Mikaze
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Evil Midnight Lurker wrote:
...I really should get this out of my system. Sorry for the ranting, but this is a big hot-button for me... it's essentially the only religious belief I even have, the hope that eternal souls exist and there's some kind of afterlife where something that humans could recognize as justice gets done. (I can't manage to have faith in anything. Hope's all I've got.) The idea of a world in which souls are known to exist, that the afterlife is real, and then that it's possible to be denied that...? GAH. It's horrifying. It's not right! Even in a fictional world written by people who aren't me and over which I have no control, and I know how egotistical and intrusive that makes me seem, sorry. :)
A little late in the reply, but...
Where did the multiverse came from? Where did all the Gods and other powers were born from? If there is a higher -I mean an utterly higher- intellect and power who was interested in creating the whole gear of the multiverse, this same intellect might never want a single soul to be truly erased. Maybe the soul-state in the multiverse is for some other "outer-otherworld" the very same as what the bodily life in the Material World is for the outer planes. Thus, a Daemon who destroys a soul would be no different (and no less deluded) than an ignorant murderer who thinks his victims are removed from exsistance.
To make a long story short, there could be a third and hidden level of existance. More hidden than the second one is for us in the real world. A level upon which the Daemons have no power, and possibly no knowledge of.
This is very close to how I run my multiverse:
(My players probably shouldn't read)
The Golarion-verse is kind of a microcosm of the Planescape multiverse which is a microcosm of an even larger multiverse and so on and so on. There are multiple linked and chained levels of existance, both "higher" and "lower" and to the side.
All souls are truly indestructible. There are plenty of awful things that can be done with them: they can be split, splintered, shattered, merged, all sorts of shenanigans. But they can't be unmade.
Fiends, celestials, etc that are "destroyed" really usually just go in one of those directions unless they merge with their home planes for a time. Souls that are devoured by demons and devils and the like roughly merge with them, adding to the spiritual amalgam until the fiend is slain and all the piecemal souls can be freed.
Souls that are "destroyed" by things like daemons, devourers, spheres of annihilation and the like are shunted into the Outer Dark, frozen in the void like vestiges. Bringing those souls back is hard but not impossible. There are dangerous spells like eversion and related effects that can be used to tear daemons and similar beings inside-out, restoring what they have taken from the multiverse while shunting them into the Outer Dark. This can be done with spheres of annihilation as well, but it tears every bit of matter that sphere had destroyed back into reality in an instant, which could be disastrous in and of itself.
Not all of this is exactly common knowledge though. Even some of the gods are in the dark about it.
MY PLAYERS REALLY NEED TO STAY OUT:
Abaddon and its daemons are actually an ongoing gambit by the as yet undiscovered baernoloths for some inscrutable purpose. And it's not one that's meant to last forever. The daemons are so consumed by their suicidal nihilism that they don't realize they're just the fall guys for their creators. Abaddon is either going to reach a critical mass once enough souls are taken, or will be wiped out entirely by rest of a vengeful multiverse, and all that's going to be left in its place is a barren, blasted, gray waste. And that's when the baernoloths will start the next phase of their plan.
There's an ongoing and unlikely loose divine alliance between Sarenrae, Gorum, and Zon-Kuthon dealing with the matters of apocalyptic threats to reality. Running off ancient prophecy and whispers from whatever did what to Dou-Bral(The Lady of Pain had something to do with it), these three deities are planning on neutralizing the greatest threats to their multiverse. Sarenrae is the guiding force behind the alliance, Gorum is set to continually be refined and reforged into the ultimate weapon against Rovagug, and Zon-Kuthon is set to show the daemons and Groetus the lie of oblivion and the truth, wonder, and pain of existance. Mortal followers of these gods that carry out their will regarding this alliance are typically seen as heretics to varying degrees by the rest of the faithful.
This alliance might get used to fuel a "bad future" game, running with the idea of Zon-Kuthon, after having flayed Groetus alive, is given the momentum to do to the rest of the multiverse what was done to him as Dou-Bral.