Question about souls, gods and Roy

[Dasick]

I'm not sure if it's been discussed before, I couldn't find anything with the search feature.

So I have a couple of questions about how the OOTSverse works.

First of all souls - are souls "immortal" in the sense that everyone the gods cashed in from worlds #2 and up, and their souls haven't been explicitly killed off, are they still around? Is Thor sad about lasersnail cause they pulled the plug too late and the Snarl got them or is it cause after a while, souls get used up as batteries and they cease to be?

Which leads me to my next question. If souls persist, then wouldn't the OG deities have like, trillions or quadrillions of souls kicking around? Or more actually. It's been explored in the Hel story that gods need "devotion", that burst of energy when someone dies and ends up in a respective god's realm. But the dead can believe and praise the gods. I wonder if gods get extra devotion when someone like Durkon dies and is resurrected multiple times? That would explain why they give out resurrection spells in the first place, cause once you got a decent enough level soul (and you need to be decent enough level to be resurrected), why risk letting it go back down and having an alignment shift or something. I wonder if that system can be gamed somehow...

Gods - so Thor is like the lawful good god right? Roy is a lawful good northerner, so he falls under Thor's domain? Cause dwarves and Durkon are lawful good, and Durkon went to Valhalla... but Roy didn't? So are the celestial realms further divided by race or is this only due to the bet Thor had with Hel, or is Valhalla still on that same mountain, just a different part of it? I also noticed that Minrah didn't have to scale anything to get into Valhalla, curious. Is that cause dwarves live under so much duress and are just way more lawful and good than the average lawful good person who doesn't have that "die honourably" sword of Damocles hanging over their head?

Roy - so Roy is what we call an "apatheist". When he goes off to his afterlife, there's no mention of any gods. So uhhh. When he dies, who gets his devotion? Speaking of alignments, it seems like there's more gods than squares on the grid. For example, Dvalinn for sure is a lawful good god. But dwarves don't go to him or his afterlife. So uhh, how does Dvalinn sustain himself? Does he share the devotion of dwarves with Thor? How about people who aren't dedicated to any one god, because people who aren't clerics don't seem to be? Who gets their devotion? Do the alignment related gods all share it, or what?

[Peelee]

I'm not sure if it's been discussed before, I couldn't find anything with the search feature.

So I have a couple of questions about how the OOTSverse works.

First of all souls - are souls "immortal" in the sense that everyone the gods cashed in from worlds #2 and up, and their souls haven't been explicitly killed off, are they still around? Is Thor sad about lasersnail cause they pulled the plug too late and the Snarl got them or is it cause after a while, souls get used up as batteries and they cease to be?

Which leads me to my next question. If souls persist, then wouldn't the OG deities have like, trillions or quadrillions of souls kicking around? Or more actually. It's been explored in the Hel story that gods need "devotion", that burst of energy when someone dies and ends up in a respective god's realm. But the dead can believe and praise the gods. I wonder if gods get extra devotion when someone like Durkon dies and is resurrected multiple times? That would explain why they give out resurrection spells in the first place, cause once you got a decent enough level soul (and you need to be decent enough level to be resurrected), why risk letting it go back down and having an alignment shift or something. I wonder if that system can be gamed somehow...

Gods - so Thor is like the lawful good god right? Roy is a lawful good northerner, so he falls under Thor's domain? Cause dwarves and Durkon are lawful good, and Durkon went to Valhalla... but Roy didn't? So are the celestial realms further divided by race or is this only due to the bet Thor had with Hel, or is Valhalla still on that same mountain, just a different part of it? I also noticed that Minrah didn't have to scale anything to get into Valhalla, curious. Is that cause dwarves live under so much duress and are just way more lawful and good than the average lawful good person who doesn't have that "die honourably" sword of Damocles hanging over their head?

Roy - so Roy is what we call an "apatheist". When he goes off to his afterlife, there's no mention of any gods. So uhhh. When he dies, who gets his devotion? Speaking of alignments, it seems like there's more gods than squares on the grid. For example, Dvalinn for sure is a lawful good god. But dwarves don't go to him or his afterlife. So uhh, how does Dvalinn sustain himself? Does he share the devotion of dwarves with Thor? How about people who aren't dedicated to any one god, because people who aren't clerics don't seem to be? Who gets their devotion? Do the alignment related gods all share it, or what?

This might help.

I hear what you're saying but you kind of showed that the exact opposite is true in the story. Roy learned a new swordfighting technique from his grandfather. That alone is proof that change and growth still happens after death.

No, Roy learned of a new swordfighting technique in Celestia, which he then mastered after returning to life. Dead souls cannot earn XP, gain levels, learn feats, or increase skills.

EDIT: I went back and read #600 and I can see how the dialogue can lead to the belief that Roy had actually mastered the technique. However, note that in panel #3, Horace reminds him he needs to spend a feat on it. If I had to reconcile that strip with what I said above, I would say that if Roy stayed in Celestia, the knowledge of the trick would have quickly faded from his mind. Even if he learned it over and over again, it would never "stick" in his head for more than a day or two.

Do you mean to say that if the Stickverse had a version of Albert Einstein up in Celestia, that Roy couldn't lean physics from him if he was inclined to find it out?

Yes, that is exactly what I mean.

And when Roy's Archon that further up the mountain greater spiritual enlightenment awaited those who had tired of more base pleasures, does that statement not imply that a soul in heaven can look to better himself, implying that yes, change is possible.

"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.

And as far as talking to people with a different point of view, doesn't Eugene offer counter proof that statement? Supposing that there was a Eugne-clone identical in all respects to Roy's father, except that there wasn't the unfulfilled Blood Oath barring him from heaven. Would not Eugene-clone and Roy have plenty to disagree about, despite the identical entry in the alignment section of their character sheet?

Is Eugene in Celestia yet?

Hell, Durkon himself is proof that people can have identical alignments and not see eye-to-eye on every issue. That wasn't a short joke, I swear. Roy and Durkon have had disagreements despite their friendship, so I don't see why, out of the entire pool of lawful good creatures, suddenly they are cookie-cutter clones of each other after death.

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.

But more to the point, the difference in viewpoint between Durkon and Roy—assuming that Durkon would even end up in the same afterlife once you take into account his worship of Thor—is peanuts compared to the difference between Roy and Haley. If you feel like you would be totally fine never talking to anyone who doesn't more or less agree with you on everything ever again, then that's great for you, but it's a mistake to assume everyone else feels that way.

Visiting people of a different alignment...didn't Soon promise Miko that Windstriker would come to visit her as often as he was able? Whatever destination Miko ended up in, it probably wasn't Celestia. It was probably one of those less cushy places you mentioned. Yet she's going to be able to receive a visitor from Celestia from time to time, unless Soon was being Jedi-honest and really meant that the horse would visit her as often as he could, which was never. In which case he should go to hell for lying, but I digress. If the gods can issue celestial day passes to horses, why is the same impossible for mortal souls?

Because they don't. Yes, they could, but they don't.

This is not a debate. You asked why X is a certain way in this comic strip. I, the author, am telling you why. Windstriker is not a dead soul, he is a living Celestial creature; he is not bound by the same rules. He needs a pass because he is in the service of the Twelve Gods and will likely be assigned to another paladin at some point, from whom he must get permission before going on a trip. If he were unemployed, he would be free to go to whatever plane he could find a way to travel to. Dead souls have no such freedom.

I know that all analogies break down if you push them hard enough, but this is again one that contradicts something earlier. This time the contradiction is in the first paragraph of your response to me. In this situation the dangerous game of life is playing pro football and the afterlife is this kind of forced retirement. But didn't you just say earlier that you can't improve any skills you have after retirement, but here in your analogy you say that the retired players can learn poetry and basketweaving?

I think a more appropriate analogy is that players who want to play football can continue to do so. Except that they're no longer at risk for traumatic brain injury, damage to their bodies, oh, and we can now form football teams from the bool of the greatest football players across history (shared alignment provision granted). So if we still want to use the football analogy...it's like we can take the list of everyone who ever played for the 49ers and assemble the best teams possible and have them play each other without risk of injury.

No, because I am specifically telling you that is not how it works. If you want to write a story about a world where the afterlife works like that, go ahead. That's not how it works in my story.

Really, you're coming at this entirely backwards. You're saying the afterlife shouldn't have flaws, and therefore Roy should be OK with everyone dying. I'm saying that I require Roy to be not OK with everyone dying in order to continue the story, and therefore the afterlife must have flaws (and here they are). Since the goal here is for me to continue to tell the story I have imagined, my position wins.

Also, the Northern Pantheon has more than nine gods, not including demigods, so there isn't just one Alignment God. And I don't think Thor is Lawful in any event.

[hamishspence]

OOTS Valhalla (assuming it fills the same role as its equivalent in the Great Wheel cosmology) is a CN bordering on CG afterlife, just as Arcadia is a LN bordering on LG afterlife.

Given Thor's presence - residing there, an element of "Devotion to deity trumps alignment for afterlife purposes" may be in play - with LG dwarves strongly devoted to a CG Thor, going to Valhalla instead of Celestia.

[Dasick]

Thanks for that Peele

Wow, OOTS afterlife doesn't just have flaws, it majorly sucks.

Being an evil lich doesn't seem like such a bad idea now actually. Sure sign me up for puppykicking at 7 and I can squeeze a monologuing class at 8:30

I was kind of ok with Roy being against everyone dying without knowing that the afterlife sucks. It was such a Roy thing. It made for a better story. I kinda regret jumping into the forums cause the more I spend learning more about OOTSverse the less I like the story :/

OOTS Valhalla (assuming it fills the same role as its equivalent in the Great Wheel cosmology) is a CN bordering on CG afterlife, just as Arcadia is a LN bordering on LG afterlife.

Given Thor's presence - residing there, an element of "Devotion to deity trumps alignment for afterlife purposes" may be in play - with LG dwarves strongly devoted to a CG Thor, going to Valhalla instead of Celestia.

All Dwarves Go To Valhalla, they even made a movie about it. Or was it dogs? I forget

Huh. I thought clerics had to match alignment with the god they chose to worship. Or at the very least, it seems like it would be a better idea for clerics to pick gods that match their alignment

[Fyraltari]

People who worship a specific god, like Durkon and Minrah*, go their domain when they die. People who don't worship a specific god, like Roy, go to the general afterlife that matches their alignment. That is why Durkon and Minrah didn't go to the mountain.

Also, it's a common theory around here that Thor is Chaotic Good.

*ignoring the Bet

[Dasick]

People who worship a specific god, like Durkon and Minrah*, go their domain when they die. People who don't worship a specific god, like Roy, go to the general afterlife that matches their alignment. That is why Durkon and Minrah didn't go to the mountain.

Also, it's a common theory around here that Thor is Chaotic Good.

*ignoring the Bet

So... what happens to the devotion of people like Roy?

Being Chaotic God seems very much in line with what we see Thor do (including constant rules lawyering on behalf of dead dwarves)

I just assumed he was LG because why would an avatar of all that is GOOD AND ORDER that is Durkon choose to worship a CG god :think:

[hamishspence]

So... what happens to the devotion of people like Roy?

Fuels the plane as a whole, and its natives, the archons.

Huh. I thought clerics had to match alignment with the god they chose to worship. Or at the very least, it seems like it would be a better idea for clerics to pick gods that match their alignment

Only TN clerics have to match a TN deity. Other clerics can be within one step, and various campaign setting specific deities have exceptions to the one step rule (and some limit their clerics, being more restrictive than the one step rule).

[Peelee]

Thanks for that Peele

Not a celebrity.

Huh. I thought clerics had to match alignment with the god they chose to worship. Or at the very least, it seems like it would be a better idea for clerics to pick gods that match their alignment

3.5 clerics have a one-step rule, though this does have exceptions for certain gods. I'd wager Thor has an exception for dwarves (assuming he's Chaotic, which I do. If he's Neutral Good, he doesn't need any exception).

[Fyraltari]

Being Chaotic God seems very much in line with what we see Thor do (including constant rules lawyering on behalf of dead dwarves)

I just assumed he was LG because why would an avatar of all that is GOOD AND ORDER that is Durkon choose to worship a CG god :think:

Thor being the one who showed the dwarves how to game the Bet by acting honorably (which, assuming he's cG, he would have done because the Good of doing it massively overshadowed the Lawful) made him very popular among the dwarves. Durkon's hometown, Firmament, housed the last two High Priests of Thor (Hurak and Rubyrock) meaning Thor's church is probably the main game in town when it comes to religion (probably because Thor worship involves skygazing and Firmament is close to the surface). Add to that that Durkon's mom is a devout Thor-worshipper and that Durkon originally joined the church less out of faith and more so that he could eventually heal her missing arm and it's pretty clear why Durkon would join the church of a god with different views than he has about Law and Chaos.

Also, Durkon is terrible at theology.

[Peelee]

Thor being the one who showed the dwarves how to game the Bet by acting honorably (which, assuming he's cG, he would have done because the Good of doing it massively overshadowed the Lawful)

I'd say gaming bets is chaotic as all get-out. Or, at least, teaching how to game it is.

[Fyraltari]

I'd say gaming bets is chaotic as all get-out. Or, at least, teaching how to game it is.

Okay but, is it still when the cheat is "rigidly obey this strict code of honour every moment of your waking life"?

[Peelee]

Okay but, is it still when the cheat is "rigidly obey this strict code of honour every moment of your waking life"?

Agreed. Which is why I changed my stance to "well, telling them 'hey here's how to game the system'" instead.

[woweedd]

Thanks for that Peele

Wow, OOTS afterlife doesn't just have flaws, it majorly sucks.

Being an evil lich doesn't seem like such a bad idea now actually. Sure sign me up for puppykicking at 7 and I can squeeze a monologuing class at 8:30

I was kind of ok with Roy being against everyone dying without knowing that the afterlife sucks. It was such a Roy thing. It made for a better story. I kinda regret jumping into the forums cause the more I spend learning more about OOTSverse the less I like the story :/



All Dwarves Go To Valhalla, they even made a movie about it. Or was it dogs? I forget

Huh. I thought clerics had to match alignment with the god they chose to worship. Or at the very least, it seems like it would be a better idea for clerics to pick gods that match their alignment

Eh. I mean, I tend to think it's not that bad. Yeah, you will one day fade into non-existence to sustain future life. So what? Are you really willing to prioritize your own self being preserved forevermore over all future life even existing?

[Fyraltari]

Agreed. Which is why I changed my stance to "well, telling them 'hey here's how to game the system'" instead.

All I'm saying is that if someone says "shaping a society into being the most honour-bond one on the planet is a Lawful action", I wouldn't disagree, but even, so this wouldn't contradict Thor being a CG deity because not doing so would have been very Evil is this case.

[Dasick]

Also, Durkon is terrible at theology.

Also Durkon choosing to worship a diety based on what society tells him to worship as opposed to one whose personality aligns with his is the most Durkon thing imaginable

Eh. I mean, I tend to think it's not that bad. Yeah, you will one day fade into non-existence to sustain future life. So what? Are you really willing to prioritize your own self being preserved forevermore over all future life even existing?

If the option is on the table, I'm sure most people will consider it. Especially since say, if you're an immortal evil bad guy you can sacrifice innocents by the truckload to keep the whole shebang going. You can make the whole soul farm more efficient anyways

Okay but, is it still when the cheat is "rigidly obey this strict code of honour every moment of your waking life"?

Thor and Loki are such brothers arent they

[woweedd]

Also Durkon choosing to worship a diety based on what society tells him to worship as opposed to one whose personality aligns with his is the most Durkon thing imaginable

Does it not? Durkon may be a repressed, honor-bound sort, but...He's also a man who loves him a good beer. Need i remind you of the giant golden tankard of ale? In classic dwarven fashion, he works hard, but he parties just as hard.

If the option is on the table, I'm sure most people will consider it. Especially since say, if you're an immortal evil bad guy you can sacrifice innocents by the truckload to keep the whole shebang going. You can make the whole soul farm more efficient anyways

Oh, sure. But, like, i'd argue it's better to prioritize future lives over your individual consciousness being preserved at all costs. Self-sacrifice and all.

[Fyraltari]

If the fact that the promise of an heavenly reward of unfathomable bliss only lasts for 100,000 years and not literal forever is enough to make you decide to feed people to your magical-lawnmower for as long as you can until people manage to put you down like the public menace you are... you probably weren't going to Celestia anyway.

Edit: Also, as I pointed out last time we had this discussion, no-one is forcing anybody to climb the mountain. We know from Roy's grandad that people can climb down whenever they feel like it too, so you can just stay indefinitely wherever you are happy with.

[woweedd]

If the fact that the promise of an heavenly reward of unfathomable bliss only lasts for 100,000 years and not literal forever is enough to make you decide to feed people to your magical-lawnmower for as long as you can until people manage to put you down like the public menace you are... you probably weren't going to Celestia anyway.

Edit: Also, as I pointed out last time we had this discussion, no-one is forcing anybody to climb the mountain. We know from Roy's grandad that people can climb down whenever they feel like it too, so you can just stay indefinitely wherever you are happy with.

I'd imagine that, once you reach the final level, there's no going back. But, regardless, to you, it doesn't feel like oblivion. It feels like the truest happiness and enlightenment you've ever felt, a total culmination of all that you wished to become.

[Jasdoif]

I'd imagine that, once you reach the final level, there's no going back. But, regardless, to you, it doesn't feel like oblivion. It feels like the truest happiness and enlightenment you've ever felt, a total culmination of all that you wished to become.

That's how I'd expect it to work, too; if you can entertain the thought of going back, you haven't reached the final level.

[Fyraltari]

I'd imagine that, once you reach the final level, there's no going back. But, regardless, to you, it doesn't feel like oblivion. It feels like the truest happiness and enlightenment you've ever felt, a total culmination of all that you wished to become.

That's how I'd expect it to work, too; if you can entertain the thought of going back, you haven't reached the final level.

Yes, that's my read of it too. You only really move up when you can't stand the thought of staying at your current level for a long time. Which still means that it's purely voluntary.

Also, I will never understand the people who think that oblivion is a terrible, dreadful thing. I mean, if nothing else, it's a good game.

[BaronOfHell]

To me the difference between any finite number of years and infinity is huge, because for one of those it'll eventually be tomorrow or today, the other is never.
Though I do imagine it would still not be true immortality, more like not aging. Like when the evil adventuring party attacked at Roy's mom's house, I understood afterwards the danger they faced was actually very real.

But, regardless, to you, it doesn't feel like oblivion. It feels like the truest happiness and enlightenment you've ever felt, a total culmination of all that you wished to become.

Doesn't it beg the question of how does oblivion feel?

To me, existence and oblivion are opposites.
If there is oblivion there is no existence. If there is no existence, there isn't anyone to feel anything. So how can a soul which has been obliterated feel anything, when it doesn't exist anymore?

[Dasick]

you probably weren't going to Celestia anyway.

Just did the test in your signature, let's see

Huh. Probably not then. I usually get something like a cleric or a druid on one of these

If the fact that the promise of an heavenly reward of unfathomable bliss only lasts for 100,000 years and not literal forever is enough to make you decide to feed people to your magical-lawnmower for as long as you can until people manage to put you down like the public menace you are

Seems like a set up. I mean, it already is a set up and the good gods aren't that different from the evil ones in this setting. They just use different means to turn mortals into batteries, the carrot or the stick. Wasn't there a movie about people resisting reality-creating godlike creatures for turning them into batteries? It had those blue and red floating orbs you touch to gain ultimate arcane power.

You don't even need to be a public menace. A lich doesn't necessarily need to be needlessly evil like Xykon. Do the evil you need to do, help sustain the system for later use. Stay in shadows. Maybe use that magic to dominate local politics. Somewhere in between Tarquin and Xykon minus all the moustache twirling nonsense

Either that or become a god yourself I guess.

[woweedd]

Just did the test in your signature, let's see

Huh. Probably not then. I usually get something like a cleric or a druid on one of these



Seems like a set up. I mean, it already is a set up and the good gods aren't that different from the evil ones in this setting. They just use different means to turn mortals into batteries, the carrot or the stick. Wasn't there a movie about people resisting reality-creating godlike creatures for turning them into batteries? It had those blue and red floating orbs you touch to gain ultimate arcane power.

You don't even need to be a public menace. A lich doesn't necessarily need to be needlessly evil like Xykon. Do the evil you need to do, help sustain the system for later use. Stay in shadows. Maybe use that magic to dominate local politics. Somewhere in between Tarquin and Xykon minus all the moustache twirling nonsense

Either that or become a god yourself I guess.

What would you rather they do, roll over and die? They need to eat too. And, besides, without them, we wouldn't exist in the first place. Also, in the OOTS verse, an absence of mustache-twirling may not be a great idea. Half the reason Tarquin got so far is because his insight into story structure allowed him to avoid making lots of the stupid mistakes villains normally make.

[Dasick]

What would you rather they do, roll over and die? They need to eat too. And, besides, without them, we wouldn't exist in the first place. Also, in the OOTS verse, an absence of mustache-twirling may not be a great idea. Half the reason Tarquin got so far is because his insight into story structure allowed him to avoid making lots of the stupid mistakes villains normally make.

The gods can do a lot more to make the system fair. That's the central concern of goblins anyways They could for example, add some sort of a reincarnation system. You spend some time in the afterlife as a battery, get the memory mostly wiped, pick a new life from a list you earned. With added bonus that you get to try for a higher level this time and get to generate devotion all over. The system is self balancing too - who cares if goblins get the short end of the stick, because there's no strictly goblin soul anyways.

Word of Giant is that he wanted the system to be unfair for the story he is telling, so idk. But if the cosmic justice is unfair, should the mortals just roll over and be good little batteries?

Imo Tarquin is really undermined by moustache twirling, in the sense of just being evil for the sake of being evil. Like lighting slaves on fire to spell out ELAN. It's not even genre savvy cause he knows the good twin bad twin trope. And it's pointless in terms of storytelling. Tarquin explaining that the harsh desert world needs his style of order is severely undercut by him doing things for the evulz

[InvisibleBison]

The gods can do a lot more to make the system fair.

I don't think they can. The gods didn't create the multiverse, and I don't see any reason why they'd be able to rework it in the way you're suggesting.

[Dasick]

I don't think they can. The gods didn't create the multiverse, and I don't see any reason why they'd be able to rework it in the way you're suggesting.

Maybe they can't. But we also see that making the system fair isnt exactly on the top of their priorities

What if goblins are usually evil because they got shafted by the cosmos? It's certainly harder to be good, and life is a struggle for them. And then they have to go through the evil afterlife*, but maybe if they were born as dwarves or elves it would have been easier for them to be good.

*Until the Dark One rose to godhood. Which makes him like, an absolute badass and a beast of a deity

[Mechalich]

What if goblins are usually evil because they got shafted by the cosmos? It's certainly harder to be good, and life is a struggle for them. And then they have to go through the evil afterlife*, but maybe if they were born as dwarves or elves it would have been easier for them to be good.

Goblins are usually evil because they were created by an evil god who generated a set of evil-generating culture circumstances than compels them to chose to either A. be brutally murdered by their fellows for non-conformity B. flee and abandon that culture entirely with no understanding of what the rest of the world has to offer (this is the Drizzt Do'Urden path, and it is hard) or C. conform to evil. Yes, this is in fact awful, but it's what the evil gods want.

OOTS, like most D&D worlds, is balanced between the demands of the good, neutral, and evil gods, and since they collectively exercise veto power over the nature of the world - in OOTS this is extremely explicit since they any time a majority of the gods become sufficiently displeased with the world's status they hit the reset button - and nothing the mortals can do can change it. This means that a roughly equivalent number of souls must suffer the horrors of the evil afterlife (and an equally large number the eternal blandness of the neutral one) at all times. Which souls is largely irrelevant. I'm sure the gods did a world in the past where the goblin-likes were good and the elf-likes were evil, but that's ultimately just window dressing. At the end of the life roughly 1/3 of all mortals each get good, neutral or evil outcomes respectively and will always remain true.

The only way this can change is if the balance of the gods changes such that the good gods triumph over the evil ones and alter the cosmic balance. The dwarf bet, in a sense, actually represents a limited permutation of this kind, in that Thor managed by way of Loki to pull a fast one that ultimately seriously weakened Hel. By contrast the emergence of the Dark One - who by all accounts is an evil deity - actually twists the balance towards evil and the reality that everyone is trying to preserve from the Snarl will actually be worse than all those that came before if they succeed.

[brian 333]

"Fair" is not the absolute it may appear to be. Your PoV matters very much.

If I plant corn with the intention of boiling it, rubbing salted butter all over it, and eating it, is it fair to the corn? Is it fair to me if the corn's right to not be eaten is invoked and I never get any husks stuck between my teeth?

The Little Red Hen comes to mind. That greedy hoarder won't share her bread, of which she has too much to eat all by herself. Is it fair? Of course I didn't help plant, harvest, or grind the wheat, I had things to do. I didn't make the loaves or bake them because I was busy. But now I'm hungry and she has bread she won't share. Is that fair?

Let us think about the humble potato. I plant the eyes, tend the shoots, protect them from drought and cut-worms. I harvest them and store them in a cool, dry place. Next season I plan to cut them up, plant the eyes, and grow more. I even give some to my friends so they can plant my variety and in that way my potatoes are spread around the world. Is it fair to the potatoes that I eat some? Is it fair to me to have done all that work, only to have the potato declare itself uneatable?

[Dasick]

Yes, this is in fact awful, but it's what the evil gods want.

That's... pretty horrifying

The only way this can change is if the balance of the gods changes such that the good gods triumph over the evil ones and alter the cosmic balance. The dwarf bet, in a sense, actually represents a limited permutation of this kind, in that Thor managed by way of Loki to pull a fast one that ultimately seriously weakened Hel. By contrast the emergence of the Dark One - who by all accounts is an evil deity - actually twists the balance towards evil and the reality that everyone is trying to preserve from the Snarl will actually be worse than all those that came before if they succeed.

The Dark One's afterlife doesn't seem too bad for the goblins though

Let us think about the humble potato. I plant the eyes, tend the shoots, protect them from drought and cut-worms. I harvest them and store them in a cool, dry place. Next season I plan to cut them up, plant the eyes, and grow more. I even give some to my friends so they can plant my variety and in that way my potatoes are spread around the world. Is it fair to the potatoes that I eat some? Is it fair to me to have done all that work, only to have the potato declare itself uneatable?

Potatoes don't have the capacity to turn into people

For the record, I was a vegetarian for a really long time

[woweedd]

That's... pretty horrifying



The Dark One's afterlife doesn't seem too bad for the goblins though



Potatoes don't have the capacity to turn into people

For the record, I was a vegetarian for a really long time

As is Rich, and I believe that was the exact analogy he used. The good gods run a free-range ethical farm...But, in the end, the chicjen's gonna get its neck snapped.