Playing with souls and demons [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Segev

2020-11-01, 11:14 AM

I have a lengthy set of musings on this concept. I’m on my phone now, but will try to go into it in detail later.

For now, I’d say “yes.”

I also posit that some fiends are “born” from powerful characters who die and skip the “petitioner” stage, and others likely come from lower-ranked fiends and petitioners leveling up or merging into amalgamations of beings. Especially when they start as masses of petitioners who’ve lost their identities and thus cant tell where one ends and the other begins.

In a way, think of Naraku from Inuyasha.

Edit to add longer post:

My thoughts on Outsiders and what becomes of the dead mortals are also linked to thoughts on how undeath works, but I'll try to stay focused on the Outsider-birth side of things. Apologies if I wander into too deep a rabbit hole.

Mortal creatures, when they die, release their soul from their body. (For this discussion's sake, I'm going to treat body and soul as separate, though I could wax philosophical on body/soul unity and...well.) For this D&D-based cosmology, I think of souls as single units, but composed of multiple components. Not in the Egyptian or Eastern sense of a well-defined "upper and loewr" soul, or "maat and..." er, my Egyptian theology is weak here, sorry. Whatever the not-maat is. Much more divisible than that, but also much less cohered when divided than that. More like cutting up a cake than pulling apart a jigsaw puzzle. Still, like a marbled cake, say, the soul's "parts" are differentiable by their contributions to who that person is. The part that thinks - the mind - is tied strongly to the astral plane, and, absent any other effects, that's probably what draws the rest of the soul first into the Astral and then lets it filter out to its final resting place.

However, without a strong core around which to cohere, the soul is fragile, and the individual parts of you that warred against each other over your decisions and choices in life now don't have to live (literally and figuratively) with each other anymore. The wild and crazy instincts you have all wander off to the Chaotic planes. The obedient or orderly parts to the Lawful ones. The parts of you that are selfish and venal descend to the lower planes, and your best nature ascends to the upper planes. This leads to petitioners who may or may not resemble the person they once were or once were a part of, but generally, one's sense of self is lost in this division, leading to the "washed-out" petitioners who lack real firm grasp of who they once were.

In fact, absent other interference, I'd go so far as to posit that "identity" stays with the body, or maybe with material possessions very important to your identity. This is what leads to hauntings and the like: if the identity is unable to "let go," it clings to fragments - or even the whole of - the soul, and the mind doesn't drag the spirit into the Astral plane. You get a ghost or something. (I have more to say on this and how negative energy comes into it, but this is enough for our discussion of souls and afterlives on the outer planes.)

Obviously, a lot of mortals view this dissolution of self as pretty horrifying. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid it!

The most obvious in "modern" civilization (i.e. the current world of whatever setting you're likely in) is religion: If you are faithful enough to your god, and believe strongly enough in his or her precepts, and strive hard enough to live by them, the worst that might happen is that your identity will cling to the parts of your soul that match his ethos and go to his outer planar residence. The more faithful you were in this case, the more "intact" you'll tend to be (though it's likely that you'll seem "purified" by the experience, it's probable that this purification is mostly just stripping away the bits more attracted to other planar locales). However, almost all faiths have some sort of "last rites." These ceremonies help the whole soul move on, possibly summoning a psychopomp to gather them up, or otherwise providing a link and a path for the entirety of the spirit to pass along to the god's domain. Some gods may also send psychopomps to their faithful even without this.

Under most conditions, these last rites remain voluntary. Laying somebody to rest doesn't work if they refuse. This means that a worshipper of Pelor being given last rites by a cleric of Bane who is performing Bane-worshippers' last rites isn't forcibly cast into Bane's realm. However...there ARE rituals which can compel the spirit to a particular outer planer entity. They are all generally termed "sacrifices." Sacrificing somebody to a god by a proper ritual can force their soul to the target entity's grasp, denying them their proper afterlife. I haven't fully developed this concept, so I'm not yet sure if I would say this always works, or if something akin to a will save based on faith in another god or just refusal to go can carve up the soul and only send parts of it to the target entity or not.

But this is why "last rites" both help prevent undeath and are considered so important. Even if they're just last rites to send somebody intact along to the outer plane most suiting them, they can help the dead soul stay together and arrive whole at his final resting place. Of course, there, he's not a perfect fit, now, and without a god to help him adjust, he's going to be less "content" than his fragmented bits would be...but I think most mortals prefer that to losing themselves.

Now, as to what this means for outsider birth!

Petitioners of the "forgot who they are" variety - including lemures and manes - are likely fragments of once-whole souls. Lemures might also be the product of torturing a soul until the bits that contain identity flee and/or evaporate.

Those who retain themselves when they arrive in the afterlife may still suffer some loss of self or fragments of their identity, but not enough to case to identify as "themselves." At most, enough to shift priorities a little. And the very strongest, or the best-protected (by rite or god or patron), will be essentially intact, viewing this afterlife as just a transition. Some might still resemble petitioners, but most will to some degree take on the lowest form of common outsider for the realm. Einherjar, unusually intelligent lemures, something of the sort. The more powerful - e.g. high level characters (who are more likely to make any required saves to "stay intact" anyway) - will become more powerful Outsiders suited to their destination. Lantern archons, Ghael Eladrins, Type I demons... sometimes this will be not just a power ranking thing, but also a "personaltiy suitability" thing. So some with very very strong tendencies might become a particular fiend or other Outsider that is stronger or weaker than their mortal level may have indicated, but likely they'll be unusually strong or weak examples of such things in such cases. (Maybe even retaining class levels to make up a difference.)

But "leveling up" isn't the only way Outsiders advance. The very most powerful tend to eat the lesser, especially in the lower planes. A devil eating a lemure is growing in strength by adding the Lawful Evil substance of the broken soul to his own. Usually, such pathetic beings are so dissolute that it does little but bolster certain aspects of the already-evil Fiend. But eat an Outsider with a sense of identity, and...well, it merges with you. Given the disparity of power and sense of self, it's most likely not going to change the identity of the consuming being, but his tastes, preferences, and maybe even some lower-level priorities might shift a little to match that of the identity he's subsumed. He may even gain new ones, albeit so very unimportant that he probably won't care beyond an odd niggling notice when it comes up.

Likewise, lemures and manes can eat each other (and often do in their hungry, empty state) and, none having much of a personal identity, which eats which is almost irrelevant, though the conglomerate being does grow a little stronger through the union. Eventually, a critical mass of components of various souls spark some sense of purpose relating to a shared desire of enough of those which merged, and from that purpose might grow eventually an identity, and they evolve into a higher form of fiend. They might still get eaten by something bigger, or they might advance through "leveling up" or through eating others. Or by merging with similarly-powerful beings and growing into something more complex in its drives and goals.

Thus, powerful Outsiders are rarely singular mortals. They're usually fragments of many mortals, though they might have a core identity that mostly aligns with who they once were. Some very powerful mortals might be able to ascend immediately upon death to being very powerful Outsiders, but it's going to be rare. A powerful patron who can preserve their psyche and identity and take all of them to their realm, and then feed them many identity-less souls, could certainly hasten that.

Now, how does this look on the less-than-evil planes?

Petitioners might not devour each other in a good-aligned plane, but they still cluster. On lawful planes, as they form groups, their group interests naturally align as is the wont of society-focused Law, and eventually the hive-mind of their pseudo-society might start to see two or more of them as truly interchangeable, and the two will even think of themselves as one, and an identity forms as clusters of petitioners unify. In Good-aligned planes, a similar process occurs but perhaps more focused through selflessness and charity and seeing each other as brothers and even as "part of oneself." Chaotic ones, I have less of an idea for; perhaps they're more into the devouring thing, or perhaps it's just that they're so focused on individual agency that lacking identity makes them feel incomplete, and so any that are making similar choices start to identify their agency with those choices and form identity around those, once again merging. (And maybe the spawning stone makes slaad by sifting and pulping petitioners into them.)

More powerful Outsiders, particularly Good-aligned ones, accept disciples and adherents who emulate them and treat them as examples. Petitioners who cannot form new identiteis on their own might just "perfect" themselves in their emulation of the angel or archon or what-have-you they follow, and become one with it. No devouring, just such complete alignment that the petitioner takes on the Outsider's identity as his own and adds his substance to it. (Maybe this is even how avatars can be formed.)

Once again, very powerful mortals might ascend immediately upon death to a higher Outsider type, especially if their personalities aligned properly or - particularly in Lawful planes - their patron assigns them appropriate duties. It's less likely that a Good patron would give petitioners as food to their favored servant, but they might give them a "flock" to "shepherd." Some of that flock might yet become self-aware new Outsiders, while others might merge with their new "shepherd," helping him ascend as a more powerful Outsider.