Are the evil afterlives actually punishments?

[ZhonLord]

So, we know that each alignment has a dedicated afterlife. Celestial Realm is the only one we've directly seen in comic, but the others have been referenced multiple times. The IFCC directors even have "inboxes"!

Now the fiends and other outsiders are always trying to tip the cosmic balance in favor of evil. So presumably they'd want to encourage evil and cruel acts. One of the things that scares people away from such is the fear of the Big Hellfire Below. The afterlife of torment.

So, wouldn't it make sense for the evil afterlives to be actually something an evil aligned character would enjoy instead? A reward, just as the good and neutral races have their own rewards. Wouldn't some evil souls like Kilkil thoroughly enjoy working under someone like Director Lee? Sure there'd be backstabbing and cruelty and callousness, but they're all used to that from doing it themselves.

So how much of a punishment, or reward, would the Evil afterlives of OOTS actually turn out to be?

[Peelee]

Yes. They are punishments.

Because I am saying that is specifically what the afterlife does. It makes you into a cookie-cutter clone of everyone of the same alignment. It may take centuries to do so, but all the people at the top of the mountain? Completely indistinguishable from one another. Arguably, that is the purpose of the D&D afterlife—to turn flawed mortal souls into perfect alignment-batteries, through various methodologies. In the Nine Hells, they torture you until you forget everything else. In Celestia, you meditate until you renounce all worldly concerns. In Valhalla, you party until you can't remember your own name. In Limbo, the chaos drives you mad. In Mechanus, you sit in grey cubicle stamping paperwork until you are bored into oblivion. And so on and so forth.

[Metastachydium]

So, we know that each alignment has a dedicated afterlife. Celestial Realm is the only one we've directly seen in comic

Technically, we've seen Hel's domain as well and it had souls in it – enslaved, essentially. Granted, she could more than afford that.


Wouldn't some evil souls like Kilkil

Kilkil is canonically Lawful Neutral. Just saying.

[ZhonLord]

Yes. They are punishments.

......whelp, that answers that. Guess I need to read deeper into Giant Interviews next time.

[Peelee]

......whelp, that answers that. Guess I need to read deeper into Giant Interviews next time.

I figured someone would link it eventually so I just went ahead and got it out of the way. But generally, that's probably going to be the case in any setting where one can actually just go and hop on over to the afterlife while still alive to see what it's all about. Plane Shift, for example, is a standard spell on the Cleric spell list. Now sure, the average Joe ain't gonna be scoping out the Abyss for themselves because their friend on MaceBook advocated "do your own research!", but enough high level characters would have adventure in such places and returned to tell the tales that the majority of the world will probably have a pretty good understanding of how it all works. "Probably" being a key word there, but still.

[Metastachydium]

But generally, that's probably going to be the case in any setting where one can actually just go and hop on over to the afterlife while still alive to see what it's all about. Plane Shift, for example, is a standard spell on the Cleric spell list. Now sure, the average Joe ain't gonna be scoping out the Abyss for themselves because their friend on MaceBook advocated "do your own research!", but enough high level characters would have adventure in such places and returned to tell the tales that the majority of the world will probably have a pretty good understanding of how it all works. "Probably" being a key word there, but still.

Given that it's apparently easier to enter Celestia if one's buddies with an Evil cleric than it is for Good folks, I tend to agree. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0497.html)

[hamishspence]

Xykon's "Anything to avoid the Big Fire Down Below" comments to V, do suggest he's quite aware of the hazards of the afterlife, for evil beings.

[Fyraltari]

So, we know that each alignment has a dedicated afterlife. Celestial Realm is the only one we've directly seen in comic, but the others have been referenced multiple times. The IFCC directors even have "inboxes"!

Now the fiends and other outsiders are always trying to tip the cosmic balance in favor of evil. So presumably they'd want to encourage evil and cruel acts. One of the things that scares people away from such is the fear of the Big Hellfire Below. The afterlife of torment.

So, wouldn't it make sense for the evil afterlives to be actually something an evil aligned character would enjoy instead? A reward, just as the good and neutral races have their own rewards. Wouldn't some evil souls like Kilkil thoroughly enjoy working under someone like Director Lee? Sure there'd be backstabbing and cruelty and callousness, but they're all used to that from doing it themselves.

So how much of a punishment, or reward, would the Evil afterlives of OOTS actually turn out to be?

There's an old short story, I like: "In Hell, everyone sits at great big table, with the most delicious looking food in their plates. However everyone's cutlery is tied to their hands and so long they can't reach into their mouth, but could reach into their neighbours'. In Heaven, it's the exact same. In Hell everybody is terribly hungry, in heaven everyone eats to their hearts' content."

The fiends can't make their afterlives actually pleasant, that's antithetical to their nature as utter bastards, and if they tried to make it tolerable, their "customers" would ruin it anyway.

As for why it's not a detriment to getting new souls, think of it like a Ponzi scheme. Each and everyone of the people sent there either thought like Xykon that they were going to be the one in a million who would find a way to escape it forever
or be the one in a million who would get to be the top dog. They're wrong. But they didn't do whatever they did that got them sent there without thinking they could escape the consequences of their action in the first place.

Edit:

Given that it's apparently easier to enter Celestia if one's buddies with an Evil cleric than it is for Good folks, I tend to agree. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0497.html)

It seems much harder to stay for a significant among of time, though.

[Rockphed]

Given that it's apparently easier to enter Celestia if one's buddies with an Evil cleric than it is for Good folks, I tend to agree. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0497.html)

The only lawful good person who we have seen have problems enter Celestia is Eugene. Considering that he is mostly stuck in the waiting room because the people who run Celestia are, in effect, holding him to his own standards, I don't think we have enough information on how hard it is to get into Celestia.

[Peelee]

The only lawful good person who we have seen have problems enter Celestia is Eugene. Considering that he is mostly stuck in the waiting room because the people who run Celestia are, in effect, holding him to his own standards, I don't think we have enough information on how hard it is to get into Celestia.

We've seen at least two people unable to enter Celestia, at least for a time, and Roy got a good grilling and was at one point in danger of losing both Lawful and Good afterlives.

[Metastachydium]

It seems much harder to stay for a significant among of time, though.

Heh. Too true!


The only lawful good person who we have seen have problems enter Celestia is Eugene. Considering that he is mostly stuck in the waiting room because the people who run Celestia are, in effect, holding him to his own standards, I don't think we have enough information on how hard it is to get into Celestia.


We've seen at least two people unable to enter Celestia, at least for a time, and Roy got a good grilling and was at one point in danger of losing both Lawful and Good afterlives.

There's also a queue (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0486.html) and an annoyingly big mountain which those running the place think is a feature (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0493.html). Be Evil! Use Plane Shift!

[Fyraltari]

Heh. Too true!





There's also a queue (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0486.html) and an annoyingly big mountain which those running the place think is a feature (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0493.html). Be Evil! Use Plane Shift!

I'll take the mountain over the sword in the face, myself.

[Metastachydium]

I'll take the mountain over the sword in the face, myself.

Fair again, but I'm pretty sure most locals didn't die married to their swords!

[Peelee]

[QUOTE=Metastachydium;25640148There's also.... an annoyingly big mountain which those running the place think is a feature (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0486.html). [/QUOTE]

Imean, let's be fair here, if Mount Celestia was not entirely composed of mountain, I would be a bit confused on the name.

[Fyraltari]

Fair again, but I'm pretty sure most locals didn't die married to their swords!
I don't get it.

Imean, let's be fair here, if Mount Celestia was not entirely composed of mountain, I would be a bit confused on the name.
Would you find a giant horse an acceptable substitute?

[Peelee]

I don't get it.

Roy and Eugene had a sword to fight against the adventurers because they saw it as an extension of themselves. Sarah, for example, did not have any weapons and could have died (or something?) without them.

[Fyraltari]

Roy and Eugene had a sword to fight against the adventurers because they saw it as an extension of themselves. Sarah, for example, did not have any weapons and could have died (or something?) without them.

Sure, but Mount Celestia is full of devas, many of which porbably have way bigger swords wreathed in Holy FlamesTM and everyone being so casual about the whole affair makes me believe that the permanent damage is very one-sided when that happens.

[Metastachydium]

Would you find a giant horse an acceptable substitute?

A herbivore?


Sure, but Mount Celestia is full of devas, many of which porbably have way bigger swords wreathed in Holy FlamesTM

Well, yes, um, but, um, only three of the five main types of devas carry greatswords and only the movanics' are actually on fire; astrals and monadics prefer maces.


and everyone being so casual about the whole affair makes me believe that the permanent damage is very one-sided when that happens.

Technically, only Horace was certifiably casual about it (it's hard to tell with lantern archons, you know), but yeah.

[Fyraltari]

A herbivore?

Look, I'm sure D&D has carnivorous mounts somewhere, we can make it work!

[Peelee]

A herbivore?

What if they can survive entirely on mushrooms?

[Ruck]

The only lawful good person who we have seen have problems enter Celestia is Eugene.

I can't miss an opportunity when one presents itself to express my belief that Eugene is not actually Lawful Good at all.

[Millstone85]

I can't miss an opportunity when one presents itself to express my belief that Eugene is not actually Lawful Good at all.I can see him being told "Okay, your family oath is fulfilled. NOW we are reviewing your alignment."

[Ruck]

I can see him being told "Okay, your family oath is fulfilled. NOW we are reviewing your alignment."

Yeah, I think some folks tend to read the final scene of Start of Darkness as Eugene being approved but I think it's more likely the review stopped at that point.

Or, at least, my rationale is that it did, because I don't possibly see how anyone who so consistently acts self-centered and dismissive of his responsibilities to other people every time we see him on the page, alive or dead, could be considered Lawful Good.

[WanderingMist]

Yeah, I think some folks tend to read the final scene of Start of Darkness as Eugene being approved but I think it's more likely the review stopped at that point.

Or, at least, my rationale is that it did, because I don't possibly see how anyone who so consistently acts self-centered and dismissive of his responsibilities to other people every time we see him on the page, alive or dead, could be considered Lawful Good.

Julia's True Neutral and according to Roy, she's basically just a young, female Eugene. I believe Eugene believes he's Lawful Good, though, because he didn't do explicitly Evil things.

[brian 333]

Getting killed would result in the destruction of the soul. Which would shortcut the usual process by a few eons. Win-win!

[Peelee]

Yeah, I think some folks tend to read the final scene of Start of Darkness as Eugene being approved but I think it's more likely the review stopped at that point.

Or, at least, my rationale is that it did, because I don't possibly see how anyone who so consistently acts self-centered and dismissive of his responsibilities to other people every time we see him on the page, alive or dead, could be considered Lawful Good.

It totally reads as if it stopped at that point, but when Roy was being judged they went ahead and did the full thing anyway because why not. And that throws a wrench in the gears of the "isnta-stop" argument (which I also subscribe to, for what the record).

[dancrilis]

Yes. They are punishments.

I disagree, sure you might be tortured into a puddle of lawful evil as a direct result of living your life in a lawful and evil way but nobody is doing it to punish you not the devils or the gods or the plane itself etc, it is merely the natural order of things.

Seperately the domain of The Dark One (at least as presented (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0704.html)) didn't seem to go the whole punishment angle either.

The evil afterlives aren't out to punish anyone, it is just that that are ran by powerful entities who happen to be evil and so unless you have befriended one of them you are likely going to have a bad time when you got there - if whoever runs the one you end up in does happen to like you (for whatever reason) then you might be largely fine (except perhaps for all the other evil people around you who now have specific cause to resent you and who want to see you suffer solely due to such patronage).

[Ruck]

Julia's True Neutral and according to Roy, she's basically just a young, female Eugene. I believe Eugene believes he's Lawful Good, though, because he didn't do explicitly Evil things.

Yeah, I think these are both good points. I also think if Eugene was genuinely Lawful or Good, that the Giant would have shown him acting that way at some point. Even in his wizardry and adventuring days he seemed more concerned with praise and recognition, feeding his own ego, than with helping others or acting altruistically.


It totally reads as if it stopped at that point, but when Roy was being judged they went ahead and did the full thing anyway because why not. And that throws a wrench in the gears of the "isnta-stop" argument (which I also subscribe to, for what the record).

The oath wasn't a problem for Roy in the end, though. He just assumed it would be. Maybe that's why his never stopped-- the Deva just didn't correct him on that point until the very end.


I disagree

Well, the author of the story disagrees with you.

[Peelee]

I disagree, sure you might be tortured into a puddle of lawful evil as a direct result of living your life in a lawful and evil way but nobody is doing it to punish you not the devils or the gods or the plane itself etc, it is merely the natural order of things.

A distinction without a difference.

[Keltest]

A distinction without a difference.

Disagree. A punishment is made as a specific reaction to something you did. It may be a punishment in a vaguely karmic sense, but they arent actually doing anything about your deeds and you may not even have actually done anything besides being grouchy and jealous of people.

[Fyraltari]

I'm not really sure whether the tormentors torturing you really care about your life really matters, personally.

you may not even have actually done anything besides being grouchy and jealous of people.

In OOTS-world that really doesn't seem to be enough to qualify as being evil.

[Peelee]

Disagree. A punishment is made as a specific reaction to something you did. It may be a punishment in a vaguely karmic sense, but they arent actually doing anything about your deeds and you may not even have actually done anything besides being grouchy and jealous of people.

Yeah, I don't really think that "being grouchy and jealous of people" gets you into Baator. Just like it's hard to clear the bar for Good, you have to be pretty despicable to plunge into actual Evil. Neutral isn't just a thin line dividing the two, it's a full third of the spectrum on both axes.

[dancrilis]

Well, the author of the story disagrees with you.

Do you have a source?

[brian 333]

I disagree, sure you might be tortured into a puddle of lawful evil as a direct result of living your life in a lawful and evil way but nobody is doing it to punish you not the devils or the gods or the plane itself etc, it is merely the natural order of things.

Seperately the domain of The Dark One (at least as presented (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0704.html)) didn't seem to go the whole punishment angle either.

The evil afterlives aren't out to punish anyone, it is just that that are ran by powerful entities who happen to be evil and so unless you have befriended one of them you are likely going to have a bad time when you got there - if whoever runs the one you end up in does happen to like you (for whatever reason) then you might be largely fine (except perhaps for all the other evil people around you who now have specific cause to resent you and who want to see you suffer solely due to such patronage).

I don't see it in comic, so I cannot say for certain that "this is how it works," but in fantasy afterlives the torments endured are usually very specific to the deeds that earned a soul its place in the afterlife.

A priest who hoarded gold while children starved might be made to feel intense hunger with nothing but gold to eat, or a murderer might be slain every morning in the way he killed, only to rise and be killed again. Such victims may not rise as manes or whatever until any memory of why they are being tormented is forgotten.

As the author does not post graphic depictions of torture, I doubt we'll ever get direct confirmation of this hypothesis

[Mechalich]

Yeah, I don't really think that "being grouchy and jealous of people" gets you into Baator. Just like it's hard to clear the bar for Good, you have to be pretty despicable to plunge into actual Evil. Neutral isn't just a thin line dividing the two, it's a full third of the spectrum on both axes.

This is one of the big 'D&D can't be consistent to save it's life' problems, as revealed in many alignment threads. We have sources that make it quite clear that the race that is attempting to murder and/or enslave the entire cosmos and make it obey their dictates (the Formians) are utterly Lawful Neutral and on the opposite side the race that just randomly kills and eats sapient beings because 'Thursday!' (Slaadi) are utterly Chaotic Neutral. At the same time, we also have sources that imply if you went to some random city and rounded up 1000 humans, 300 of them would be 'evil.' These two scenarios cannot both be true in a give setting.

OOTS seems to hold to the former approach, simply because two of the main cast members: Haley and V, are way past 'being grouchy and jealous of people' and remain neutral. Belkar, by contrast, is evil, but he's a murderous sociopath who actively enjoys hurting and killing people. Violent psychopaths/sociopaths are rare.

It also seems to be generally easier to be good than it is to be evil. For example, Elan is good-aligned mostly because he's just a nice and empathetic person. Humans, being social creatures with self-reinforcing ingroup support structures are in some sense primed to be good, insofar as good as defined as helping other people (this can get a little weird, like how D&D tends to define environmental damage as a moral externality that can be caused by doing too much good). Obviously, there are going to be other species that lack this setup - Serpentfolk, for example, since snakes are solitary animals, are a good candidate, but hey, human designed developed D&D's moral basis, so them's the breaks.

[Rater202]

Yes. They are punishments.


Xykon's "Anything to avoid the Big Fire Down Below" comments to V, do suggest he's quite aware of the hazards of the afterlife, for evil beings.

Yeah... There's a reason why some people consider being an insane brain in a jar, a soul in a trinket remotely operating your own rotting corpse, or a disembodied spirit that can only partially escape the ethereal plane as being worth it.

D&D Afterlifes are predatory and parasitic, they exist to turn people into either sustenance for the Gods or soldiers for various cosmic conflicts. Guaranteed death of personality and loss of the self.

The good ones at least make the experiance enjoyable, but each and every one of them will eventually destroy you utterly.

[Peelee]

OOTS seems to hold to the former approach, simply because two of the main cast members: Haley and V, are way past 'being grouchy and jealous of people' and remain neutral.

Haley isn't Neutral, and V did one notably inarguably Evil act (it was a hell of an act, but V is also repentant).

I don't think your thesis is holding very well here.

[Mechalich]

One thing with regarding this topic is that it's very semantically sensitive. Punishment, specifically, implies both the commission of some kind of infraction/fault, and an entity who is inflicting the punishment. With regard to OOTS it can actually be said that this is not the case. The Gods, collectively, represent all the alignments and those on one side considered right is wrong while the others wrong is right. As such evil mortals aren't punished simply because there's no one saying 'being evil is wrong' in the polytheistic setup, they are merely sorted.

However, that doesn't mean that ending up in an evil afterlife isn't worse, by functionally any measurement that could possibly be applied, than ending up in a good one. Celestia is functionally paradise (if slightly stuffy), and the Nine Hells are brutal torment all the time. Schemes to avoid the afterlife entirely are possible, but they mostly just delay things or lead to a 'fate worse than death' (mileage may vary on this, obviously) after something goes wrong like when a lich's phylactery almost inevitably gets destroyed someday.

[PontificatusRex]

Disagree. A punishment is made as a specific reaction to something you did. It may be a punishment in a vaguely karmic sense, but they arent actually doing anything about your deeds and you may not even have actually done anything besides being grouchy and jealous of people.

I very strongly suspect that Evil souls get an interview with the equivalent of the Deva that grilled Roy, very happy to tell them all the horrible things they did that justify consigning them to eternal punishment.

[Peelee]

I very strongly suspect that Evil souls get an interview with the equivalent of the Deva that grilled Roy, very happy to tell them all the horrible things they did that justify consigning them to eternal punishment.

Do they do it in song form (https://youtube.com/watch?v=DR7rurcamNo)?

[PontificatusRex]

Do they do it in song form (https://youtube.com/watch?v=DR7rurcamNo)?

Only for Pandemonium. And it's all Modern Jazz.

[Ruck]

This is one of the big 'D&D can't be consistent to save it's life' problems, as revealed in many alignment threads.

One of the biggest problems is that we essentially use "alignment" to mean two different things: Both a character's outlook and worldview and how they might be expected to act in the world, and as the evaluation of the sum total of their actions when it comes time for a final judgment and assignment to the afterlife.


OOTS seems to hold to the former approach, simply because two of the main cast members: Haley and V, are way past 'being grouchy and jealous of people' and remain neutral. Belkar, by contrast, is evil, but he's a murderous sociopath who actively enjoys hurting and killing people. Violent psychopaths/sociopaths are rare.

Haley is Good, and I'm not at all clear what you mean when you say she is "way past 'being grouchy and jealous of people.'"

V is True Neutral by outlook, and while they did a horrifically evil thing, one that might not be balanced on the scales by the time their judgment comes, I think that outlook factors in because V is remorseful and trying to atone. Someone who was Evil in outlook just wouldn't care about the unintended consequences and innocent lives.


Do you have a source?

Do you need one beyond the one already posted?


Do they do it in song form (https://youtube.com/watch?v=DR7rurcamNo)?

You know, I clicked on the link wondering what it would be, and in the three seconds between that and the video loading, I realized "Oh, yeah, I bet it's ____."

[Metastachydium]

Look, I'm sure D&D has carnivorous mounts somewhere, we can make it work!


What if they can survive entirely on mushrooms?

Alright, I'm all sold. Mount Celestia is a large shark now that only eats mushrooms. (YOU CAN'T TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME!)


I can't miss an opportunity when one presents itself to express my belief that Eugene is not actually Lawful Good at all.

Preach it!

[Mechalich]

Haley is Good, and I'm not at all clear what you mean when you say she is "way past 'being grouchy and jealous of people.'"

Haley straight-up murdered Crystal in cold blood. If that qualifies as good that only reinforces my overall point that being evil in OOTS requires some truly vile stuff. This is not a fantasy world where 3/10 people qualify as evil. Heck, it's more like a world where 3/1000 people do.

[Ruck]

Haley straight-up murdered Crystal in cold blood. If that qualifies as good that only reinforces my overall point that being evil in OOTS requires some truly vile stuff. This is not a fantasy world where 3/10 people qualify as evil. Heck, it's more like a world where 3/1000 people do.

Or, one act doesn't permanently alter one's alignment.

But that is if you accept the framing that Haley murdered Crystal in cold blood, which I do not. Haley killed someone who had actively been trying to kill her and broke a truce in order to continue trying to kill her and would have resumed trying to kill her at the first opportunity (and in fact did so).

[hamishspence]

The "3/10 People are evil" bit is based on the idea, not just that "minor acts can be Evil" but also, that "lots of minor evil, plus a lack of good = evil character".

That's quite compatible with the OOTS-verse.

[brian 333]

Evil comes in lots of flavors, not just "Psychopathic Peppermint."

Scrooge, who saw hungry children and not only ignored them when he had the means to feed them, but advocated that they submit themselves as slave laborers in exchange for small portions of bad food.

Harming a child, elder, or other helpless individual through neglect or intentional abuse.

The thief who walks past help wanted signs to steal.

Anyone who kicks a cat.

A son who allows his elderly parent to become homeless when he has a spare bedroom, or even a spot on the kitchen floor.

A person who begs or steals to consume drugs.

A person who demands his share of the bread, who has neither sown nor reaped, ground, or baked the grain.

The city official who demands higher taxes from the populace while diverting public funds for his personal benefit.

And on and on. These things are Evil and they are very easy to overlook because the misery they cause is not apparent. The victims are everywhere, and any potential solution is overwhelming, so it becomes someone else's problem.

Add, ignoring the misery of others because it is inconvenient.

Yes, easily, 1/3 of the population is Evil. Those who try to make a difference are not. They may be the real minority.

[GloatingSwine]

Afterlives in D&D and related settings have a strong element of "how people of that alignment think the world should work". People who go to an evil afterlife have a crappy time of it because, well, if they were in power then that's what they'd do to the people at the bottom as well.

[Tzardok]

Plus the fact in the normal Great Wheel (and not the OOTS version, which differs in some details) some souls of the dead doget to be on top and kick the others (those evil enough to be converted into new fiends and cunning/brutal/whatever valued trait enough to raise in the hierarchy). At least in Planescape, the Great Wheel's afterlifes aren't punishments.

[hamishspence]

"Being converted to a new fiend" generally comes after the death of personality. LE version: "Soul is tortured till it can't remember its name" then morphed into a lemure (which is mindless) and those lemures that distinguish themselves, then rise in the hierarchy.

NE version - soul becomes a worm called a larva - with none of the personality it had in life.

CE version - soul becomes a mane - nearly mindless - and those manes that distinguish themselves - are promoted to dretches - with none of the personality they had in life.

[Tzardok]

Death of personality (or better, death of memory, which is treated as the same thing by many people) comes in Planescape the moment you enter the afterlife. In that regard it doesn't matter wether you are converted into an outsider at some point or not.

[hamishspence]

The 3.5 book Fiendish Codex 2 suggests that the "soul shells" (initial-stage souls in Baator) have enough of their memories that the devils go out of their way to prevent them from drinking from the River Styx - because that would remove them. To the devils, there is no point in a soul shell with no memories.

It's clear in OOTS that Roy, Horace, and Sara all remember their lives - being in the early stages of the equivalent process for Celestia (climbing the mountain).

[dancrilis]

Do you need one beyond the one already posted?


Yes - nothing in that quote mentions punishment it simply sets up how the universe works.

Peelee feels I am making 'a distinction without a difference' which I disagree with as I think the distinction matters, but it is close enough that I don't feel the need to argue the point.
One could say that the evil souls are getting what they deserve for a lifetime of evil deeds and as such that they are being punished for a lifetime of evil deeds - I wouldn't say that, but it is a fair take.

[Tzardok]

The 3.5 book Fiendish Codex 2 suggests that the "soul shells" (initial-stage souls in Baator) have enough of their memories that the devils go out of their way to prevent them from drinking from the River Styx - because that would remove them. To the devils, there is no point in a soul shell with no memories.

The Fiendish Codex 2 is a pretty mediocre book and doesn't always gel with older fluff.


It's clear in OOTS that Roy, Horace, and Sara all remember their lives - being in the early stages of the equivalent process for Celestia (climbing the mountain).

As I said, OOTS differs in some details from the Planescape Great Wheel. Apparantly, in OOTS souls also aren't turned into fiends or celestials.

That's also why I originally didn't intend to add this to the discussion, as it is pretty irrelevant to OOTS, but when GloatingSwine mentioned it I felt the need to add to his post.

[hamishspence]

As I said, OOTS differs in some details from the Planescape Great Wheel. Apparantly, in OOTS souls also aren't turned into fiends or celestials.

I get the impression that the lantern archons, just like in Manual of the Planes 3.0, are mortal souls that have gotten promoted to celestials - after they've completed the process of "becoming abstract quanta of Lawful Good".

The Giant has pointed out that the Way The OoTS Afterlife Works, is the way standard D&D afterlives have always worked - with, at most, minor tweaks.



Folks, this is exactly how the afterlife has always worked in D&D; I've maybe tweaked some specifics, but the gist is the same. Souls go to the afterlife and eventually dissolve into the substance of the Outer Plane to which they are remanded, end of story. You don't have to like it or think it's fair, but it's how it works—because like my story, D&D needs the afterlife to not be Awesome Happy Fun Times Forever or else there's no logical underpinning for why the heroes should want to save the world from destruction.

Manual of the Planes states that the reason Raise Dead, Resurrection, True Resurrection etc fail once enough time has passed, is that souls eventually forget their past lives - doesn't say anything about them forgetting instantly, the moment they get in.

[Tzardok]

I get the impression that the lantern archons, just like in Manual of the Planes 3.0, are mortal souls that have gotten promoted to celestials - after they've completed the process of "becoming abstract quanta of Lawful Good".

Roy's Archon looks and acts to me like a wholy new created being, not one that had a former existence in some way.



Manual of the Planes states that the reason Raise Dead, Resurrection, True Resurrection etc fail once enough time has passed, is that souls eventually forget their past lives - doesn't say anything about them forgetting instantly, the moment they get in.


I would need a source page for that statement, because all sources I remember claim that souls can't be resurrected anymore because they were assimilated into the plane or converted into an outsider, not because they lost their memories.

Furthermore, the Planescape sourcebook On Hallowed Ground (have I mentioned already that I am only talking about Planescape here?) describes on page 29 how souls travel through the Astral to the afterlife and leave their memories behind on the way, only incarnating as petitioners on arrival.
So this is one of the minor tweaks The Giant mentioned. Or it isn't, and he is mistaken about the way it "always" worked.

[hamishspence]

I would need a source page for that statement, because all sources I remember claim that souls can't be resurrected anymore because they were assimilated into the plane or converted into an outsider, not because they lost their memories.

In the D&D cosmology, when characters die, their souls drift toward the Outer Plane that matches their nature most closely. Souls that in life were lawful good tend to drift toward Celestia, while those that relished evil and chaos wind up in the Abyss. Once there, they enjoy the fruits or suffer the punishments of their alignments, eventually forgetting their past lives (this is why spells that restore life may fail if a long time has elapsed).


the Planescape sourcebook On Hallowed Ground (have I mentioned already that I am only talking about Planescape here?) describes on page 29 how souls travel through the Astral to the afterlife and leave their memories behind on the way, only incarnating as petitioners on arrival.

Souls aren't petitioners - they're "just souls". Exceptional souls are petitioners.





Become One with The Plane: The vast majority of souls in the afterlife silently experience their final destination, whether it's a place of great beauty such as Elysium or a place of mad cruelty such as The Abyss. As time passes, they become more like the plane, taking on its qualities and caring less about their time among the living. At some point they cease to have an independent existence and become one with the fabric of the plane itself. Essentially, souls eventually become abstract quanta of the good, evil, law, chaos, or neutrality they lived with when alive.

This process is why every rich individual in the D&D world doesn't come back from the dead repeatedly. Whether they're good or evil, most souls find resonance in the afterlife - they have a sense that they are where they're supposed to be. Only souls with strong force of personality and unfinished business among the living (which includes many adventuring PCs) respond to the call of a raise dead or resurrection spell.

Get A New Body: Some individual souls come to the attention of the gods and powerful outsiders that inhabit the planes, either because the souls were exceptionally good or wicked in life or because the deity sees great potential in an otherwise unremarkable soul. These souls are granted new bodies and become outsiders called petitioners. Most petitioners are 2 Hit Dice outsiders with abilities similar to those of the outsiders that inhabit their particular plane. Lemure devils and dretch demons are typical petitioners, for example. Petitioners serve gods or outsiders that created them; many are promised promotion to more powerful forms (whether demonic or angelic) if they serve well. In this way, the deities replenish the ranks of their hosts.

[Tzardok]

Souls aren't petitioners - they're "just souls". Exceptional souls are petitioners.

On Hallowed Ground again: all souls become petitioners upon reaching their destination in the afterlife (or at least, all souls of humanoids. The book mentions some in-universe debate on wether animals and some other creatures do).

[hamishspence]

On Hallowed Ground again: all souls become petitioners upon reaching their destination in the afterlife (or at least, all souls of humanoids.



Roy's Archon looks and acts to me like a wholy new created being, not one that had a former existence in some way.


Most petitioners of Celestia are lantern archons.

So - the reason it doesn't mention a former existence - is that it's forgotten it - exactly like a petitioner, but not like a soul. Roy is a soul, who has not been in the afterlife long, and so still has all his memories - the lantern archon is a petitioner - who has been created from a mortal soul, and so has no memories of the time when it was a mortal.

Complete Divine (3.5 book) makes it clear that souls don't always become memory-less petitioners - in fact, they're the exception, not the rule.



Plus the fact in the normal Great Wheel (and not the OOTS version, which differs in some details) some souls of the dead doget to be on top and kick the others (those evil enough to be converted into new fiends and cunning/brutal/whatever valued trait enough to raise in the hierarchy).




Furthermore, the Planescape sourcebook On Hallowed Ground (have I mentioned already that I am only talking about Planescape here?) describes on page 29 how souls travel through the Astral to the afterlife and leave their memories behind on the way, only incarnating as petitioners on arrival.

The "normal Great Wheel" may just be the various versions of Manual of the Planes, not On Hallowed Ground, in this context. That, or On Hallowed Ground is written loosely enough that the 3.0 MoTP, and Complete Divine, don't count as outright retconning it.

[dancrilis]

(have I mentioned already that I am only talking about Planescape here?)


Complete Divine (3.5 book) makes it clear that souls don't always become memory-less petitioners - in fact, they're the exception, not the rule.

I think (and could be wrong) that this might be the crux of the discussion - as Tzardok is speaking about the Planescape setting where hamishspence is talking about DnD in general, it is entirely possible that in Planescape the generic exception (the creation of petitioners) is the rule.

I would assume that unless otherwise stated that The Giant is making use of general DnD (with his own tweaks) rather then a specific (non-OOTS) setting.

[Peelee]

I think (and could be wrong) that this might be the crux of the discussion - as Tzardok is speaking about the Planescape setting where hamishspence is talking about DnD in general, it is entirely possible that in Planescape the generic exception (the creation of petitioners) is the rule.

I would assume that unless otherwise stated that The Giant is making use of general DnD (with his own tweaks) rather then a specific (non-OOTS) setting.

On this I completely agree.

[hamishspence]

all sources I remember claim that souls can't be resurrected anymore because they were assimilated into the plane or converted into an outsider

A petitioner, in 3.0-3.5, is an outsider. Complete Divine also states (page 130) that a soul that has become a petitioner, cannot come back from the dead, since, by being given a new body, they have been effectively returned to life.
So, since souls normally can be resurrected for a long period after death, it follows that they generally don't become petitioners for a long time.

[Tzardok]

Yes, my word choice of "normal" was propably not right. But I did mention in every post that I was primarily talking about Planescape.

And yes, it is an outright retcon:

Here's the bottom line: A petitioner is the spirit of a basher who's died someplace. It doesn't matter if the deader was a planar or a prime; he's still going to wind up as a petitioner, and perhaps get reconstituted in some bodily form.

You could maybe argue now that 3.x redefined the term to mean only those who get a bodily form (ignoring that On Hallowed Ground doesn't say that this is reserved to exceptional souls), but even in that case the leaving behind of memories is described as something that happens on the way to the afterlife and to all souls, not just those that get a body.

Edit: Also, Planescape sourcebooks usually mention that petitioners are pretty much common as dirt on the Outer Planes and usually fulfil the roles of nameless NPCs.
And On Hallowed Ground has rules on pg 32 on how petitioners are resurrected.


But no matter if a sod's been a petitioner for a day or a century, when he awakens in his old body, he has little or no memory of his time on the planes. The return of his original memories wash the others away.

[Peelee]

Yes, my word choice of "normal" was propably not right. But I did mention in every post that I was primarily talking about Planescape.

Ok, but are you talking about different D&D source books conflicting with each other in a vacuum, or are you talking about what likely happens in Order of the Stick?

[Tzardok]

Ok, but are you talking about different D&D source books conflicting with each other in a vacuum, or are you talking about what likely happens in Order of the Stick?

Vacuum. As I mentioned before, I didn't even want to start talking about this, but when GloatingSwine mentioned the "afterlifes are the way the people who go there think the world works" part, I couldn't help myself and expanded on that.

I'm also pretty sure I always mentioned that the planes in OOTS don't work the way I'm talking about them?

[Rater202]

So the takeaway here is that all D&D Afterlives suck and even the allegedly good gods only see mortal souls as sustenance, raw materials, or fodder with which to craft more soldiers who retain nothing of their orignal existence.

The whole of existence is a scam, Mortals are basically cattle and the only difference between good and evil is whether you're Kobe Beef or veal.

...Oh God. I think a lot of us have commented on the inconsistency with Timeless Body, in t3.5, how it does make sense that you'd still die when your time is up if you're not aging and can't be aged artificially. If you're just permenantly in the prime of your youth.

Most of the classes that get timeless bodies are either spiritual types or outright divine casters.

The reason you still die at some arbitrarily defined points is that whatever Gods, Planer Concept, or Cosmic Principal is the source of your powers is yanking them away or just letting you die so they can grab your powerful soul for food/materials.

[Tzardok]

I mean, you can formulate it that way, but the way Planescape described it, it was always about transcendence. A petitioner that fuses into their god isn't eaten, they become their god in a certain way. They add their own unique perspective of what that god is and means to the deity, and through that the deity evolves, becomes more. A god without souls is doomed to stagnate and never change.

The same with the planes. When a petitioner is absorbed by a plane, their perspective of what it means to be Lawful Good or whatever is added to the greater whole. Every soul that goes to Mount Celestia makes Lawful Good stronger, either by directly becoming one with it, or by fighting as one of the archons. Every soul in Baator makes the hellish hierarchy greater, every soul in the Abyss adds a new vice to the orgy of depravity and violence until it spills out over the rest of reality, every soul in Aborea furthers the cause of freedom and inspiration in the world.

You may think that you abandoning your individuality on the way makes it horrible, but if you ever felt the need to be part of something vastly greater than you are? Well, this is the perfect place for you.

Edit: And to return to OOTS, I think this applies in some way even to the OOTS version of the cosmology. It's all a question of interpretation. Talking about it as if it was a big soul farm is interpreting it in the worst possible way, just like Redcloak does.

[Rater202]

I mean, you can formulate it that way, but the way Planescape described it, it was always about transcendence. A petitioner that fuses into their god isn't eaten, they become their god in a certain way. They add their own unique perspective of what that god is and means to the deity, and through that the deity evolves, becomes more. A god without souls is doomed to stagnate and never change.

The same with the planes. When a petitioner is absorbed by a plane, their perspective of what it means to be Lawful Good or whatever is added to the greater whole. Every soul that goes to Mount Celestia makes Lawful Good stronger, either by directly becoming one with it, or by fighting as one of the archons. Every soul in Baator makes the hellish hierarchy greater, every soul in the Abyss adds a new vice to the orgy of depravity and violence until it spills out over the rest of reality, every soul in Aborea furthers the cause of freedom and inspiration in the world.

You may think that you abandoning your individuality on the way makes it horrible, but if you ever felt the need to be part of something vastly greater than you are? Well, this is the perfect place for you.

Yeah, and if I eat a steak part of that cow becomes part of me. Not such a good existence for the cow though.

You can dress it up however you want but at the end of the day the Gods/Planes are predatory parasites furthering their evolution at the expense of countless beings who literally worship them.

[Fyraltari]

So the takeaway here is that all D&D Afterlives suck
It's almost impossible to come up with an afterlife concept that doesn't suck when you think about it for a moment.


and even the allegedly good gods only see mortal souls as sustenance, raw materials, or fodder with which to craft more soldiers who retain nothing of their orignal existence.
That's not true. Thor demonstrably care about his followers as people. They still go through the same process, but it's not like the gods can opt out. At the very least, the good afterlives make the process as pleasant as they can.

[Peelee]

Vacuum. As I mentioned before, I didn't even want to start talking about this, but when GloatingSwine mentioned the "afterlifes are the way the people who go there think the world works" part, I couldn't help myself and expanded on that.

I'm also pretty sure I always mentioned that the planes in OOTS don't work the way I'm talking about them?
I might have missed that. Sorry!

It's almost impossible to come up with an afterlife concept that doesn't suck when you think about it for a moment.

Almost as hard as coming up with a life concept that doesn't suck. :smallwink:

[Tzardok]

Yeah, and if I eat a steak part of that cow becomes part of me. Not such a good existence for the cow though.


Does the cow's personality become part of your personality and get a voice in what you do from then on? Did the cow think before its death that you were the best guy in the world, that living life the way you do is the best thing ever and wanted to be with you for all of eternity after death? If no, then it's not the same thing.


I might have missed that. Sorry!


No problem. Things like that happen. And I always feel like I am not expressing myself not understandably enough, so it's a valid concern. :smallsmile:

[Rater202]

It's almost impossible to come up with an afterlife concept that doesn't suck when you think about it for a moment.Theres a reason why immortality or some other form of eternal existence appeals to so many people.


That's not true. Thor demonstrably care about his followers as people. They still go through the same process, but it's not like the gods can opt out. At the very least, the good afterlives make the process as pleasant as they can.

That was a more general statement since the topic had moved to more general D&D cosmology.

As for making it pleasant... An "angel of mercy" euthanizing the terminally ill without their consent is still a serial killer, no matter the motive or method. No matter how nice Thor is to his food before he eats it, he;'s still eating it. If anything, being nice to the food makes it worse.

And Thor himself is just one God. In one version of the cosmology. And he for example seemed perfectly fine with the deal that Hel got every dwarf soul that died dishonorably(which explicitly includes innocents) up until things got inconvenient for his faction and since Thor Worship seems to be the default for most dwarves going by Celia's comment back when the party was split, that means that a lot of his worshipers became Hel's slaves post death so how much does he really care about individuals?

[Fyraltari]

Really, a cornerstone of D&D cosmology is thay evil and good are locked in a stalemate, why would you expect them to be perfect?

The forces of Good offer centuries of bliss before asking you to contribute again. A contribution they require not to wither and be conquered by hordes of fiends. Complaining that the fun times don't last forever seems a bit... Entitled?


Almost as hard as coming up with a life concept that doesn't suck. :smallwink:

And yet people still seem to find the concept of cessation of existence abhorrent. *Shaking my head*

[dancrilis]

The forces of Good offer centuries of bliss before asking you to contribute again. A contribution they require not to wither and be conquered by hordes of fiends. Complaining that the fun times don't last forever seems a bit... Entitled?


It is possible that if at some core level of your personality you are not willing to step up and aid against the forces of evil dominating the cosmos that you might not belong in the good afterlife to begin with.

[Peelee]

And yet people still seem to find the concept of cessation of existence abhorrent. *Shaking my head*

Well that's easily explained, it's because there's more Star Wars to watch.

[Rater202]

Really, a cornerstone of D&D cosmology is thay evil and good are locked in a stalemate, why would you expect them to be perfect?

The forces of Good offer centuries of bliss before asking you to contribute again. A contribution they require not to wither and be conquered by hordes of fiends. Complaining that the fun times don't last forever seems a bit... Entitled?It's not entitled to want to exist.

[Resileaf]

Something to keep in mind is that the good afterlives never force souls to ascend. It's described that the souls in Celestia spend years, decades, maybe centuries partying in the lowest levels and enjoying their perfect existence, but eventually they grow bored or decide that they need different kinds of stimulation. So they decide to ascend, where they start to grow more spiritual and introspective, but there's nothing stopping them from going back down if they want to. The more time passes, the higher they ascend the mountain and realize what they can now do until of their own free will, they decide to ascend and fuse with the plane's lawful good energy, satisfied that they've experienced all they wanted to experience.

At no point were they pressured to do it. No one marched them up the mountain. They weren't controlled.

[Fyraltari]

Theres a reason why immortality or some other form of eternal existence appeals to so many people.
It's almost impossible to come up with a concept if eternal existence that doesn't suck when you think about it for a moment.


That was a more general statement since the topic had moved to more general D&D cosmology.

As for making it pleasant... An "angel of mercy" euthanizing the terminally ill without their consent is still a serial killer, no matter the motive or method.
The souls on Celestia don't seem bothered in the least, where are you getting "without their consent" from?

No matter how nice Thor is to his food before he eats it, he;'s still eating it. If anything, being nice to the food makes it worse.
What would you have Thor do, then?


And Thor himself is just one God. In one version of the cosmology.
He seems representative of the way the Giant thinks a good D&D god ought to behave, but that may just be my reading.

And he for example seemed perfectly fine with the deal that Hel got every dwarf soul that died dishonorably(which explicitly includes innocents) up until things got inconvenient for his faction and since Thor Worship seems to be the default for most dwarves going by Celia's comment back when the party was split, that means that a lot of his worshipers became Hel's slaves post death so how much does he really care about individuals?
What? No, you have that backwards. The reason most dwarves worship Thor is because he's the one who taught them how to avoid Hel's clutches. He's never been fine with the Bet, it was made in his name when he was no state to meaningfully consent.

He abides by it because he is forced by the Gods' convention, not because he wants to. Notice hiw his choice of distraction was to make Hel release dwarves he couldn't save, which include dwarves that would have gone to Loki (and presumably oher gods too).

[hamishspence]

But no matter if a sod's been a petitioner for a day or a century, when he awakens in his old body, he has little or no memory of his time on the planes. The return of his original memories wash the others away.

And Roy's memories of everything "beyond the big golden gate" are extremely blurred too - just not quite for the same reason.

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0666.html

[Resileaf]

As for making it pleasant... An "angel of mercy" euthanizing the terminally ill without their consent is still a serial killer, no matter the motive or method. No matter how nice Thor is to his food before he eats it, he;'s still eating it. If anything, being nice to the food makes it worse.

Also something I'd like to respond to this, the gods in OotS don't eat souls, they eat worship provided to them by souls. The soul never comes to any harm from this worship being provided. It's not like eating a burger, it's like hugging a cow to share in its heat.

[Rater202]

The souls on Celestia don't seem bothered in the least, where are you getting "without their consent" from?

Roy's Archon didn't exactly clarify what happens to the souls that transcend when they get to the top of the mountain.

He was very vague about it.

If you weren't informed of something, then it doens't matter if you agreed. You don't know what it entails, your agreement is worthless.

Also, comparing what Thor says about the Gods taking sustenance from mortals to what the Giant's said about ll afterlives, he's leaving out some details about what eventually happens to the souls providing the fourth kind of sustenance.

[Millstone85]

It's almost impossible to come up with an afterlife concept that doesn't suck when you think about it for a moment.
centuries partying [...] eventually they grow bored [...] satisfied that they've experienced all they wanted to experience.Yes, that's pretty much the best I can come up with myself.

[hamishspence]

Also something I'd like to respond to this, the gods in OotS don't eat souls, they eat worship provided to them by souls. The soul never comes to any harm from this worship being provided. It's not like eating a burger, it's like hugging a cow to share in its heat.

Gods only get worship from living mortals. The "slowly powering the Outer Planes and the Afterlives over time" bit:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1144.html

may be tied to the "loss of individuality" process.


I am saying that is specifically what the afterlife does. It makes you into a cookie-cutter clone of everyone of the same alignment. It may take centuries to do so, but all the people at the top of the mountain? Completely indistinguishable from one another. Arguably, that is the purpose of the D&D afterlife—to turn flawed mortal souls into perfect alignment-batteries, through various methodologies. In the Nine Hells, they torture you until you forget everything else. In Celestia, you meditate until you renounce all worldly concerns. In Valhalla, you party until you can't remember your own name. In Limbo, the chaos drives you mad. In Mechanus, you sit in grey cubicle stamping paperwork until you are bored into oblivion. And so on and so forth.


A soul, in addition to the personality traits it had in life, also generates a quantity of Soul Power™. The afterlife processes that soul so that it has less personality and the power is more available to the gods/other beings who rule that plane. This is why gods want souls to go to "their" afterlife; more dead souls equals more available power. Destroying a soul simply removes that quantity of power from the multiverse (or converts it to some unusable form, if we assume that there's conservation of energy in play) in addition to eradicating what's left of the personality.

[gbaji]

But that is if you accept the framing that Haley murdered Crystal in cold blood, which I do not. Haley killed someone who had actively been trying to kill her and broke a truce in order to continue trying to kill her and would have resumed trying to kill her at the first opportunity (and in fact did so).

I'm not sure how you can read this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0648.html) and not see anything other than cold blooded murder. She literally ambushed Crystal while she was in the shower and killed her. She made a point of choosing that time because Crystal wouldn't be wearing her protective jewelry (premeditated murder), and literally went out of her way to do it before leaving. And while it's somewhat retconned later (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0979.html) as a form of "I just got to you first", the reality is that at the time Haley didn't mention anything of the sort. She only talked about stealing Crystal's items to sell for profit and refusing to pay the money to the guild that had been agreed upon in the deal brokered by Celia. As far as we can tell, the guild and Crystal were willing to go along with the peace agreement until Haley broke it. The worst Crystal did prior to that was mock her about her haircut (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0645.html).

There is no indication at all that Crystal intended at any point in the immediate future (or any future for that matter) to actually kill Haley. If anything, she intentionally didn't want to because her status as nemesis (or whatever) allowed her to gain levels when Haley did. She had to be ordered to do it (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0613.html).

So yeah. That was straight up premeditated murder for nothing more than direct personal profit. While not on the same grand scale as what V did, at least V was in the midst of a fight (and under the influence of the soul splice), and didn't actually realize the full ramifications of what was being done (or how widespread the effect would be), and actually showed remorse. We've seen nothing from Haley that she views killing Crystal as anything more than just something she needed to do.


That's not true. Thor demonstrably care about his followers as people. They still go through the same process, but it's not like the gods can opt out. At the very least, the good afterlives make the process as pleasant as they can.

I don't think the Gods really have much ability to influence how the outer planes work anyway. Not sure, but I don't think they created them. More like they're manifestations of the same primal reality and have a part in it all. As the top manifestations of various archetypal aspects of the alignment system that the outer planes represent, their specific power does derive from the process, but they are as much a part of it as any other manifestation (like the outsiders). They are as much formed from ideas as the outer planes themselves.

They do appear to have created the prime material plane, and the mortal beings that live there, but that may also merely be them playing their "part" in a larger cosmology. It's an interesting feedback effect (and a bit of a paradox at the same time). Thoughts coalesce into regions in the astral plane and form the outer planes (and their associated alignments based on the types of thoughts). The Gods manifest as representations of specific subsets of those ideas. They in turn create the prime material plane and mortals. And the mortals via their thoughts and alignment and worship fuel the outer planes and the gods (and the outsiders too). Of course, one might wonder where the thoughts came from in the first place...

[Fyraltari]

It is possible that if at some core level of your personality you are not willing to step up and aid against the forces of evil dominating the cosmos that you might not belong in the good afterlife to begin with.
That too.

Well that's easily explained, it's because there's more Star Wars to watch.
Ah. So this is what hell is like.

It's not entitled to want to exist.
To want to exist forever at the cost of everything else? Yes, yes it is. Also, you are calling Thor morally bankrupt for continuing to exist, too.

Something to keep in mind is that the good afterlives never force souls to ascend. It's described that the souls in Celestia spend years, decades, maybe centuries partying in the lowest levels and enjoying their perfect existence, but eventually they grow bored or decide that they need different kinds of stimulation. So they decide to ascend, where they start to grow more spiritual and introspective, but there's nothing stopping them from going back down if they want to. The more time passes, the higher they ascend the mountain and realize what they can now do until of their own free will, they decide to ascend and fuse with the plane's lawful good energy, satisfied that they've experienced all they wanted to experience.

At no point were they pressured to do it. No one marched them up the mountain. They weren't controlled.
That too.

Roy's Archon didn't exactly clarify what happens to the souls that transcend when they get to the top of the mountain.

He was very vague about it.

If you weren't informed of something, then it doens't matter if you agreed. You don't know what it entails, your agreement is worthless.
Horace climbed down the Mountain. If you get to the top and decide you don't want to merge with a plane, you can just climb back down to a level you're confortable with. No one is being forced or tricked, it's just that they eventually all decide to do it. Because being the kind of persons who would make that choice is the reason they're there in the first place.

I notice you haven't answered my question about what you'd want Thor to do instead.

[Resileaf]

Gods only get worship from living mortals. The "slowly powering the Outer Planes and the Afterlives over time" bit:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1144.html

may be tied to the "loss of individuality" process.

But they still don't eat the soul. They just get to be fed by its proximity to them.

[hamishspence]

And while it's somewhat retconned later (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0979.html) as a form of "I just got to you first", the reality is that at the time Haley didn't mention anything of the sort. She only talked about stealing Crystal's items to sell for profit and refusing to pay the money to the guild that had been agreed upon in the deal brokered by Celia. As far as we can tell, the guild and Crystal were willing to go along with the peace agreement until Haley broke it. The worst Crystal did prior to that was mock her about her haircut (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0645.html).

There is no indication at all that Crystal intended at any point in the immediate future (or any future for that matter) to actually kill Haley.

Strips were left out "deleted scenes" so to speak, because including them would have slowed the online story too much, and later included in the book Don't Split the Party.

That mission to rescue Roy's body? Crystal spent the whole of it trying to get Haley killed, in a "plausible deniability" way that would fool Celia and Belkar. Haley was hard-pressed to survive it.

[Fyraltari]

There is no indication at all that Crystal intended at any point in the immediate future (or any future for that matter) to actually kill Haley. If anything, she intentionally didn't want to because her status as nemesis (or whatever) allowed her to gain levels when Haley did. She had to be ordered to do it (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0613.html).

So yeah. That was straight up premeditated murder for nothing more than direct personal profit. While not on the same grand scale as what V did, at least V was in the midst of a fight (and under the influence of the soul splice), and didn't actually realize the full ramifications of what was being done (or how widespread the effect would be), and actually showed remorse. We've seen nothing from Haley that she views killing Crystal as anything more than just something she needed to do.

There's a bonus page in that book where crystal murders the not-necromancer whose name escapes me right now for no reason and basically promises to kill Haley too. The Giant has stated that Haley's ambush was written with this page in mind and that the negative reactions the ambush received made him regret not include it in the main comic as its absence makes Haley's actions look much worse than he intended.

[Peelee]

That too.

Ah. So this is what hell is like.

Before Andor I'd agree with you, but then, well, Andor happened.

[Rater202]

To want to exist forever at the cost of everything else? Yes, yes it is. Also, you are calling Thor morally bankrupt for continuing to exist, too.

No, I'm calling the Gods in general morally bankrupt for prolonging their own existence at the expense of countless mortal beings who are being misled about what the afterlife entails.

As for what he should do? He can start by not leaving out the "eventually, you lose all sense of self and get consumed by either me or the plane itself" part out of his lecture on how godly sustenance works.

If the gods want the moral high ground, mortals need to know that they're basically cattle for the Planes and Gods while they're still alive. Reasonable access to means of extending their life indefinitely should be widely available, for mortals who want to opt-out of eventually being god food.

Alternatively, at the beginging of a given act of creation the Gods could have made all races immortal and subsisted entirely on worship.

[Peelee]

No, I'm calling the Gods in general morally bankrupt for prolonging their own existence at the expense of countless mortal beings who are being misled about what the afterlife entails.

Mortal beings that are created for and only exist due to that purpose. It's like gardening. They plant the seen and wait for it to grow to harvest.

Also, seems like the mortals know full well what the afterlife entails. At least, the parts they care about. We don't actually know if they're unaware of the merging, but they do actually get the parts we know they're aware of.

[WanderingMist]

And yet people still seem to find the concept of cessation of existence abhorrent. *Shaking my head*
Well, yeah, I don't want to stop experiencing things entirely. I just want all the benefits of existing without the biological restrictions like needing to eat and sleep.

I think the problem most people have with immortality is the assumption that they'd eventually get bored after having done everything. But if humans could remove and re-insert memories as though they were computers, a lot of the problems with the infinity of an afterlife are averted because then you can just take out experiences and have them for the first time again.

[Fyraltari]

Before Andor I'd agree with you, but then, well, Andor happened.
Purgatory, then?

No, I'm calling the Gods in general morally bankrupt for prolonging their own existence at the expense of countless mortal beings who are being misled about what the afterlife entails.

Cool. Any reason why the gods should die so that the mortals... don't live forever anyway but the mortals shouldn't die so that the gods can keep on making more mortals?

As for what he should do? He can start by not leaving out the "eventually, you lose all sense of self and get consumed by either me or the plane itself" part out of his lecture on how godly sustenance works.

If the gods want the moral high ground, mortals need to know that they're basically cattle for the Planes and Gods while they're still alive.
"The world's a big soul farm" is already the conclusion Durkon reached. I think that was communicated pretty clearly.

Reasonable access to means of extending their life indefinitely should be widely available, for mortals who want to opt-out of eventually being god food.
There already is. Souls can stay off the uppest level of Celestia for as long as they want.


Alternatively, at the beginging of a given act of creation the Gods could have made all races immortal and subsisted entirely on worship.
What makes you think that was even remotely possible?

[Rater202]

Mortal beings that are created for and only exist due to that purpose. It's like gardening. They plant the seen and wait for it to grow to harvest.

The difference of course is that my stepfather's tomatoes aren't sapient. They don't have feelings, hopes, aspirations, or so on of their own.

[hamishspence]

"Getting increasingly detached" is how it works.



"Spiritual enlightenment" in this case means giving up attachments to the world and accepting that you are no longer part of it. If anything, it is essentially unlearning things; becoming less of an individual with a unique perspective and more of a pure embodiment of alignment. Horace is a little further on that path than Sarah because he's not still engaging in things like random hook-ups, because he understands that nothing matters anymore when you're dead. It is not some sort of eternal learning experience; it's letting go of everything you learned because you don't need it anymore. That is the only change available to dead souls.



If you're a serf with a short brutal life, then a few centuries of fun followed by an eternal blissful serenity might sound pretty damn wonderful.

But more relevantly, this is the natural cycle of the multiverse. Yes, if you place your own personal autonomy over the natural processes of existence—if you think you are so important that your specific personality must be preserved at all costs, forever—then I suppose you would feel that you should struggle against it, but doing so would be arrogant at the least and dangerously foolhardy at worst. There is no path that will prevent you from eventually being returned to this cycle—other than achieving godhood or total oblivion, e.g. the Snarl—and most of the methods of delaying it will land you in the very worst versions when you get there.

The fact is that the sort of hyper-rational analysis of your afterlife options that you're talking about simply does not happen for most people in the OOTS world. They live their lives how they see fit, and then they die and it's over.

[Peelee]

The difference of course is that my stepfather's tomatoes aren't sapient. They don't have feelings, hopes, aspirations, or so on of their own.

.... And? What does that change?

[gbaji]

There's a bonus page in that book where crystal murders the not-necromancer whose name escapes me right now for no reason and basically promises to kill Haley too. The Giant has stated that Haley's ambush was written with this page in mind and that the negative reactions the ambush received made him regret not include it in the main comic as its absence makes Haley's actions look much worse than he intended.

I'm aware of the bonus strip. And I still think it's an odd about face for both characters really. I suspect that it's one of the rare cases in this comic where the needs of future story resulted in character actions that just didn't quite fit. It struck me as odd that Crystal would go from one day hesitating to actually kill Haley when she had every ability to do so, and the next to "Ok, I'm going to kill her". It seemed very blatantly just to set up a rationale for what Haley did, which in turn was the set up for the final confrontation with the Crystal Golem and resolution of the thieves guild storyline. Everything up to that point in the comic suggested that while Crystal talked about hating and wanting to kill Haley, when it came down to it, she was more interested in one-upping her than actually killing her. So yeah, it was a bit out of left field.

Also, that doesn't change the fact that it's still premeditated murder on Haley's part. If she had managed to turn the tables during the raid and taken out Crystal, that would be one thing. Self defense and all that. But self defense doesn't allow you to wait until later when the person who tried to kill you is in the shower and defenseless, and then kill her via sneak attack. That's not self defense. That's retaliation. We can quibble over whether that is "evil", but it's definitely not "good". And, honestly, some minor dialogue differences would have made all the... er... difference.

If Crystal had stopped to monologue about how she's waited so long to kill Haley and now she finally gets to do it, instead of pausing to consider whether it might be better to let her off with a warning so she can gain more easy levels, it wouldn't have created the disconnect (but would have still fit the action sequence just as well). And if Haley's dialogue when killing Crystal had been more in line with "You've tried to kill me so many times, and I know you wont stop despite the "deal", so I'm getting you first" instead of going off about how much she'd get hocking Crystal's jewelry and how the deal is off and the guild wont get one penny from her, it also would have worked seamlessly. Those minor changes would have reinforced a "kill or be killed" dynamic between the two. Hah. But hindsight is 20/20 of course. I'm fully admitting to unfair armchair authoring here.


It still would be premeditated murder though. Don't get me wrong, I still don't think that makes Haley "evil" or anything, but if we're counting up actions or something, that does rank pretty high. Although to be fair, I've actually seen Haley really more as CN than CG for the most part anyway, so her action fits into that alignment just fine. But that's just how I personally see the alignments. And yeah, there's enough disagreement on that to fill an encyclopedia of virtual pages.

[Fyraltari]

Also, that doesn't change the fact that it's still premeditated murder on Haley's part. If she had managed to turn the tables during the raid and taken out Crystal, that would be one thing. Self defense and all that. But self defense doesn't allow you to wait until later when the person who tried to kill you is in the shower and defenseless, and then kill her via sneak attack. That's not self defense. That's retaliation. We can quibble over whether that is "evil", but it's definitely not "good". And, honestly, some minor dialogue differences would have made all the... er... difference.

[...]

It still would be premeditated murder though. Don't get me wrong, I still don't think that makes Haley "evil" or anything, but if we're counting up actions or something, that does rank pretty high. Although to be fair, I've actually seen Haley really more as CN than CG for the most part anyway, so her action fits into that alignment just fine. But that's just how I personally see the alignments. And yeah, there's enough disagreement on that to fill an encyclopedia of virtual pages.

Okay, so you agree that this:


So yeah. That was straight up premeditated murder for nothing more than direct personal profit.
emphasis mine, is not a fair description of what happened?

[Reach Weapon]

There is no indication at all that Crystal intended at any point in the immediate future (or any future for that matter) to actually kill Haley.

"I don't care if you're back in the guild, I'll get you for this someday, Starshine!" (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0621.html) Maybe it's just me, but that reads like a direct and ongoing threat.

[Tzardok]

I didn't see ever a point in the story where Crystal was hesitating to kill Haley. I saw her drawing it out (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0610.html) because she's stupid and wants to savor it. Crystal backstabbing Haley at every possible point in the extra strips never felt out of character.

[Mike Havran]

I didn't see ever a point in the story where Crystal was hesitating to kill Haley. I saw her drawing it out (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0610.html) because she's stupid and wants to savor it. Crystal backstabbing Haley at every possible point in the extra strips never felt out of character. While I absolutely agree that Crystal wanted to kill Haley whenever she had the opportunity:
1. At the point where Haley decided to murder Crystal, the reunified OotS were about to leave Greysky immediately, and Crystal and Bozzok were not an active threat anymore (Haley never states an intent to return to Greysky)
2. Argument about pre-emtive strike falls flat, because Haley states outright she expects Crystal to be raised and she just robs her corpse without trying to make Crystal's return complicated by, say, stashing her corpse into bag of holding and disposing of it shortly afterwards. That would have been pragmatic attempt to reduce the chance of future encounter. Instead, she just loots and actually makes her return more likely by fuelling Crystal's need for revenge. This suggests improvisation and drive by spite and greed, not by caution.


The difference of course is that my stepfather's tomatoes aren't sapient. They don't have feelings, hopes, aspirations, or so on of their own.Sapience is not a big deal between mortal and God. I dare say the distance between Thor and Durkon is larger than between Durkon and a tomato.

[Millstone85]

Mortal beings that are created for and only exist due to that purpose.Ah yes, my favorite topic.

https://runt-of-the-web.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/you-pass-butter.jpg


Sapience is not a big deal between mortal and God. I dare say the distance between Thor and Durkon is larger than between Durkon and a tomato.Considering how OotS gods look like the kind that romance mortals, I think cucumbers would be a better metaphor.

[Mechalich]

In the most generous reading of what the gods are doing mortals, being mortal, aren't meant to exist eternally and ultimately can't without horrible bad stuff happening to their selves - such as what eventually happens to liches following the functionally inevitable destruction of their phylactery, which is distinctly unpleasant.

In OOTS nothing other than the gods is eternal. Significantly, they have to periodically wipe the memories of the Outsiders, obliterating their sense of self, every time they reboot the world. Mortal minds, presumably, eventually break if extended across too much time. The dissolution of self if therefore inevitable, and the system the gods have constructed allows the energy produced by that process to be recycled rather than being scattered across the cosmos like when lich minds dissolve.

People in the various good afterlives still get to live as long as they want, possibly thousands of subjective years, prior to the gradual merge with their planes. Meanwhile the evil afterlives seek to destroy the self as rapidly as possible via the expedient of overwhelming the psyche with monstrous amounts of pain until it shatters. Fundamentally this is a difference between as much paradise as you could possibly want vs. as much pain as you can possibly stand. Even if the ultimate destination - dissolution - is the same - the journey is very different.

Now, whether or not the gods, knowing that dissolution is the ultimate fate of all mortals, should be creating mortals at all, is an open and complex philosophical question. It's also broadly irrelevant since mortals have to exist in order for there to be a story at all.

[dancrilis]

I didn't see ever a point in the story where Crystal was hesitating to kill Haley.

Here Panel 1. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0613.html)

[Peelee]

Considering how OotS gods look like the kind that romance mortals, I think cucumbers would be a better metaphor.

Sounds like you've never had a good tomato.

A successful joke on these lines will leave everyone confused.

[brian 333]

Yeah, and if I eat a steak part of that cow becomes part of me. Not such a good existence for the cow though.

You can dress it up however you want but at the end of the day the Gods/Planes are predatory parasites furthering their evolution at the expense of countless beings who literally worship them.

Is this not what all of life does? At the very foundation there may have been chemosynthetic life that existed without predation or parasitism, but every life form after that consumed the remains of the dead for it's sustenance. Even green plants, (you know who you are!) can only survive in symbiosis with fungi, which survives on the remains of other life forms. How can we assume a value judgement of other beings which survive in the exact same manner that their food does?

'Tis said that fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

The Oots are not the end of the food chain: they are one link. Are they vile and despicable because they eat lettuce? Why would that judgement only apply to the top of the chain and not the middle links?

[Rater202]

Is this not what all of life does? At the very foundation there may have been chemosynthetic life that existed without predation or parasitism, but every life form after that consumed the remains of the dead for it's sustenance. Even green plants, (you know who you are!) can only survive in symbiosis with fungi, which survives on the remains of other life forms. How can we assume a value judgement of other beings which survive in the exact same manner that their food does?

'Tis said that fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

The Oots are not the end of the food chain: they are one link. Are they vile and despicable because they eat lettuce? Why would that judgement only apply to the top of the chain and not the middle links?
The judgment starts to apply once they start eating sapient beings.

[Resileaf]

The judgment starts to apply once they start eating sapient beings.

Is it really that hard to wrap your head around the fact that the OotS gods don't eat mortal souls?

[Rater202]

Is it really that hard to wrap your head around the fact that the OotS gods don't eat mortal souls?
Giant described a scenario where Oots Afterlives are more or less identical to the default D&D cosmology as well as a scenario where souls of mortals are ultimately rendered down into raw materials and sustenance for the gods and the planes with everything that doesn't "fit" being erased.

Thor isn't literally eating his worshipers in Valhalla but the end result is the same.

[brian 333]

The judgment starts to apply once they start eating sapient beings.

Sapience is relative. Aside from symbolic logic and tool use, what can you do that a fish cannot? For that matter, why ignore the intelligence of plants?

Some smart and well educated idiot once said that man was the only life form that makes war. Ever watch a coral reef?
And trees. Oh, man, trees are so evil they use chemical warfare to control their space. They actually form alliances and betray them from time to time. Because plant intelligence is alien to us we tend to think it does not exist, but plants learn, adapt, and murder rivals to gain an edge.

But it's okay to eat them because we don't recognize them as sapient? Is there a test? If so, I bet a lot of humans fail it. Would that mean they are on the menu?

Let's look at chickens. They feel pain. They form friendships. They recognize family members and are aware when non-family members of their species are around. They can count. They learn from experience.

They are sapient. In fact, they are so smart that 100% of the species refused to participate in the Tide Pod Challenge. That makes them more sapient than a good number of humans.

Everything we eat has some degree of self awareness and intelligence: even the seaweed around our sushi rolls.

Sapience is a bad place to draw the line.

[Ruck]

No, I'm calling the Gods in general morally bankrupt for prolonging their own existence at the expense of countless mortal beings who are being misled about what the afterlife entails.

The alternative you're proposing is non-existence for both gods and mortals. The gods created the mortals, and if they starve to death, they can't create any more.

[Mechalich]

Giant described a scenario where Oots Afterlives are more or less identical to the default D&D cosmology as well as a scenario where souls of mortals are ultimately rendered down into raw materials and sustenance for the gods and the planes with everything that doesn't "fit" being erased.

I think the difference here is that while in typical D&D the planes endure more or less forever, or at least geologically significant periods of time, in OOTS the deities reboot reality at fairly regular intervals measured in thousands of years at most and when they do this all of the 'soul stuff' that has accumulated since the last reboot is gathered up and used in order to form the new world.

[Metastachydium]

Sapience is relative. Aside from symbolic logic and tool use, what can you do that a fish cannot? For that matter, why ignore the intelligence of plants?

(…)

And trees. (…) Because plant intelligence is alien to us we tend to think it does not exist, but plants learn, adapt, and murder rivals to gain an edge.

But it's okay to eat them because we don't recognize them as sapient? Is there a test? If so, I bet a lot of humans fail it. Would that mean they are on the menu?

Let's look at chickens. They feel pain. They form friendships. They recognize family members and are aware when non-family members of their species are around. They can count. They learn from experience.

They are sapient. In fact, they are so smart that 100% of the species refused to participate in the Tide Pod Challenge. That makes them more sapient than a good number of humans.

Everything we eat has some degree of self awareness and intelligence: even the seaweed around our sushi rolls.

Sapience is a bad place to draw the line.

Brian. Brian, you are the hero this world needs.


Giant described a scenario where Oots Afterlives are more or less identical to the default D&D cosmology as well as a scenario where souls of mortals are ultimately rendered down into raw materials and sustenance for the gods and the planes with everything that doesn't "fit" being erased.

Thor isn't literally eating his worshipers in Valhalla but the end result is the same.

In that case, my dear Bookmark, you are morally bankrupt so long as you don't refuse to eat so that you can sustain your body. I think your description is fairly accurate, and that makes you conclusion all the more wrong. This is not predation. Nor is it parasitism, as you implied (given that mortal existence is just as much dependent on that of the gods as it is the other way round, this claim was ludicrous to begin with).

The term you're looking for is saprotrophy. It happens all the time and you benefit from it immensely. The natural order of things is that if left alone with the appropriate agents, matter will end up refined into its basic components which then form the basis of all growth and complexity. It happens to everyone, from little flowers through oh-so-clever humans to baleen whales. Our decay is the necessary prerequisite of all new life and I'm grateful to all the pillbugs, earthworms, fungi and bacteria that make this possible. Those that came before us feed our own existence and we shall fuel that of those yet to come.

Structurally, the only difference between the two processes amounts to this: as many have pointed out, those in Celestia can choose to delay undergoing this transformation for as long as they feel fit and as such, are guaranteed to be refined into the essence of new life, a peculiar form of energy that powers all creation when they are ready.

[Millstone85]

Well, this has been quite the Lovecraftian insight into the nature of the biosphere.

[Resileaf]

Giant described a scenario where Oots Afterlives are more or less identical to the default D&D cosmology as well as a scenario where souls of mortals are ultimately rendered down into raw materials and sustenance for the gods and the planes with everything that doesn't "fit" being erased.

Thor isn't literally eating his worshipers in Valhalla but the end result is the same.

No it's not, because the gods (at least the good ones) have no involvement in the process except to enjoy the passive worship the souls generate as they go through the natural process of the afterlife they've been sent to.

[Peelee]

The judgment starts to apply once they start eating sapient beings.

Again, why? What is the issue here? What does that change?

[hroþila]

The judgment starts to apply once they start eating sapient beings.
The judgement can only start if you assume that there's an alternative. But the gods aren't omnipotent. They're not even immortal, strictly speaking. They need the sustenance and there's no indication that non-sapient beings can provide it.

In any setting with non-omnipotent gods that arose (or were created) pretty much as is, they have little to no choice, and no more control over their fundamental nature than the mortals they created have over theirs.

[brian 333]

Brian. Brian, you are the hero this world needs.

This sort of comment is usually in blue text, but...

This begs for sigging. Can I sig this?

[BaronOfHell]

Since it's the perception of the mortals that forms the gods, and the gods forms the afterlives, does it not mean the afterlives are the way mortals believe them to be, simply because that is what they believe?


It's almost impossible to come up with a concept if eternal existence that doesn't suck when you think about it for a moment.

Suck to write a story about... or suck for the immortal person?


centuries partying [...] eventually they grow bored [...] satisfied that they've experienced all they wanted to experience.

What I never understood is that so many people have reservation about accepting immortality, unless they themselves can choose to stop existing at any time they wish, yet I never seem to find anyone who are reluctant to accept the end of their existence, despite having no "come back when you wish"-button (Of course such a button would by definition be nonsensical).

[Fyraltari]

Suck to write a story about... or suck for the immortal person?
The latter.


What I never understood is that so many people have reservation about accepting immortality, unless they themselves can choose to stop existing at any time they wish, yet I never seem to find anyone who are reluctant to accept the end of their existence, despite having no "come back when you wish"-button (Of course such a button would by definition be nonsensical).
...

You never found anyone who was afraid of death?

[Metastachydium]

This sort of comment is usually in blue text, but...

This begs for sigging. Can I sig this?

Please do! You've earned it.

[Millstone85]

Since it's the perception of the mortals that forms the gods, and the gods forms the afterlives, does it not mean the afterlives are the way mortals believe them to be, simply because that is what they believe?According to Thor (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html), "The Outer Planes are ideas that were so powerful, for better or worse, that they became places" and "The spirits of people who believe those things strongly are drawn to them, and help make the plane itself".

So it looks like the answer to your question would be yes, minus two things:

The gods aren't necessarily an intermediary between mortal belief and the afterlives.
Spirit assimilation might be part of the belief-based plane-shaping process itself and thus happen regardless of what people believe.

[BaronOfHell]

The latter.


...

You never found anyone who was afraid of death?

Not anyone who have admitted to it, no. Many who are afraid of living forever though. On the other hand, these opinions came from discussions about just that, so I suppose it does draw a certain audience.

Anyway, I don't understand why it would suck to live forever, and it is something I have given a lot of thought, but my argument requires an assumption about your life, so I'm kind of afraid I overstep some boundaries with this reply and I really hope I don't.

My assumption is that your life doesn't suck, and my question is, if you found out your age wasn't whatever your current age is, but infinite, would that suddenly change anything about your current life? My assumption is no, your life still wouldn't suck.

The way I imagine is if the conscious self has existed from before the universe as we know it existed, and as far back as one wants to go, inhabiting various vessels, such as our own, only with the memory of the current life.
Of course that may be a silly idea, but I think my point is valid.


"The Outer Planes are ideas that were so powerful, for better or worse, that they became places" and "The spirits of people who believe those things strongly are drawn to them, and help make the plane itself".

Thank you for looking it up, to me that makes it even more definite that evil people think of their afterlife as a punishment, and that joined belief is what makes it so.

[Metastachydium]

Thank you for looking it up, to me that makes it even more definite that evil people think of their afterlife as a punishment, and that joined belief is what makes it so.

Heck, the NE afterlive would appear to be based around the idea that "You Are Bad and You Should Feel Bad".

[brian 333]

We live within bounded infinities. Time flies when you're having fun, but drags when you are bored. No mechanical clock can meter out how you experience time. It is your own personal infinity. And when you time travel back to those moments, the perception is reversed, such that monotony has a scant moment in the memory-replay while times of intensity are crystal clear moment by moment.

Example, I know there were hundreds of times I put on my football pads in my Mom's station wagon, but am hard pressed to recall the details of any particular time, but the time we got T-boned and the car spun around? I remember every detail, flying over my brother, the tiny shards of safety glass frozen in the air with me.

Now, apply that to an infinite time span. The boring would grow forever longer, and the exciting and new would be forever rarer and briefer. Sooner or later there will be nothing new, nothing not done a billion times. Existence would be an infinity of bored nothingness. Remembering the exciting would eventually grow stale. Even erasing your memories so you could do it all again would become dull over time.

At that point, are you not functionally dead?

The OotS afterlife is actually a good deal. You exist as long as your existence has meaning to you, and when the end comes you never even know it or care.

[InvisibleBison]

Now, apply that to an infinite time span. The boring would grow forever longer, and the exciting and new would be forever rarer and briefer. Sooner or later there will be nothing new, nothing not done a billion times. Existence would be an infinity of bored nothingness. Remembering the exciting would eventually grow stale. Even erasing your memories so you could do it all again would become dull over time.

Novelty is not required to make life worthwhile.

[Millstone85]

Not anyone who have admitted to it, no.Well then, I will freely admit to it. Death terrifies me. Your learn to live with its inevitability but it is still a horrid perspective.


Many who are afraid of living forever though.The one thing death beats is everlasting torture. And there are plenty of stories describing just that: Punitive afterlives, of course, but also various forms of undeath or tales of immortals who end up buried alive, etc.

Comfortable immortality is harder to imagine, for sure, but I do get annoyed with how many sour grapes get thrown at it. My take is that I would want to find out by myself how long I can go before I experience the boredom, feeling of obsolescence or whatever pitfall I am told will eventually come to me.

And then, yeah, I would merge with a mystical plane, or with the post-human singularity, or simply return to dust.


Heck, the NE afterlive would appear to be based around the idea that "You Are Bad and You Should Feel Bad".If I understand the panel correctly, that's Carceri, the NE/CE afterlife.

The true NE afterlife, Hades, reads "Nothing matters".

[Fyraltari]

Not anyone who have admitted to it, no. Many who are afraid of living forever though. On the other hand, these opinions came from discussions about just that, so I suppose it does draw a certain audience.
I am not afraid of living forever because that's not a realistic possibility. As for fearing death, on the one hand it is my general philosophy not to worry about the inevitable, on the other I enjoy being alive and I enjoy my loved ones being alive so I wish for death to come very late. When my grandmother suffered heart failure I was afraid I was afraid she would no longer be with us, and I was relieved when she was cleared to leave the hospital and go back home. The couple of times I almost had an accident I was afraid.
So I fear death, but I don't dwell on it.
Then again, I cannot fathom what "not-being" is like (it's not like anything) so, while I fear death, I'm not afraid of being dead, if that makes sense.


Anyway, I don't understand why it would suck to live forever, and it is something I have given a lot of thought, but my argument requires an assumption about your life, so I'm kind of afraid I overstep some boundaries with this reply and I really hope I don't.
It's fine.

Well, for starters, unless you've found a way to make the universe last forever, you'll run into a big problem eventually.

But really the problem is with infinity. Our minds can't understand big numbers, infinity (which, as far as we can tell, doesn't actually exist) would break them. And to be able to handle it we'd need to become so different that I'd hesitate to call the immortal being human or me anymore. A simple example: have you noticed how the days seem to be short these days while they were so long during your childhood? Apparently our experience of time is informed by our memories, the longer our lived experience, the faster times seem to go by. Can you imagine how short the days would get pas five hundred? Five thousand? Five million?


My assumption is that your life doesn't suck, and my question is, if you found out your age wasn't whatever your current age is, but infinite, would that suddenly change anything about your current life? My assumption is no, your life still wouldn't suck.
I mean, finding out that my life is a lie would probably have some effect. I would probably try to find out what the hell's going on with me, why I can't remember anything of all that time and all that.

More seriously, I am accepting that, barring unfortunate accidents or disease, I will bury my parents, grandmothers and uncles and aunts. I don't have children (yet), but I do have a niece I love very much. I don't want to bury her. Ever.


The way I imagine is if the conscious self has existed from before the universe as we know it existed, and as far back as one wants to go, inhabiting various vessels, such as our own, only with the memory of the current life.
I don't mean any disrespect to your beliefs but as far as I am aware, the evidence we have at our disposal is that the conscious self is an emergent property of our bodies and that it simply ceases along their other processes upon death.

I also fail to see any difference between "A's conscious self loses all memories and is transferred into B" and "A's conscious self is destroyed and B is born with their own."

[Metastachydium]

If I understand the panel correctly, that's Carceri, the NE/CE afterlife.

The true NE afterlife, Hades, reads "Nothing matters".

…
You are correct, of course. I misremembered (and didn't bother to check). Still, that doesn't really change the point, does it, now?


I am not afraid of living forever because that's not a realistic possibility.

Thankfully.


I also fail to see any difference between "A's conscious self loses all memories and is transferred into B" and "A's conscious self is destroyed and B is born with their own."

From an eschatological point of view, there is a huge difference, but that topic, I'm afraid, is deemed inappropriate hereabouts.

[Millstone85]

…
You are correct, of course. I misremembered (and didn't bother to check). Still, that doesn't really change the point, does it, now?It gives the most obviously guilt-based afterlife a less central position. Beyond that, yeah, not much of a change.

[Tzardok]

I don't think Carceri is guilt-based. All the other statements the planes "make" are said to others. So "You are bad and you should feel bad" is what a soul in Carceri thinks about other people, not about itself. This also fits with the way Carceri is described in other sources: as a prison where the only thing that keeps you imprisoned is your own spite, your suspicions and paranoia, the prisoners' inability to cooperate. Nobody trusts anybody else, because if they were trustworthy, they wouldn't be in Carceri. In short, it is the Planes' greatest Crab Bucket.

[gbaji]

Okay, so you agree that this:


emphasis mine, is not a fair description of what happened?

No (er. it's "not-not", meaning it is a fair description). Because at the moment she made the decision to kill Crystal (or to act on the decision to do so), her statements had nothing to do with protecting herself from Crystal, but entirely about taking her stuff and ripping off the guild. As has already been pointed out, she even expected Crystal to be raised and made no effort to prevent this (in fact, asked Crystal to deliver a message for her if/when she was raised). Hardly the action of someone just trying to prevent a future attempt on her life by Crystal.

It looked very much like she was rage-quitting the guild, and doing as much damage to them on the way out as possible. It very much comes off as personal and petty. And yes, even with the bonus page, it still comes off that way. Blunted perhaps in that it gives us a better understanding of why she's so angry at both the guild and Crystal and thus would do this, but it's still very much for pure personal gain (I suppose "pleasure at killing Crystal" fits into "personal gain" here).

And again. Even if it wasn't, it's still murder and it's still premeditated. Which is the larger point when considering where this fits in terms of alignment actions.


Well, this has been quite the Lovecraftian insight into the nature of the biosphere.

We are but grass for the gods.


According to Thor (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html), "The Outer Planes are ideas that were so powerful, for better or worse, that they became places" and "The spirits of people who believe those things strongly are drawn to them, and help make the plane itself".

So it looks like the answer to your question would be yes, minus two things:

The gods aren't necessarily an intermediary between mortal belief and the afterlives.
Spirit assimilation might be part of the belief-based plane-shaping process itself and thus happen regardless of what people believe.


The last point is key. This process of assimilation of mortal souls/energy/whatever is a natural process. As natural as decay for mortal bodies. It will happen. Gods benefit from this, not because they're sitting there munching down on a mortal buffet or something (food pyramid joke aside), but because they themselves are manifestations of those things and thus empowered by them.

It's not about the quantity of soul power involved here. It's the amount that represents some combination of belief/worship/whatever in the existence of a given god that actually causes/allows the existence of that god. The power goes to maintain the same concepts/thoughts whether there's a god attached to it or not. But when enough of those things coalesce powerfully, it forms a god. And once created, gods tend to want to maintain their existence, so they promote set of mortal belief and worship that focuses those mortal thoughts on ones that are specifically designed to maintain them.

[BaronOfHell]

Then again, I cannot fathom what "not-being" is like (it's not like anything) so, while I fear death, I'm not afraid of being dead, if that makes sense.

The way I imagine it, the time before we are born is equivalent to the time after we are no more. Even if time only has existed for some ~15 billion years, from my perspective, those years went by instantly.


A simple example: have you noticed how the days seem to be short these days while they were so long during your childhood? Apparently our experience of time is informed by our memories, the longer our lived experience, the faster times seem to go by. Can you imagine how short the days would get pas five hundred? Five thousand? Five million?

When I was much younger I would decide upon some exciting things I'd do during a day, like I did more than 25 different things in one day, each their own thing giving some enjoyment individually, while together formed a big part of my day, yet probably only took a matter of hours. Now I decide upon 3 things and it takes me a week to do just one, though the tasks seems so small, and I seem so much more capable and I can even use a lot of automation, it frustrates me to be so slow.
I'm not sure time moves by faster, but I do feel like I manage to do less things.

Though if I do stuff like I did when I was younger, there is either no difference, or I am faster now, so while I have experienced the point you're making, I'm not convinced it is because I am older now than I was back then.



I don't mean any disrespect to your beliefs but as far as I am aware, the evidence we have at our disposal is that the conscious self is an emergent property of our bodies and that it simply ceases along their other processes upon death.

No no, I also think the consciousness is a biological function of our body, not analogous to oots where it is a spirit in a vessel, I just wrote it in the hope my example wouldn't be rejected as impossible.


I also fail to see any difference between "A's conscious self loses all memories and is transferred into B" and "A's conscious self is destroyed and B is born with their own."

If it means that our self is the sum of our memories, and given the claim that an eternal life is a bad thing, does it not simply mean that too much knowledge is a bad thing, not the part about existing forever?


Comfortable immortality is harder to imagine, for sure, but I do get annoyed with how many sour grapes get thrown at it. My take is that I would want to find out by myself how long I can go before I experience the boredom, feeling of obsolescence or whatever pitfall I am told will eventually come to me.

We had this TV documentary the other day about the development of anti-aging drugs, and of course, just like every time I saw something similar on some US/UK-channel, the "philosopher" had to chime in.
This time the claim was that if we lived forever we would never get out of bed, because we had no urgency of achieving the things we wish to achieve.. like I would postpone whatever I want to do, because I could always do it tomorrow.. and perhaps that is true for him, but stuff like that I do find a bit annoying.

[Millstone85]

We had this TV documentary the other day about the development of anti-aging drugs, and of course, just like every time I saw something similar on some US/UK-channel, the "philosopher" had to chime in.
This time the claim was that if we lived forever we would never get out of bed, because we had no urgency of achieving the things we wish to achieve.. like I would postpone whatever I want to do, because I could always do it tomorrow.. and perhaps that is true for him, but stuff like that I do find a bit annoying.Joke on him, I am already procrastinating my short life away. :smallsigh:

[Keltest]

I mean, the list of things I do because I'll die if I don't do them is pretty much limited to eating and sleeping. Everything else has some other motivator beyond my imminent death that I don't forsee waiting on me indefinitely.

[Peelee]

I'm actively seeking a job that carries a very real, if statistically unlikely, possibility that I will die as part of the job. Death still scares the hell out of me.

[Rater202]

I am on record as desiring genuine eternal life.

However, there are far worse things than mere death. I have a healthy sense of self-preservation, but I can think of several things where death would be preferable.

Like living eternally but being helpless and in constant pain. Or being lobotomized. Or of experiencing the death of the self—if it's a choice between killing me and destroying everything that makes me me and pretending I'm still alive because I left a functioning meat-vessel behind that some new person might eventually come to inhabit than just ****ing kill me, it's more honest.

Fear of death is irrational—be afraid of discrete, tangible threats to your continued existence, but fearing death itself is just wasting the time that you could be living.

[gbaji]

Yeah. Such philosophical analysis bugs me too. I think any degree of "I can always do this tomorrow" would be more than offset with "I've got the time to do a bunch of things I might otherwise not". I think the day to day pleasures would be pretty much the same. While I suppose there can be some amount of jadedness with regard to "new things" as we get older, that still doesn't prevent me from enjoying watching a film, even if the plot is pretty standard stuff I've seen many times before. And going out to eat with friends is still enjoyable, even if you've done it a hundred times before (one can argue it maybe becomes more enjoyable).

I also think that maybe the kinds of things you would enjoy doing and therefore actively involve yourself in may change if you had forever to live, but I just don't buy the "no reason to get out of bed" bit.

And yeah, that's before examining that people might be even more interested in involving themselves in longer term projects, goals, whatever, if they know they'll live long enough to see the results (of either success or failure). I'm probably going to be a lot more interested in investing in, say space exploration if I know that maybe one day I'll be able to travel to other planets than if it's assumed that this "might be something future generations may do". Dunno. I could see a lot of things being different given a different perspective like that. But definitely don't see pure apathy being a likely outcome.

Not sure how this fits into the idea of an "eternal soul" from an afterlife in stick world though. I think the bigger problem with souls lasting "forever" would be that in that case, they are removed from the prime material plane, aren't really doing anything that impacts anything, and so yeah, I can totally see the concept that over time, you'll just sort of fade away into a generic version of yourself/alignment/whatever. But that's not a function of immortality so much as being in an environment where nothing you do actually matters.

[Reach Weapon]

Even if it wasn't, it's still murder and it's still premeditated. Which is the larger point when considering where this fits in terms of alignment actions.

I think that's a frame more in keeping with our cosmology than that of the Stickiverse, and perhaps a little more time with Elan would help here?

To keep it brief: Crystal was locked in as Haley's nemesis but in the larger arc she had been supplanted by a hotter, arch-er one. Haley needed to both knock Crystal back while increasing her own power for their inevitable concluding fight, and protect her Dad's ransom.

And perhaps she enjoyed doing it a bit too much, but I believe that's more a points off on your record issue than a real disqualifier.

[danielxcutter]

Also she probably expected Bozzok to rez Crystal anyways. Not turn her into a continuously in pain Flesh Golem.

[ti'esar]

Honestly, while I feel like this has wandered far afield from the original topic, I dunno what the problem is with a story positing that no one would choose to exist literally forever, given that the alternative is by definition impossible to prove. Like, even if there's a million-year-old immortal secretly posting here right now he couldn't exactly offer any comments on whether someone would want to exist for a billion years, and so forth.

[Metastachydium]

Also she probably expected Bozzok to rez Crystal anyways. Not turn her into a continuously in pain Flesh Golem.

Well, she did use a conditional there, but she very clearly considered that a feasible outcome, perhaps even a preferable one (since she left a message for Bozzok that dead!Crystal might not be able to transmit). As for the golem thing, she explicitly believed it was a power-up with few downsides until Crystal told her about the pain.

[brian 333]

A point: Haley is not Lawful Good. She does not have to follow the rules. Doing something for selfish, personal reasons is totally within the bounds of the Chaotic alignment.

So, was her act good?

We are talking about killing an unrepentant murderer whose only justification is, "I hurt less when I make other people hurt more."

Killing Crystal is on par with killing a dangerous predator that is killing villagers. It's just something that has to be done.

It is not a Good act, in that there is no altruism involved. But killing Crystal, a person who only didn't kill Haley a dozen times over because she was not competent enough to do it without getting caught, is an act of self-preservation.

Verdict: according to D&D alignment rules, the act was Chaotic Neutral.

(Note that this has nothing at all to do with real world morality or law.)

[Fyraltari]

We are talking about killing an unrepentant murderer whose only justification is, "I hurt less when I make other people hurt more."

Wrong murder of Crystal.

[Keltest]

Wrong murder of Crystal.

An unrepentant murderer whose only justification is "I felt like it" then?

[Fyraltari]

An unrepentant murderer whose only justification is "I felt like it" then?

She doesn't justify herself. She leaves the thinking to Bozzok.