bohandas
2017-06-16, 05:22 PM
Yeah, and Iuz is going to be a special case for any Greyhawk-related afterlife story: as far as I can tell, Iuz was born here on the Prime, was imprisoned here on the Prime, and has never even had a non-Prime plane of his own.

Where would Iuz send his faithful?

Not his own domain, since that's here on the Prime.

He does seem strongly associated with the undead however

EDIT:
Just thought of something. If any of you have a copy of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil handy check Hedrack's bio, maybe there might be something in there that would give a clue since he was a follower of Iuz who was killed and resurrected

CowardlyPaladin
2017-06-16, 10:40 PM
Think about in most cosmologies you are being tortured by a finite amount of extra dimensional entities, but the amount of human souls who die is always growing, so in some years there are more humans souls than demons\Asuras\efreets, so why don't the humans just... you know rebel and take over?

Even worse they force you to the torture devices, let's say roll a rock or a pit of boiling oil, what happens if a supplicant simply refuses to do it? Refuses to go to the pit or roll the rock? What will they do? Threat you? With what? Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!

Besides people of higher realms are supposed to be perfect right? Well how they can be perfectly Benevolent and merciful if they know there are other humans suffering in the lower realms?

That makes no SENSE! >:@


in some version of D&D the Angels are moratls who are transformed

Pugwampy
2017-06-17, 08:32 AM
The Wall of the Faithless is exclusively an FR concept, and one that has changed over time. It's not one I'm fond of, but I also think "faith" means something far different in a world where gods are not only demonstrably real, but have visited the planet in living human memory (at least, before 4e's fast forward).


Correct my poor fuzzy brain if i am wrong , but i kinda recall an FR concept regarding deity,s survival being dependent on faith and worship from the mortals . If you dont take part , you are taking away their power and even their life force .

Commiting deicide is frowned upon even by the kindest of super beings .
Thats one lame excuse for the "wall" existing


Then there is that nice RJ Salavatore concept of all of us mortals. We have no control .We belong to them . Weather we like it or not we are literally personifying some god or goddess by our actions or moral code . We do not or have not ever chosen our dieties , they chose us and flow through us . It takes a bit of time to give that deity a name but all you have to do to find them is examine your way of life .

And that young Drizzt is why you belong to Mielikki and not Lolth

TheFurith
2017-06-17, 10:37 AM
Besides people of higher realms are supposed to be perfect right? Well how they can be perfectly Benevolent and merciful if they know there are other humans suffering in the lower realms?

Perhaps they signed something similar to D&D's Pact Primeval?

GPS
2017-06-17, 05:10 PM
Think about in most cosmologies you are being tortured by a finite amount of extra dimensional entities, but the amount of human souls who die is always growing, so in some years there are more humans souls than demons\Asuras\efreets, so why don't the humans just... you know rebel and take over?

Even worse they force you to the torture devices, let's say roll a rock or a pit of boiling oil, what happens if a supplicant simply refuses to do it? Refuses to go to the pit or roll the rock? What will they do? Threat you? With what? Most people irl fear torture because they are afraid of dying, but you can't threat someone who is dead with death since well YOU ARE Fing DEAD!

Besides people of higher realms are supposed to be perfect right? Well how they can be perfectly Benevolent and merciful if they know there are other humans suffering in the lower realms?

That makes no SENSE! >:@
Like, they could just push you into the pit. It's not hard.

Darth Ultron
2017-06-17, 08:12 PM
Faith is not something you can choose to have, unless the gods only care about seeing their rituals and taboos obeyed.

You might need to Google ''faith''. Faith is very much something people choose to have or not have: free will is a basic component of most major religions. In almost D&D campaign setting, the gods are real beings. The gods put themselves out there, and mortals chose the one they want to follow and worship. But mortals get the choice to have faith or not.

Bohandas
2017-06-18, 02:56 AM
So really you mean worship, not faith

Esprit15
2017-06-18, 04:20 AM
Perhaps they signed something similar to D&D's Pact Primeval?

Also, they aren't perfect, and aren't they fighting a war against the evil planes?

Necroticplague
2017-06-18, 07:05 AM
You might need to Google ''faith''. Faith is very much something people choose to have or not have: free will is a basic component of most major religions. In almost D&D campaign setting, the gods are real beings. The gods put themselves out there, and mortals chose the one they want to follow and worship. But mortals get the choice to have faith or not.

Faith isn't something you chose to have. You can choose to worship, but you can't choose to have faith.Faith is more of a personality characteristic then an active decision.

You also don't really need faith, in a setting where gods' existences are provable facts. Faith is for things you lack the capacity to know.

pwykersotz
2017-06-18, 08:28 AM
Faith isn't something you chose to have. You can choose to worship, but you can't choose to have faith.Faith is more of a personality characteristic then an active decision.

You also don't really need faith, in a setting where gods' existences are provable facts. Faith is for things you lack the capacity to know.

A few google queries show no support for your assertion other than opinion blogposts. Do you have a source of some sort?

And I think Faiths and Pantheons disagrees with not needing faith in those settings (of course edition or game may vary), but it's been a while since I've read it so I'm not sure.

Bohandas
2017-06-18, 09:17 AM
You generally cab;t choose what you believe in, you have to be convinced. I mean you can choose some things to a limited extent but doublethink has it's limits.

Nifft
2017-06-18, 09:57 AM
You generally cab;t choose what you believe in, you have to be convinced. I mean you can choose some things to a limited extent but doublethink has it's limits.

You can't convince people of things that they don't want to be convinced of.

They must make the choice to actually consider your arguments.

"Doublethink" is a very specific thing -- a type of disassociation, codified by the dystopian setting of 1984.

"Doublethink" is not a synonym for "free will", which is what the others are talking about.

Millstone85
2017-06-18, 10:11 AM
You can't convince people of things that they don't want to be convinced of.

They must make the choice to actually consider your arguments.Then they made the choice to consider your arguments, not the choice to be convinced by them.


"Doublethink" is a very specific thing -- a type of disassociation, codified by the dystopian setting of 1984.

"Doublethink" is not a synonym for "free will", which is what the others are talking about."Doublethink" is closer to what I meant when I said that you can't choose to have faith. Then you brought the matter of predestination, which I thought was quite a leap.

Elderand
2017-06-18, 10:49 AM
People who think the wall of the faithless is about faith are wrong. For a certain definition of faith. The Faerunian gods don't give two crap about faith in the real word sense. it is entirely about worship and about allegiance, nothing more; belief is unecessery in a world where the gods show up in person on a frequent basis and where miracles happens every ten minutes.

Gods, in faerun, aren't an article of faith (as in belief without proof), they are a fact of life. You can absolutely believe in the gods and still end up in the bloody wall.

No, all that matters is that you follow the gods decree, worship them and pick one to follow more than the others.

And the wall exist as a threat so people will worship the gods, because the gods had their very lives tied to having followers.


Also, thinking that in dnd afterlives are about reward or punishment is wrong. The fiendish planes aren't about punishing evil people, the good planes aren't about rewarding people. Those are just....collateral consequences of the alignement of outsiders.

The outer planes are about getting as many souls as they can to strengthen their own position, nothing more. Your identity doesn't endure after you die, it is stripped from you to turn you into an outsider or a building block of the plane. To the outer planes you're not people, you are brick and mortar, commodity.

The only ones whose identity endure are those who have pleased whoever controls the plane personally. You are a glorified toy at that point.

Thinking the planes are about reward and punishment is just an egocentric view of the planes, where it's all about the soul of the mortal. But dnd isn't built that way, mortals don't matter, mortals identities hopes and dream only matter in that they determine where the soul goes after death. Then you're just a bag of bricks to be used.

The main difference between the good and evil planes is that in the good planes, they'll generally be nice enough to let you fade on your own after a few decades. The evil planes will torture you so you fade after a short while because they are very aggressive in their recruitment drive and need new lemures or because mortal souls make for good batteries. The turnover on souls is ridiculously high in the lower planes because they are always fighting each other to see who is the bigger ****. Good has a low turnover because they just sit back on their asses and watch the spectacle.

tomandtish
2017-06-18, 01:49 PM
Faith is not something you can choose to have, unless the gods only care about seeing their rituals and taboos obeyed.


Wait, so if I lack faith (e.g. in predestination or in God), that's due entirely to both predestination and God?


D&D faith is not simply accepting the existence of god X. That's a basic fact about the world. Most people accept the existence of the entire pantheon, that doesn't make everyone a follower of both Bane and Pelor. If you lack faith in D&D, that's less not taking time to go to your church on sundays and more being unable to relate to the interests of any god you know about.

Can you say that someone who only follows god X because he's scared ****less of the Wall has true faith? If I were god X, I'll be a little bit outraged by the hypocrisy.


People who think the wall of the faithless is about faith are wrong. For a certain definition of faith. The Faerunian gods don't give two crap about faith in the real word sense. it is entirely about worship and about allegiance, nothing more; belief is unecessery in a world where the gods show up in person on a frequent basis and where miracles happens every ten minutes.

Gods, in faerun, aren't an article of faith (as in belief without proof), they are a fact of life. You can absolutely believe in the gods and still end up in the bloody wall.

No, all that matters is that you follow the gods decree, worship them and pick one to follow more than the others.


At one point at least, even that bolded bit wasn't entirely true. You could worship several of them and your soul would go to whomever you ended up following the most.


The Faithless firmly denied any faith or only gave lip service to the gods for most of their lives without truly believing.

Note that nothing there says he has to pick a specific deity as a patron.

Take your typical farmer. He prays to Chaunteau for good crops. He may offer occasional prayers to Helm for protection when bad things are in the area. He prays to Tymora when he needs luck. Other god will get prayers or offerings based on circumstances.

As long as those prayers are sincere, he's not one of the faithless (he legitimately believes). And he's not false (since he hadn't selected one and then rejected them). He'll end up going to one of them. You didn't have to make a conscious choice to pick one, although life would probably work out that way (for our farmer Chaunteau would be most likely).

Koo Rehtorb
2017-06-18, 02:15 PM
You don't end up in the wall by accident. You need to be seriously committed to defying the gods if you're going to end up there.

Pex
2017-06-18, 05:03 PM
On a tangent but related, what irks me is deities punishing people by turning them into undead. This fits more into pre-5E D&D cosmology, but some undead were created as divine punishment by non-Evil and I would say some Good deities. Why would they do that to unleash such a horror onto the world? The Death Knight is the more powerful example. I know that's from Dragonlance but even so, why punish a person by making him such a powerful creature that can and does cause harm to others? Hecuevas are another example, though they haven't seen play since 2E. Ghouls were originally not an Orcus thing. Osiris and Mummies I take as a soft exception because the purpose of Mummies is to guard a tomb from raiders, so it's not a punishment or even an Evil cause, but I wouldn't object to lumping them into this.

hamishspence
2017-06-18, 05:05 PM
Hecuevas are another example, though they haven't seen play since 2E.

They were in Fiend Folio - 3rd ed. Also Dragon Magazine Annual - 4e.



Note that nothing there says he has to pick a specific deity as a patron.

Take your typical farmer. He prays to Chaunteau for good crops. He may offer occasional prayers to Helm for protection when bad things are in the area. He prays to Tymora when he needs luck. Other god will get prayers or offerings based on circumstances.

As long as those prayers are sincere, he's not one of the faithless (he legitimately believes). And he's not false (since he hadn't selected one and then rejected them). He'll end up going to one of them. You didn't have to make a conscious choice to pick one, although life would probably work out that way (for our farmer Chaunteau would be most likely).

And in Ed Greenwood's Elminster's Forgotten Realms, it's stated that this is the practice of virtually everyone in Faerun - with clergy, paladins, and fanatics being the rare exceptions.

At the same time, it does say that they nearly always revere one deity more than the others. I like the idea that they don't have to be conscious of which deity though.

Darth Ultron
2017-06-18, 08:43 PM
A few google queries show no support for your assertion other than opinion blogposts. Do you have a source of some sort?


Well, as all ways, everyone makes up their own definition for every word to make discussions impossible.

tomandtish
2017-06-18, 09:56 PM
On a tangent but related, what irks me is deities punishing people by turning them into undead. This fits more into pre-5E D&D cosmology, but some undead were created as divine punishment by non-Evil and I would say some Good deities. Why would they do that to unleash such a horror onto the world? The Death Knight is the more powerful example. I know that's from Dragonlance but even so, why punish a person by making him such a powerful creature that can and does cause harm to others? Hecuevas are another example, though they haven't seen play since 2E. Ghouls were originally not an Orcus thing. Osiris and Mummies I take as a soft exception because the purpose of Mummies is to guard a tomb from raiders, so it's not a punishment or even an Evil cause, but I wouldn't object to lumping them into this.

Soth is probably more a case of "careful what you wish for". He was cursed by his second wife Denissa, who was an elven priestess (Mishakal, IIRC). When he refused to save their child from the flames, she cursed him, saying "you shall live the lifetime of every soul that you have caused death today". It may be that turning him into an undead was the only way the curse was able to be fulfilled.

Think of The Mummy movies (Brendan Fraiser). The downside of those powerful curses that follow a person beyond death, is that the victim has to be around to suffer it in some form. And that form is usually harmful to mere mortals.

Blacky the Blackball
2017-06-19, 05:50 AM
The thing with the generic D&D Great Wheel cosmology is that the evil aren't being punished.

Basically* you get to spend eternity with people who are similar to yourself. If you're Lawful Good then you'll end up in the Seven Heavens with the other Lawful Good people. If you're Chaotic Evil then you'll end up in the Abyss with the other Chaotic Evil people.

Now, of course, those places are very different. If you end up in the Seven Heavens you'll be welcomed and given somewhere to live and soon you'll be having a great time with your new friends. But if you end up in the Abyss you'll find yourself being exploited and bullied and preyed upon by those who have been there longer than you and who have managed to claw their way up the might-makes-right pecking order; possibly even tortured for their amusement.

Now the latter is obviously much less pleasant than the former, but it's not punishment. It's just that everyone ends up with people like themselves and it turns out that the people like yourself aren't very nice.

Basically, the Great Wheel runs on a weaponised Golden Rule - do unto others as you would want them to do unto you; because after you die they will be doing it unto you.




*I say "basically", because in the pre-Planescape AD&D version of the Great Wheel (the version I'm most familiar with) there are a couple of complications to this system. Firstly, there is no True Neutral afterlife - those who are Neutral just get reincarnated. It's only by having a strong enough commitment one one or both of the alignment axes that has you taken out of the endless cycle of reincarnation to become a permanent denizen of one of the outer planes. Also, the other way out of the endless reincarnation cycle is that some pantheons actively judge their dead worshippers - if you worship one of these pantheons and you've pleased the gods sufficiently you may become one of their servants in the afterlife rather than just going to your natural fate (reincarnation or transformation into an outer planar denizen).

Millstone85
2017-06-19, 10:11 AM
The Faerunian gods don't give two crap about faith in the real word sense. it is entirely about worship and about allegiance, nothing more; belief is unecessery in a world where the gods show up in person on a frequent basis and where miracles happens every ten minutes.Yes, in our corner of the real world these days, it is primarily about believing in a god's existence. If you do, it is naturally assumed that you are also a big fan of this character. The possibility of someone believing in a god's existence, but also regarding said god as undeserving of their love, trust or respect, is something that often gets thrown as an insult but is almost never a claim made for oneself.

In the Realms now, few people would doubt the truth of a whole pantheon's existence. But it would still make sense to ask if someone has faith in a given god. Do you see some dirtbag or coward with too much power, or do you see the spiritual guide through whom you find meaning in your life? And what I find most disturbing about the Wall of the Faithless is that there would probably be a lot of people on Toril, some of them good people, some of them also very committed to the rites and commandments associated with a god, who deep down in their heart just wouldn't feel that way for any of the gods, and their souls would end up in the wall.

But maybe I am wrong and the gods of Toril just want solid allegiances. In that case, the Wall of the Faithless is a little less creepy.



The Faithless firmly denied any faith or only gave lip service to the gods for most of their lives without truly believing.And with this, the wall is super creepy again.


The outer planes are about getting as many souls as they can to strengthen their own position, nothing more. Your identity doesn't endure after you die, it is stripped from you to turn you into an outsider or a building block of the plane. To the outer planes you're not people, you are brick and mortar, commodity.This is why I love illithid elder brains. Look at these dumb mind flayers, with their belief that their consciousnesses will endure in the great unity of the brine pool. But wait! It turns out your PC's afterlife works pretty much the same. What a cruel twist!

But at least the Upper Planes can be expected to make the lives of future generations better. There is solace in that.


I say "basically", because in the pre-Planescape AD&D version of the Great Wheel (the version I'm most familiar with) there are a couple of complications to this system. Firstly, there is no True Neutral afterlife - those who are Neutral just get reincarnated. It's only by having a strong enough commitment one one or both of the alignment axes that has you taken out of the endless cycle of reincarnation to become a permanent denizen of one of the outer planes.I wouldn't be surprised if druids counted that as a reason to be True Neutral. Stay in the flow! Death comes to all, but why deny your soul its rebirth? This beautiful world is not meant to be escaped!

Elderand
2017-06-19, 10:45 AM
Yes, in our corner of the real world these days, it is primarily about believing in a god's existence. If you do, it is naturally assumed that you are also a big fan of this character. The possibility of someone believing in a god's existence, but also regarding said god as undeserving of their love, trust or respect, is something that often gets thrown as an insult but is almost never a claim made for oneself.

In the Realms now, few people would doubt the truth of a whole pantheon's existence. But it would still make sense to ask if someone has faith in a given god. Do you see some dirtbag or coward with too much power, or do you see the spiritual guide through whom you find meaning in your life? And what I find most disturbing about the Wall of the Faithless is that there would probably be a lot of people on Toril, some of them good people, some of them also very committed to the rites and commandments associated with a god, who deep down in their heart just wouldn't feel that way for any of the gods, and their souls would end up in the wall.

But maybe I am wrong and the gods of Toril just want solid allegiances. In that case, the Wall of the Faithless is a little less creepy.

And with this, the wall is super creepy again.

You're conflating two definition of faith here.


1
a: allegiance to duty or a person
b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

2
a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion
b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2)

I think you find the wall problematic because you expect the faerunian gods to expect definition number 2b. But it doesn't, all it requires is a mixture of definition 1 and 2a.
2b cannot exist in faerun because there is definitive unarguable proof that the gods exist. All that matters is that you pay sincere allegiance to the gods and follow their doctrine because you believe they're a good idea.

goto124
2017-06-20, 05:00 AM
Could these gods work with a system similar to fealty?

Pugwampy
2017-06-20, 05:55 AM
My half orc barbarian will only worship the deity who gives him this day his daily healing potion .

Amen

Lemmy
2017-06-20, 10:30 AM
What really doesn't make sense is the afterlife of "reward" in Golarion... You follow the gods and accept Pharasma judgement... Just so you can have your soul used as brick in Nirvana or something.

Nifft
2017-06-20, 10:49 AM
What really doesn't make sense is the afterlife of "reward" in Golarion... You follow the gods and accept Pharasma judgement... Just so you can have your soul used as brick in Nirvana or something.

All in all, we are all just bricks in the wall.

Max_Killjoy
2017-06-20, 12:37 PM
Faerun needs it's Reagan. "Mr Myrul... tear down this wall!"

Seriously, The Wall has to be one of the most effed-up cosmologies ever conceived (fictional or real).

But then, given how most gods behave, it's probably the only way they have to terrorize mortals into actually following them.

hamishspence
2017-06-20, 01:59 PM
I've seen some suggestions that Kelemvor was especially lenient on both the False and the Faithless during his early part reign, if they were virtuous.

Which implies that the Wall was taken down when Kelemvor was made God of the Dead by Ao - but put back up after Kelemvor was convinced by the other gods (who'd put him on trial for incompetence) that he'd made a mistake.