Question about souls, gods and Roy

[Vahnavoi]

That's one of the bonus comics in printed books, right? I haven't read it so I can't comment on it directly. Both under D&D rules and folklore, though, different types of undead are, well, different. To wit: a ghost is the incorporeal spirit of someone who was wronged or died tragically, often retaining much of their personality. A lich is an evil sorcerer who did something horrible to their own self to escape death.

So, Redcloak might not be as right about a ghost, while still applying to Xykon.

[hamishspence]

That's one of the bonus comics in printed books, right? I haven't read it so I can't comment on it directly. Both under D&D rules and folklore, though, different types of undead are, well, different. To wit: a ghost is the incorporeal spirit of someone who was wronged or died tragically, often retaining much of their personality. A lich is an evil sorcerer who did something horrible to their own self to escape death.

So, Redcloak might not be as right about a ghost, while still applying to Xykon.

The one thing they both have in common is that they both retain their original mortal souls - with the soul being in charge, no less, unlike with vampires where the body is "controlled by a malign intelligence" which is not the original mortal soul.

While normally liches have to do the lich transformation to themselves, and have to be evil, plenty of D&D novels and splatbooks subvert this, with there being liches who aren't evil, and liches who have had the transformation forced on them somehow.

Redcloak's beliefs about the controllability of undead, may be blinding him to just how much volition and personhood they can have - including Xykon. Xykon is a person - just an incredibly vile person.

[RatElemental]

Sounds quite fun actually, provided the souls don't die.

Bad news: There are two main differences between Ysgard and Acheron, and one of them is that the souls who fall in battle on Acheron don't get back up. The other is that they're press-ganged into pointless battles by pointless generals fighting over worthless ground, while in Ysgard you fight whoever you want for whatever reason you want and then at the end of the day go get drunk with them.

[KorvinStarmast]

Bad news: There are two main differences between Ysgard and Acheron, and one of them is that the souls who fall in battle on Acheron don't get back up. The other is that they're press-ganged into pointless battles by pointless generals fighting over worthless ground, while in Ysgard you fight whoever you want for whatever reason you want and then at the end of the day go get drunk with them.

I will be interested in the sales brochure for the travel package to Ysgard.

[Psyren]

The one thing they both have in common is that they both retain their original mortal souls - with the soul being in charge, no less, unlike with vampires where the body is "controlled by a malign intelligence" which is not the original mortal soul.

While normally liches have to do the lich transformation to themselves, and have to be evil, plenty of D&D novels and splatbooks subvert this, with there being liches who aren't evil, and liches who have had the transformation forced on them somehow.

Redcloak's beliefs about the controllability of undead, may be blinding him to just how much volition and personhood they can have - including Xykon. Xykon is a person - just an incredibly vile person.

I don't think Redcloak is entirely wrong in his assessment of most undead in D&D and OotS. Even for the ones that aren't just straight up hijacked by a vile spirit, something happens to them during the reanimation-with-negative-energy process that renders them... twisted. Ghosts being an outlier to that (which they certainly are in most editions, being able to be any alignment etc) doesn't mean he is wrong about the rest.

[brian 333]

The town Roy's Mom exists in has all the carnal pleasures in which she wants to indulge. Eventually she will tire of lost codpieces piling up in the corner and move up to the next town. I'm guessing Eric will have 'grown up' in her eyes, and move on as well. Eventually, she will tire of whatever is going on there and move up to the next town.

This does not seem like such a horrible thing. This seems, to me, like a chance to be and do everything you ever wanted to do in life. Having done it as many times as you like, eventually you grow out of the desire to do it some more.

Example, as a kid I inherited two brothers' worth of Legos. I spent hours building things. It has been thirty years or so since I last played with Legos, and I probably would only do so if a child wants me to do so. I'm otherwise done with them.

Life is like that. You grow out of things and move on. Celestia gives you time to move on from everything you find to be unimportant. You become more and more what you find really important, and the unimportant things just don't interest you anymore.

Contrast that with the Evil afterlives, where you are tormented until you know nothing else. There is no up-side to that.

Xykon is right. Avoiding The Fire Down Below is better than any Evil afterlife. He just didn't figure that out until it was too late to do anything but buy time. Eventually, probably after he's done most of the work himself, he will go exactly where he is avoiding and face exactly what he wants to avoid.

[woweedd]

The one thing they both have in common is that they both retain their original mortal souls - with the soul being in charge, no less, unlike with vampires where the body is "controlled by a malign intelligence" which is not the original mortal soul.

While normally liches have to do the lich transformation to themselves, and have to be evil, plenty of D&D novels and splatbooks subvert this, with there being liches who aren't evil, and liches who have had the transformation forced on them somehow.

Redcloak's beliefs about the controllability of undead, may be blinding him to just how much volition and personhood they can have - including Xykon. Xykon is a person - just an incredibly vile person.

Indeed. Redcloak is deluding himself just as much as Tsukiko was about the controllability of undead. He's just better at rationalizing. That's the thing with having high Wisdom: Doesn't mean you know the right choice, sometimes, it just means you're better at rationalizing the thing you already want.

[tomandtish]

I will be interested in the sales brochure for the travel package to Ysgard.

Come to Ysgard.
Travel to a brand new plane.
Meet exciting new people...
And kill them...
And drink with them...
And be killed by them...
And drink with them....
etc.

[RatElemental]

Come to Ysgard.
Travel to a brand new plane.
Meet exciting new people...
And kill them...
And drink with them...
And be killed by them...
And drink with them....
etc.

Don't forget the tag line: Party until you can't remember your name or who you were, leaving behind all earthly attachments and sense of self to join the eternal mosh-pit and power the plane with your very essence.

[Psyren]

Life is like that. You grow out of things and move on. Celestia gives you time to move on from everything you find to be unimportant. You become more and more what you find really important, and the unimportant things just don't interest you anymore.

Contrast that with the Evil afterlives, where you are tormented until you know nothing else. There is no up-side to that.

Xykon is right. Avoiding The Fire Down Below is better than any Evil afterlife. He just didn't figure that out until it was too late to do anything but buy time. Eventually, probably after he's done most of the work himself, he will go exactly where he is avoiding and face exactly what he wants to avoid.

I'll take this a step further: Good afterlives give you as much time as you want to choose when you're ready to move on - but the kinds of people who end up in Good afterlives will eventually, over a long enough time horizon, willingly choose that sacrifice.

The one thing all the OotS gods have in common is that they need to consume mortal souls to live. Even if mortals don't know that while they're alive, they'll find that out once they cross over; it's not a secret, and even if it was, dead mortals would still notice more and more of their friends/family reaching the summit of Mount Celestia and not coming back down, or entering the heart of forest in Arborea and never re-emerging etc.

Knowing that their gods need the raw materials of their soulstuff to survive, these Good-aligned petitioners also know what will happen if they don't eventually surrender it and merge with the plane - too many of them doing so means that the Good gods will starve. And since the Evil and Neutral gods aren't nearly as permissive when it comes to waiting around for their petitioners to willingly pass on, that means that only the Good gods would die off, putting Good Itself in jeopardy. And that's something truly Good beings would very likely sacrifice themselves to prevent.

[brian 333]

I don't think it is a sacrifice, in the case of the Good deities.

We see Hel squishing dwarf souls. Maybe some of them are thankful that their torment is over, but the rest are trying to avoid the thumb. With the Good deities we see nothing like that. The souls are simply growing older and older.

Eventually, the old souls pass on. They become the energy of their plane in much the same way that people who die of old age decay and become fertilizer for the next crop.

There is no sacrifice involved. It is just the circle of life extrapolated into the afterlife.

[KorvinStarmast]

Don't forget the tag line: Party until you can't remember your name or who you were, leaving behind all earthly attachments and sense of self to join the eternal mosh-pit and power the plane with your very essence.

Be the brawl, Danny, be the brawl.

[Resileaf]

The one thing all the OotS gods have in common is that they need to consume mortal souls to live. Even if mortals don't know that while they're alive, they'll find that out once they cross over; it's not a secret, and even if it was, dead mortals would still notice more and more of their friends/family reaching the summit of Mount Celestia and not coming back down, or entering the heart of forest in Arborea and never re-emerging etc.

This again? No, the OotS gods don't eat souls, they just get get passive nourishment from their presence in their afterlife.

[Fyraltari]

This again? No, the OotS gods don't eat souls, they just get get passive nourishment from their presence in their afterlife.

The gods absorb the energy of the planes, the planes absorb the souls. It's a shortcut, but it's not essentially wrong to say the gods eat the souls.

[Beni-Kujaku]

The gods absorb the energy of the planes, the planes absorb the souls. It's a shortcut, but it's not essentially wrong to say the gods eat the souls.

About the same way plants eat people because they get nourishment from biological wastes in the ground.

[Fyraltari]

About the same way plants eat people because they get nourishment from biological wastes in the ground.

I think you've just made Metastachydium's day.

[Resileaf]

The gods absorb the energy of the planes, the planes absorb the souls. It's a shortcut, but it's not essentially wrong to say the gods eat the souls.

Not even, the gods don't absorb the energy of the planes, they absorb passive worship that the soul emits during its time in the afterlife.

About the same way plants eat people because they get nourishment from biological wastes in the ground.

It's more the way plants feed on light through photosynthesis. There's technically some eating going on, but the sun isn't being harmed by it.

[Fyraltari]

Not even, the gods don't absorb the energy of the planes, they absorb passive worship that the soul emits during its time in the afterlife.

You might want to tell to Thor and Durkon:

Thor: Plants absorb sunlight, animals eat plant, people eat animals, other people defeat them and gain levels. Then the worms eat everyone.
Durkon: An' tha Gods skim tha souls off tha top. Tha more levels, tha better the souls.
Thor: Pretty much. We don't keep making these worlds for fun.
Durkon: Then Redcloak's right. 'E's food fer us an we're food fer ye. Tha world's a big ol' soul farm.
Thor: Ok: see again, that's unnecessarily pejorative.

He then goes on to describe how goblins weren't purposefully put in the position of "food" for PC.

It remains true that the souls don't endure forevermore in the afterlives and that it is the souls being absorbed by them that allows the Planes to sustain the gods. The souls are food for the gods. Or fuel. Or any other metaphor you want.

[Resileaf]

You might want to tell to Thor and Durkon:

Thor: Plants absorb sunlight, animals eat plant, people eat animals, other people defeat them and gain levels. Then the worms eat everyone.
Durkon: An' tha Gods skim tha souls off tha top. Tha more levels, tha better the souls.
Thor: Pretty much. We don't keep making these worlds for fun.
Durkon: Then Redcloak's right. 'E's food fer us an we're food fer ye. Tha world's a big ol' soul farm.
Thor: Ok: see again, that's unnecessarily pejorative.

He then goes on to describe how goblins weren't purposefully put in the position of "food" for PC.

It remains true that the souls don't endure forevermore in the afterlives and that it is the souls being absorbed by them that allows the Planes to sustain the gods. The souls are food for the gods. Or fuel. Or any other metaphor you want.

The energy the gods feed off of does not affect the soul in any way though. They get something out of the soul being there, but it's not getting harmed from what the gods absorb.

[Fyraltari]

The energy the gods feed off of does not affect the soul in any way though. They get something out of the soul being there, but it's not getting harmed from what the gods absorb.

Assuming this holds true for Hel and her ilk, this is usually not the reason people bring up gods eating souls.
Edit: Also, if the eating metaphor is good enough for the comic, it is good enough for the discussions about the comic.

Besides, I think it's more likely the gods only absorb the energy after the soul's been completely absorbed by the plane and therefore stopped existing as a discrete entity. If true then the gods' nourishment don't bring any harm to the soul in the same way that eating a steak brings no harm to the ox (it's already dead).

[Peelee]

Also, if the eating metaphor is good enough for the comic, it is good enough for the discussions about the comic.

Thor made a distinction between absorbing and eating. Durkon then used eating as a metaphor and Thor decried that as unnecessarily pejorative.

It should not be surprising, then, that some people object to the eating metaphor as Thor did.

[Resileaf]

Yes, the food metaphor is a good starting point, but it doesn't take into account all the nuance of the system.

[Fyraltari]

Thor made a distinction between absorbing and eating. Durkon then used eating as a metaphor and Thor decried that as unnecessarily pejorative.

It should not be surprising, then, that some people object to the eating metaphor as Thor did.

No, what Thor objected to as unnecessary pejorative is the notion that goblins are lower than the PCs on this particular food web. That's what he argues against in his next sentence. Thor is not adverse to food metaphors, he says they used to explain this system with a pyramid diagram.

[Peelee]

No, what Thor objected to as unnecessary pejorative is the notion that goblins are lower than the PCs on this particular food web. That's what he argues against in his next sentence. Thor is not adverse to food metaphors, he says they used[/URL] to explain this system with a pyramid diagram.

I'm assuming the joke of "the food pyramid was a bad teaching aide" thing didn't land for you?

[Fyraltari]

I'm assuming the joke of "the food pyramid was a bad teaching aide" thing didn't land for you?

Nah it did. But the food pyramid is a bad teaching aid about food. Thor didn't get rid of it because what they were talking isn't comparable to feeding.

[Peelee]

Nah it did. But the food pyramid is a bad teaching aid about food. Thor didn't get rid of it because what they were talking isn't comparable to feeding.

Again, Thor specifically made a distinction between absorbing and eating, never said the gods ate souls, and objected to Durkons statement about humans "eating" goblins.

I don't think it's out of hand to not want to go with the eating analogy when Thor himself doesn't especially if you claim that if it's good enough for the comic it's good enough for the discussion. It's not good enough for the comic. We see that.

[dancrilis]

Durkon then used eating as a metaphor and Thor decried that as unnecessarily pejorative.

No, what Thor objected to as unnecessary pejorative is the notion that goblins are lower than the PCs on this particular food web.

I think what Thor was objecting to was Durkon calling the world 'a big ol' soul farm' - where Thor called it an ecosystem, he found boiling it down to a 'soul farm' to be pejorative and unnecessary.

As for souls as food - I don't think Thor had any real objection to that, with the understooding that it was a metaphor rather then literal, i.e things break down and are reused even souls (on consideration without the gods souls would presumedly still break down in the planes).

[Fyraltari]

Again, Thor specifically made a distinction between absorbing and eating

He really doesn't, though "Plants absorb sunlight, animals eat plants, people eat animals" treats "absorb" and "eat" as comparable if not identical.

never said the gods ate souls, and objected to Durkons statement about humans "eating" goblins.

No, he objects to the notion that goblins are food for dwarves and never the opposite. In a broader sense, he criticizes Redcloak for attributing malicious intent to an accidental design flaw (that the goblins consistently lose), i other words for failing to apply Hanlon's Razor. Thor never corrects Durkon's use of food as a metaphor . He says "pretty much", meaning that it is, for all intent and purposes, correct.
I don't think it's out of hand to not want to go with the eating analogy when Thor himself doesn't especially if you claim that if it's good enough for the comic it's good enough for the discussion. It's not good enough for the comic. We see that.[/QUOTE]

Not only is it good enough for the comic, it is good enough for the author:

I see it this way:
CG gods are those that advocate for organic and free range farms, but they are not vegetarian; they still eat you in the end .

Bingo.

And I presume everyone who has a moral problem with the gods using the mortal world to generate their sustenance will be going vegan now.

[Jasdoif]

The energy the gods feed off of does not affect the soul in any way though. They get something out of the soul being there, but it's not getting harmed from what the gods absorb.

I think of it more like RTGs; souls decay into the general substance of the plane of the afterlives, and that decay produces energy that be can tapped into...regardless of whether gods tap into it or not.

I feel like if the gods had the ability to alter the fundamental nature of souls and the afterlives, they'd have eliminated their own need to eat...or their ability to be mentally influenced by their followers across worlds. Instead, I think it's far more likely their own existences are bound by those laws of...unnature?

No, what Thor objected to as unnecessary pejorative is the notion that goblins are lower than the PCs on this particular food web. That's what he argues against in his next sentence.

I thought Thor was responding to the "world's a soul farm" bit as unnecessarily pejorative (specifically the implication that Thor only cares about his followers for how much he can eat, I imagine), and opened the next sentence with "The point is" to move the topic of conversation to what he wanted to talk about (which, funnily enough, is a less pejorative variant of "You're missing the point" as an opener).

[Psyren]

This again? No, the OotS gods don't eat souls, they just get get passive nourishment from their presence in their afterlife.

"Eventually repurpose into an alignment battery," then, if "consume" is distasteful. My larger point is that souls don't stay as the discrete entities they were as mortals forever, and all the afterlives are designed to do that. The Good ones are only unique in that they give their souls total agency in the matter, rather than being forced into it via eternal torture, violence, monotony, confusion etc. And for me at least, that inherent volition makes all the difference.

EDIT: Thanks for the Giant quote, Fyraltari

About the same way plants eat people because they get nourishment from biological wastes in the ground.

...Yes? And what do you suppose would happen if every plant stayed a plant forever with none of them ever returning to the soil? Eventually, the soil they were planted in would fail.