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A while back there was a thread that turned to alignment and human(oid) sacrifice and eventually about whether or not the souls of those sacrificed went to the deity/demon lord/archdevil/whatever being honored. I think the general consensus was that those souls always go to their appropriate afterlife unless unusual measures were taken in the ritual, and that there were also other ways to doom a soul to one of the "lower" planes after death that circumvented their judgment by Pharasma(and thus their being sent to the appropriate plane).
For the purposes of plot hook/world building fuel, just how many ways are there for this to happen to people regardless of deed or alignment, and how should this affect the setting?
Off the top of my head:
There's at least one type of evil altar-construct creature that sends anyone sacrificed upon it to whatever deity or fiend it is dedicated to. The name escapes me, Black _______ I think. I believe it's from the Council of Thieves Bestiary, but not in the actual AP.
There's a number of creatures in the Bestiary and Bestiary 2 capable of doing this to people, such as the Balor Lord that can instantly turn you into a demon. There's the Cacodaemon which is possiblly frighteningly common(certainly moreso than Balor Lords) and can serve as familiars. And all they have to do is be near someone when they die, then bam, instant soul gem ripe for the taking. There's at least one other daemon that does the same thing, the Thanatodaemon I believe.
Oh, and this is fun. The spell Hellfire Ray from the Cheliax book. If it kills the target, they possibly sent instantlly to hell. I can't remember the spell level entirely, but the notion of such power being in the hands of a mortal makes it even more terrifying in many ways than knowing a fiend can do it. Have someone petty and cruel enough, and a trip to perdition could just be a word and fingerpoint away.
I know there's a corruptive disease/condition originating from the Worldwound of a demonic nature that's easy to pick up just by going anywhere within that zone's borders, but I don't remember anything about it harming the soul. Directly at least. Could be wrong though.
I'm not entirely certain, but I think there has been mention of fiendish pacts passing the price down to the original signer's descendants. While I'm pretty sure Pharasma and most every non-evil deity frowns on that, does that "sins of the father" clause actually work in the Golarion-verse? Curses certainly pass down but this is quite a bit more harsh, all things considered.
That's all that stands out right now. Plenty of ways to kickstart an Orpheus plotline or a "let's raid hell and punch devils" adventure. But what about the finer details this stuff would affect?
Are Pharasma's servants pretty much expected to kill anyone known to have used hellfire ray on sight? How do inhereted contracts get squared with the current patron deities of pact-bound descendants? If there are demons powerful enough to flatout turn people into demons against their will, are there celestials who exist to heal those wounded souls?
How does one react if they know that despite a life spent in saintly virtue or apathetic meh-ness, they could be damned through no fault of their own? What measures do they take and how does this affect their culture?
When you sacrifice someone to an evil deity/demon lord/ archdevil, if the sacrified soul doesn't go to the honored deity, what's the point of doing a sacrifice ??
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To be clear, are you looking for all ideas as to how a soul might be halted from arrival at its preferred afterlife? Or all printed mechanisms of achieving this end?
In the purely hypothetical side, no doubt an alchemist of sufficient quality could craft a tincture that imprisons the soul within the body upon death.
On the setting speculation side of things, I imagine Pharasma has some inquisitors that specifically seek out and capture/eliminate creatures, items and knowledge of how to circumvent her judgment. They are probably ... testy ... about spells like Hellfire Ray.
I do, however, want to keep this an "evil only" technology. Enabling good deities or beings to snap up souls and "save" them has unfortunate implications, while demonic and infernal trickery for soul possession/consumption is an old standby.
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When you sacrifice someone to an evil deity/demon lord/ archdevil, if the sacrified soul doesn't go to the honored deity, what's the point of doing a sacrifice ??
Traditionally, and by that I mean I read it somewhere once, a massive amount of energy (the energy that would have fueled the sacrifices continued life) is released upon death. I suppose a ritual would gather that energy and send it on to the evil deity/demon lord/archdevil. Alternatively maybe the evil entity just likes killing in its name and enjoys ritual murder.
[off topic]
In the most recent Dresden Files novel, one of the characters is at risk of death so a massively powerful angel turns up solely to escort his soul to its proper resting place. I though that was a pretty cool idea.
[/off topic]
Pharasma might have servants that are specifically tasked with traveling to the lower planes and recovering stolen/misappropriated souls.
Personally I feel that any effect that steals or transforms a soul should be a plot device and not thrown about lightly, but thats me.
Mikaze, you make the best threads!
I do, however, want to keep this an "evil only" technology. Enabling good deities or beings to snap up souls and "save" them has unfortunate implications, while demonic and infernal trickery for soul possession/consumption is an old standby.
I tend to agree with you in that it should be mostly evil's domain. That said, there's precedent for good redeeming evil "by any means necessary" as well. In the Book of Exalted Deeds, for example, there's a ninth level spell that actually captures any creature and places it in a gem for something akin to a year where they "learn" about being good, losing their old abilities and gaining new "good" ones in their place. End of the year, the gem shatters and they've got a shiny new template and a good alignment (and are missing many of their other abilities). Now, don't get me wrong. Both the spell and the template are terrible (in both implication and power: seriously, why does the Red Dragon have to lose all its sorcerer spells just because he's good now?). But the precedent is there.
It's also possible to create a magic trap (with the consecrated spell feat so it doesn't affect good creatures) that activates a spell when someone comes across it called "Create Archon", with the [good] descriptor attached that drains 1d4 point of CON (IIRC) each casting. It creates a new Lantern Archon from that interaction. It's not much of a stretch that aggressive anti-evil types (even those who are "against evil" that are themselves evil, such as Dexter Morgan) would weaponize this stuff and deploy it wherever they could. Either a) from accidental exposure/unintentional repeated casting of a [good] spell, evil creatures become good, or an evil creature dies and you get [their CON score number] of good creatures in their stead. It's like a win/win.
(This is especially be nasty/effective, if you place some sort of containment effect on top of it to prevent them from leaving, with an automatic atonement cast to bring the person in question over to the side of good, or die, and since no compulsions are involved it should work)
Finally, proficient use of Diplomacy with a captured, non-good creature could, if successful over a long period, be used to alter the alignment (I believe seven opposed by will saves over the course of a month?). Not as egregious, but similarly, a kind of "forced" alignment change via the "power of good" against a "helpless evil".
Nonetheless, all this is 3.x, not Pathfinder, so it's iffy at best.
Probably the worst item was an Idol of Apostasy in, I think, Dragons of Faerun that instantly changed any good viewer to the opposite alignment (via the Remorseless Charm spell). This could, by RAW, be theoretically reversed (yes, I believe "theory by RAW" applies in this case, as it wasn't an artifact and even many inherently evil items could be reversed according to the BoED, and, IIRC, it didn't limit itself to the specific items listed there).
I don't know, Mikaze, if you want only Pathfinder stuff, or not.
Other, weaker, possibilities include a Helm of Opposite Alignment, certain kinds of lycanthrope, and other things that change alignment against the will and thus 'condemn an innocent', although it's not as direct as the kinds you're mentioning.
I think you mentioned most of the ones I was aware of.
NEARLY INSTANT EDIT (followed by another for spelling): Wait! I just thought of the Pit Fiend Duke's ability to make ghosts. It's not as powerful as the Balor's ability to make a new loyal demon, and it doesn't fit perfectly, as the Pit Fiend can only make ghosts and only a limited number of them are indentured (his CHA-mod, I believe), but there's that. Also the Nabasu's death gaze creates ghouls (which have the original soul, IIRC, because they're sentient) and it's higher form ("Vrolikai" from the Bestiary 2) create Juju Zombies instead. It's also implied that souls in hell are tortured until they become lemures, meaning they don't start out instant devils, so, you know, it may be possible to do things that way - bring an innocent "soul" to Hell, and it's reforged into a devil.
EDIT AGAIN:
Soul Eaters from Bestiary 2 - are terrible indeed! They don't condemn to another plane, per se, but they consume everything and make it a part of themselves forever.
EDIT PART THE THIRD:
Core example of sacrifice in play
non-Core, but still Paizo example
Sadly, the core is weak for an argument-standpoint, and the fan stuff is... well, not official. The non-core Paizo stuff, however, points out "commodities" which might be useful in coming up with a picture of RAI.
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To be clear, are you looking for all ideas as to how a soul might be halted from arrival at its preferred afterlife? Or all printed mechanisms of achieving this end?
Basically all of the in-universe ways this can happen, but also ideas on how the world setting would react. Mainly for brainstorming and ideas on how to kick off "rescue from hell" plots at different levels and in different flavors.
I do, however, want to keep this an "evil only" technology. Enabling good deities or beings to snap up souls and "save" them has unfortunate implications, while demonic and infernal trickery for soul possession/consumption is an old standby.
I'd generally agree on good not touching these tactics, for many of the same reasons sanctify the wicked doesn't really click as written. Some CN proteans perhaps, but none "higher" than that.
Imagining the alchemist route as a sort of "living death" poison now...
The whole horrific point of demonic sacrifice is the condemnation/annihilation of an innocent soul. It's a classic trope in a lot of genres. One of Victor Von Doom's obsessions after all was rescuing his mother's soul from Mephisto's Hell. A diety can't claim a soul from another power's home domain, and a human sacrifice is an express ticket there. General rule I've always applied that the only rescue for such souls, is for heroes to go there directly to contest ownership.
That's how it works in many settings, but in Golarion, IIRC, unless certain unusual measures are taken, the souls of the dead check in with Pharasma first. That or they go restless...
Otherwise there wouldn't be much point to that black altar...thing whose name I really need to look up.
** spoiler omitted **...
Just a lot of IMO here mind: I always had to change sanctify the wicked to make it work for me. A lot of folks have criticized it as simply being mindrape with a [Good] descriptor rather htan [Evil]. While the flavor of the spell spares it from being exactly that, it does get uncomfortably close to brainwashing territory. At least as far as "you fail that save and you're done" goes. Redemption and damnation need choice to mean something, certainly the first one, which makes the "damned innocent" theme so tragic(and likely gets good fightin' mad).
Basically I just had it only usable on beings that truly did want redemption. For beings like undead tormented by unnatural hunger or hatred or risen/rising fiends* whose very nature makes being good hurt, sanctify the wicked was a way to recalibrate the entirety of their being with the core of their souls, that bit that yearned to be something else. Kind of makes it a super-mega-atonement spell I guess.
Though I wonder if the element of choice should be waived if it's a matter of "resetting" a soul that has been forcibly changed against its will to begin with. Probably something celestials may very well get into barfights over...
*Rising fiends being the answer to falling angels after all, free will and all that. I figure they're typically born from those souls that truly did regret how far they had fallen or possibly even these innocent souls unjustly taken by the lower planes.
Do agree that Team Good could engage in redemption tactics that aren't nice though. Oubliettes in the heavens holding fiends that are known to have formed from souls unjustly twisted into fiends are a part of my homebrew after all. ;) (hell, one of 'em wound up becoming the goddess of redemption for the setting)
I always forget the Helm of Opposite Alignment. What a horrifying item that is when you really think about it. Actually just had a player almost get nailed with that effect by a Deck of Many Things variant. He drew that and another card that knocked him down a level. He spent his one discard immediately to dodge the alignment change in favor of whatever else the next card would throw at him, less than a day before the BBEG throwdown. Now I'm imagining schisms in Sarenrae's church all about this one item, between the mainstream and the extreme Dawncult. IIRC, Sarenrae did inherit her former boss' job as the safekeeper of free will...
Checkin' those links after work, thanks!
*Rising fiends being the answer to falling angels after all, free will and all that. I figure they're typically born from those souls that truly did regret how far they had fallen or possibly even these innocent souls unjustly taken by the lower planes.
Good question, since risen fiends exist, albeit crazy rare. Is it a case of free will, or might it be due to "flaws" or "imperfections" in the rendered down evil of their souls? Take for instance a devil formed from the souls of a mortal damned to hell by contract who regreted their deal, or a daemon formed from the rendered down soul-stuff of a hundred thousand different souls from a mortal city dragged into Abaddon who still hears the echoes of the final prayers for mercy from its metaphysical constituent parts. Such situations might prime a fiend for future redemption.
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Very good point on such rituals being as much if not more about the performer than the victim. Especially if they get initiates in on it. Get 'em started on that downward spiral early.
Good question, since risen fiends exist, albeit crazy rare. Is it a case of free will, or might it be due to "flaws" or "imperfections" in the rendered down evil of their souls? Take for instance a devil formed from the souls of a mortal damned to hell by contract who regreted their deal, or a daemon formed from the rendered down soul-stuff of a hundred thousand different souls from a mortal city dragged into Abaddon who still hears the echoes of the final prayers for mercy from its metaphysical constituent parts. Such situations might prime a fiend for future redemption.
Huh. And here I thought daemons weren't made from mortal souls at all(making them more alien than even the demons and devils). Noted! :)
Keeping that amalgamation-of-a-city's-souls idea in mind too...
Huh. And here I thought daemons weren't made from mortal souls at all(making them more alien than even the demons and devils). Noted! :)Keeping that amalgamation-of-a-city's-souls idea in mind too...
You'll find out the details soon enough (and their internal debate on that question and its ramifications). Plus I don't know if said details got changed during editing. ;)
Wow, I write a lot. I get ninja'd often, too. Hm. I'm sure there's no correlation. Also, that certainly doesn't have anything to do with the points I make below (OR DOES IT?!?!?). Incidentally, you can also substitute "ethics" and "law verses chaos" for any argument made herein and it would still be applicable.
NEW MENTION: hypnotism. It still works that way. Also, simulacrum effectively creates a new creature (sort of) who, at least the Devs think, can change their alignment and alter themselves like normal people... ish. It's kind of vague. But there's that too.
As far as Sanctify the Wicked being mindrape with [good] descriptor, I agree, it's basically exactly that. I always had the feeling that it was good's "last ditch" effort for something that was wrongfully turned and impossibly returned without such extreme measures... the problem, of course, being that it doesn't work on outsiders, if I recall. Meaning it's kind of useless.
Oddly enough, the only place I've seen it used in fiction (or rather what was clearly a variant of it, as the character who received it didn't lose their magic), not only was it the most horrible thing ever*, but it was also used on an outsider. So, you know, it was never actually used in fiction.
It was also kind of ruined due to
Another character, in a slightly modified 4E has gained the power to effectively perma-friend someone. He uses this against evil creatures to influence their behavior and, hopefully, in the end, their alignment. He's tried it twice so far. It hasn't worked yet, though he's not been at this too long. He's now got two evil friends who he's preventing from doing evil things. Joy.
This brings up another question: what is the nature of free will in the first place? One could (and indeed it often is) posit(ed) that free will is nothing but an illusion brought on by the "sentience effect" and hopelessly a slave to our environment. No, not just the locale/ethnic group/culture in which we were raised, but rather everything, ranging from star-radiation to specific rotation of the planet, to the star's light bouncing in peculiar waves off atoms. What, then, is "free", when it's all actually determined by everything else: does nothing matter if we don't have the choice, but only a (very effective) illusion of it?
Another important question: what is the nature of good and evil? What are these things? What defines them? What shapes them and gives them purpose? We all agree (well, most of us agree) that they exist (and in the game they certainly do) but what makes them them? Is there anything higher than alignment? Even the deities seem subject to it, so they cannot legislate morality**, so it must be greater than they. But what is morality? What makes something moral? Nature? The world is implied to be akin to a cosmic accident by creatures who are, at best, shown to be chaotic neutral (twice-over, really). Why would anything matter in the face of that (unless, again, that could be overcome)? And if they can be overcome, what is good, but the usurper, the surge of chaos... literally a kind of cancer that devours the core of reality from within (as the Proteans actually argue is true)?
Anyway, it's all a bit obscure. Most games don't get that deeply into it, of course, and if they do, they leave shortly thereafter. It becomes a "Big Lipped Alligator" moment, if you will. And then everyone has arguments online.
1) MOST people would be unaware that this could happen, or have a lack of knowledge or understanding such that they'd leave it to more learned scholars (most of whom, lacking the knowledge or understanding themselves, simply enforce the status quo).
2) Those who do know would:
... 2a) respond with faith in their chosen deity/philosophy (including atheism) and generally ignore the problem, possibly even convincing themselves of comfortable lies, thus maintaining the status quo (this being the most likely, as that's what sanity kind of does for you - let you get on with things, even if it doesn't seem like you should)
... 2b) respond with fear and worry, spiraling into madness induced by doubt (slightly less likely, but very possible, as most people have the ability to ignore most facets of reality they don't like, and those few who don't often have mental problems because they constantly obsess over what they don't like - this is the doomsayer mad prophet who visits Groeteus, most likely)
... 2c) respond with acceptance and even determination and, while not ignoring it, effectively behaving as if it didn't exist (from the outside) while actually knowing and living with acceptance of the darkest of truths, both maintaining the public status quo (very difficult to do, and even those who maintain some complete honesty often find themselves mentally lying to themselves about something to make themselves more comfortable, so relatively rare)
... ... 2c-and-a-half) publicly or privately work to correct or manipulate (or find and instruct those who can) the "imbalance" for their own gain (usually this would be relegated to outsiders themselves, working behind the scenes, keeping things from mortals, not in order to lie, but in order to prevent calamity and mass-destruction and hysteria, or, alternatively, to allow them to take advantage unmolested, effectively leaving both good and evil with the desire not to make this public knowledge).
So, you know, magic and outsiders*** excluded, kind of like real life. Sure, there'd be a ton of people who debate things, but most people - and probably all of us to a certain extent - are comfortable with little lies about the nature of the universe. We tell them to ourselves, consciously or not, to keep us sane and happy and doing what we want to do. The bigger the problem we know of, the fewer the people who dwell on it.
** Unless you're talking about 4E-core-world presumptions, in which case they kind of can and are kind of the source of everything-ish, except for physical reality which they kind of stole, and, of course, madness, which kind of infected some of 'em and created the abyss. Also, they can be overcome and replaced by mortals, even though they're the origin of all mortal souls. Sort of. It's complicated. So, you know, that sentence applies to Golarion.
*** Debatable, and I, personally believe in Divinity, specifically One Who Is far beyond the scope of anything any fantasy-story can really utilize, but for purposes of this conversation, "outsiders", as generally presented in Golarion, don't exist in the real world, to our knowledge.
EDITED: for word choice under the single asterisk above. ("victims" to "sins" in one sentence)
Huh. And here I thought daemons weren't made from mortal souls at all(making them more alien than even the demons and devils).
That's really funny: I got the exact opposite impression, that daemons were the first evil mortals to die and transform - later accidentally creating demons, and possibly half-inspiring Asmodeus before that to create devils from soul-stuff.
That's one reason they view existence as a curse, and seek to destroy and devour mortals... to end existence.
Also, Mr. Stewart, some of your concepts are crazy awesome right there. Wow, that's terrific.
Of course, the problem with all this is that since innocence, faith, and goodness are of no actual protective value against being damned to Hell or having your soul outright destroyed... well, that is the problem. What are the good deities and outsiders doing? It seems that only Pharasma and the agathions really have a focus on making sure souls get where they're supposed to go, and it's pretty clear that their efforts aren't enough.
It's not just horrible, it's nauseatingly loathsome and vile in a way that makes me hate, not the fiends, but the authors.
Universes should NOT be ALLOWED to work this way. >.<#
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Of course, the problem with all this is that since innocence, faith, and goodness are of no actual protective value against being damned to Hell or having your soul outright destroyed... well, that is the problem.
This, IMO, is another example of alignment being made irrelevant by mechanics. If one chooses to be good (or evil, whatever) and can yet be arbitrarily shoved into another afterlife, it makes the choice of alignment pretty much meaningless, and the role of Pharasma an impotent waste of time, since she can't stop souls from being poached away.
It's slightly less silly than the idea, in Classic Horrors Revisited, that casting animate dead can steal souls out of heaven or hell and trap them in their rotting corpses, but it still makes hash out of the entire point of alignment.
I don't mind so much if ridiculously powerful effects, such as a Balor or Pit Fiend might be able to use, can do this sort of thing, but if some 1st level Adept in service to Lamashtu can stick a knife in the heart of a paladin and send his soul screaming to the Abyss, that's lame. Cacodaemons, IMO, get away with it too cheaply as well.
No 3 HD daemon, IMO, should be able to cheat Pharasma at her job...
Pharasma, already not my favorite god, is made to be harsh, reactionary, fond of tossing souls to Groetus, etc. *and* totally sucky at her job, if there are too many (and too easy) means of robbing her blind and scoffing at her 'laws.'
Mythologically, travel to an afterlife is seen as a journey one makes, and a result of one's choices in life. Whether it be taking a skiff across the river, or climbing the world tree, it's rarely portrayed in myth as people getting arbitrarily shoved into other realms without in some way *choosing,* *deserving* or *working towards* that end.
When someone is snatched away unjustly, it is something done by a figure like Hades himself, and, even then, Persephone has to ingest something from the underworld to become even partially trapped there.
Something like that, coming from the god of the underworld itself, seems more palatable to me than it being a power that some dude's familiar can pull off.
Of course, the problem with all this is that since innocence, faith, and goodness are of no actual protective value against being damned to Hell or having your soul outright destroyed... well, that is the problem. What are the good deities and outsiders doing? It seems that only Pharasma and the agathions really have a focus on making sure souls get where they're supposed to go, and it's pretty clear that their efforts aren't enough.
It's not just horrible, it's nauseatingly loathsome and vile in a way that makes me hate, not the fiends, but the authors.
Universes should NOT be ALLOWED to work this way. >.<#
It's quite possible that the various assorted good (EDIT: and neutral!) deities are "working on it". If the omniverse has some serious issues (such as being "created" via what is effectively a randomized process) than the act of instilling order - taming it, if you will - is necessarily* a long one. It presents a case for a kind of theistic evolution, one that ascribes that Evil (or at least Chaotic "exceptionalism"-as-the-norm) is present and inherent, but that Good (and/or Order) are making inroads in altering the fundamental "flaws" of a pre-broken existence.
In fact, quite a large number of creatures traverse the ether, guarding the soul streams (on both sides of the moral alignment spectrum), making sure they get to Pharasma for proper judgement. This indicates to me that there is a great deal of care and, despite the power of wickedness to corrupt it, there are mighty forces at work to correct this imbalance over-all.
The idea of a pre-broken existence isn't a new one, and authors need to borrow from tropes, otherwise they're not writing much. In this case, they took a fine trope and have followed it to its logical conclusion, especially given that people can alter reality as it suits them anyway, including the minds and spirits of others. In a world with magic this powerful, it's bound to happen this way. Ask yourself, if the reverse was true, would it be worse or better or with no change at all in your opinion?
FURTHER FOOD-FOR-THOUGHT: Does destroying a fiend (a creature who is the result of its alignment) by way of a Create Archon-trap (or similar effect, if that doesn't exist), thus literally converting it's willful soul-stuff/life-force from evil (which all of its component essences chose) to lawful good (which none of them did) count as either a violation of free will or of the "good" clause?
*Okay, I admit that this is not true. However, given, as we are, apparently finite deities, it is true, although the definition of "long" is debatable depending on the how finite the deities are and how big the "omniverse" in question is and how many problems there are to fix.
EDIT:
Some good insights
There's also the question of wealth, and TRUE VALUES. We're currently picking away at the weak underside of a gaming system in terms of morality. Why, exactly, does Wish require diamonds? What about Raise Dead or Resurrection? What happens to those gem stones to make them vanish? What's evil about onyxes that they are used in Animate Dead? What's valuable to an outsider about your gold given to them which they could probably dig more of far easier and more cheaply on the plane of earth (or better yet adamantine or other "rare" materials)?
In part it's "good story seeds" and in part it's "game balance". Both of these are inherent in this question - real question isn't "Do we like it?", but "What effect does this have on the world since it's a part of it?".
Also, I'd hardly say Pharasma's bad at her job. She's a neutral deity. Not lawful. Not good. Not evil. Neutral. She can generally get away with what she wants. She'll be the judge of what's the 'proper' way to deal with dead souls - she, she's the deity of death. If you have any issues with the way she's doing the job, you can feel free to take them up with her when it's your time in line. :)
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I love these boards. :)
On the run at the moment, but...
Huh. And here I thought daemons weren't made from mortal souls at all(making them more alien than even the demons and devils).That's really funny: I got the exact opposite impression, that daemons were the first evil mortals to die and transform - later accidentally creating demons, and possibly half-inspiring Asmodeus before that to create devils from soul-stuff.
That's one reason they view existence as a curse, and seek to destroy and devour mortals... to end existence.
Also, Mr. Stewart, some of your concepts are crazy awesome right there. Wow, that's terrific.
Yeah, I thought they were just anthropomorphic personifications of nihilism born from a mix of bad mojo-laden protoplanar stuff and the experiences of mortal death echoing across the planes. Thought of it as making them the one true Kill On Sight race for everybody and that they had no capacity to be anything more than what they already were, since they had no root in souls and whatnot(which it now turns out they do, maybe. Gotta read that book Todd! :) )
Of course, the problem with all this is that since innocence, faith, and goodness are of no actual protective value against being damned to Hell or having your soul outright destroyed... well, that is the problem. What are the good deities and outsiders doing? It seems that only Pharasma and the agathions really have a focus on making sure souls get where they're supposed to go, and it's pretty clear that their efforts aren't enough.
It's not just horrible, it's nauseatingly loathsome and vile in a way that makes me hate, not the fiends, but the authors.
Universes should NOT be ALLOWED to work this way. >.<#
I don't think it's an lack of action as much as coverage in the material. On the soul-destroying front, you at least have everyone taking that matter seriously, with angels working alongside even some devils and demons to keep the daemons at bay. (have to admit, they've done a good job of setting daemons up to be the most hated beings in-universe and out of it).
As for the damned, well at least there's still the capacity for hope that things may yet change. Sarenrae and Shelyn not giving up on turning the evil gods away from...er, evil...seems to lend credence to that. They wouldn't bother if there wasn't any hope for them, and if there's hope for those guys, then surely there is for the rest. And someone's gotta be working on that.
Cacodaemons, IMO, get away with it too cheaply as well.
No 3 HD daemon, IMO, should be able to cheat Pharasma at her job...
Especially considering that many of us have chainsawed thousands of those things to death back in Doom. ;)
Have to agree that Pharasma really needs a boost. Though she may have already gotten one....I'm going to be playing in Carrion Crown so I haven't been able to read the new stuff about her or her psychopomps...
But man the idea of a flock...uh...murder of Vanths falling upon daemons and ripping them inside out like soul-stuffed pinatas is just satisfying. :)
And agreed on how animate dead shouldn't work that way. I took that bit as a bit of in-universe speculation and just used it as that. Not sure if it was intended that way or not, but I remember getting the feeling it was, and it messes with Pharasma a bit less.
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Have to agree that Pharasma really needs a boost. Though she may have already gotten one....I'm going to be playing in Carrion Crown so I haven't been able to read the new stuff about her or her psychopomps...
Good luck with that. There's a section in the 2nd adventure that might have a properly roleplayed cleric of Pharasma working at cross-purposes with the adventure's stated goal, to the frustration of all.
And agreed on how animate dead shouldn't work that way. I took that bit as a bit of in-universe speculation and just used it as that. Not sure if it was intended that way or not, but I remember getting the feeling it was, and it messes with Pharasma a bit less.
When I brought it up in a thread, James Jacobs said that he completely disagreed with the authors interpretation in Classic Horrors, but he also consistently agreed with the fans who said that same exact thing whenever we had 'necromancy evil?' type discussions, so I'm not sure about his final position on that subject.
Huh, I somehow missed/ignored that part of animate dead, probably because I've been running under the impression that undead created with that spell have no soul: only those sentient undead have (or are) a soul. So apparently Classic Horrors Revisited has changed that? Ew.
That said, it's a third level spell. That means a sixth level caster, at least, or eighth if you're an Adept (regardless of how awesome your picture on the PFSRD might be). That's only one level lower (or one level higher, if you're an adept) than gaining a cacodaemon as a familiar.
Really, one reason why it might seem so overwhelming is that we're looking at the world through the lens that sixth is "low" level. And in Golarion it kind of is. BUT! That's not entirely true in most campaign settings, as I understand (especially things like Eberron). To clarify, Golarion is neither of terribly high, nor terribly low level, over-all, but 6th-8th level characters are common enough that this could be a problem. I suppose one bar on this is that a) necromancy is icky and b) daemons are icky, making them kind of rare for those reasons alone, and Pharasma's basically warring against them both* making them less acceptable to anyone sane (because they'll all visit Pharasma eventually).
Regardless, I can see the problem if a (relatively) low level spell and a low level familiar. That's unfortunate.
* To a point - she's not out-and-out warring with all daemons, considering some come right up to her spire, but she's got her psychopomps running around to prevent their kind from being successful, and her aeons running around to balance out whatever they're doing.
EDIT: I can't find it now, but I could swear I read somewhere fairly recently that aeons, in Golarion, are Pharasma's servants (instead of the "Monad" mentioned in Bestiary 2... effectively implying that somehow Pharasma is the "Monad" or is its greatest servant, whichever).
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Classic Horrors Revisited didn't explicitly change it IIRC. It was mostly flavor info in a sidebar explaining why mindless undead and making them are evil in the Golarion-verse.(as much as I would have preferred leaving it a bit more grey, though that same sidebar had mentions of risen fiends and good intelligent undead, so hey). It was all "in character" though, so I don't think it was rock solid fact. Or at least that's not how it came across to me.
EDIT-Aren't daemons banned from visiting the Boneyard? Thought they were, but it's been a while. My perspective of "everyone hates daemons" might be coloring that memory.
Classic Horrors Revisited didn't explicitly change it IIRC. It was mostly flavor info in a sidebar explaining why mindless undead and making them are evil in the Golarion-verse.(as much as I would have preferred leaving it a bit more grey, though that same sidebar had mentions of risen fiends and good intelligent undead, so hey). It was all "in character" though, so I don't think it was rock solid fact. Or at least that's not how it came across to me.
Perhaps. In-character is okay, I suppose. Still, difficult to accept.
EDIT-Aren't daemons banned from visiting the Boneyard? Thought they were, but it's been a while. My perspective of "everyone hates daemons" might be coloring that memory.
Probably most daemons? I don't know, but IIRC, thanatos daemons can ply the styx up to the base of Pharasma's area, as they are the ferrymen of the neutral evil dead. I always kind of supposed that they just ferried the neutral evil souls off to Abbadon {Spelling? Guh.} or stupid souls off to wherever the styx went, so long as their price was paid (and they had no reason to betray whoever).
EDIT-Aren't daemons banned from visiting the Boneyard? Thought they were, but it's been a while. My perspective of "everyone hates daemons" might be coloring that memory.
Yep, they're banned from stepping foot inside of the Boneyard.
Now imagine the gate from the Boneyard to Abaddon in the Devouring Court like a stone archway containing a black membrane, warped and distorted like choppy water from the pounding of grasping hands, and pushed in by extended claws and leering, screaming, fanatical faces. They aren't allowed in, but they're waiting just on the other side of that gate for the ones being sent to them. And they're hungry.
Yeah, Pharasma's not letting that in. :)
There's a tension in our-world folklore and folk religion between a model in which damnation is something you do to yourself, and one in which it's something that's done to you. "Even a man who is pure and good/And says his prayers at night/Can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms/And the autumn moon shines bright." The defenses against having damnation done to you *can* involve being pure and good, but often they are more along the lines of morally-neutral protective magic--garlic can literally save your soul--or somehow winning the protection of a greater being.
The two models are in conflict in our world, and it seems to me that they can be in conflict in Golarion as well. It might be metaphysically *right* that damnation can only be accomplished by your own choices, while not being entirely pragmatically true in the world as it stands. Or the apparent damnations of the innocent may all be flawed damnations, which is the view most of my good PCs have held. Asmodei may claim your innocent soul, but by the very nature of things, his hold over you is innately flawed and someday you may rebel, escape, or be rescued.
I am really happy to see Paizo doing more with redemption. In their early APs (especially pre-Pathfinder) good people and creatures fell with great regularity but redemption seemed to be a pipe dream. One AP has a GM note for its final scene to the effect of: "The players may think that such and such is evidence that the BBG could be redeemed-- but they're wrong, he can't." Yucch. I played a paladin in that particular campaign who eventually became an ex-paladin, broken under the cumulative weight of so much evidence that evil is stronger than good. (And yes, someone with an adamantine dedication to goodness could have dealt with that realization; but she wasn't quite strong enough.)
My lead _CoT_ character is a heavy-duty enchantment sorceress, and she routinely considers every captive as potential recruitment fodder. She is not good herself (far from it) but she does represent relative sanity and stability compared to where most of her captives come from. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes she fails: she routinely hits things like "being a demon cultist has freed me from the need to discipline my worst passions, and actually I don't know how to do it anymore". Those types get fed to an otyugh. (She is interested in gaining recruits, not in saving souls.) Is it moral to use suggestion and charm to these ends? She doesn't care, but if she did it would be an interesting argument. I think she'd say that she has no power to force a moral transformation against a genuine will to remain true to oneself: it's more a matter of strengthening some already-present impulses and weakening others. (As is, slowly and insidiously, happening to her. She's the only character I've ever had who notices that she has temptations to be good, and tries to push them aside. It's pretty funny to watch. Lately she doesn't like murder so much, and she excuses this by saying "My ally so-and-so wouldn't like it"--a transparent cover for "I don't feel like it.")
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One AP has a GM note for its final scene to the effect of: "The players may think that such and such is evidence that the BBG could be redeemed-- but they're wrong, he can't." Yucch. I played a paladin in that particular campaign who eventually became an ex-paladin, broken under the cumulative weight of so much evidence that evil is stronger than good. (And yes, someone with an adamantine dedication to goodness could have dealt with that realization; but she wasn't quite strong enough.)
In a game where actually accomplishing anything good, where concepts like mercy, forgiveness and redemption are *impossible* tasks (or even derided as naive or unrealistic), the only *sane* response from a Paladin is to either give up trying, or to actively work towards the destruction of the universe, since it's canonically impossible to be good in such a setting.
The Paladin with the 'adamantine' will to continue trying isn't being strong-willed or admirable. Just delusional.
Roller-skating uphill. Pissing into the wind. Whatever one wants to call it, a paladin attempting to live by a code of good and / or law, when the GM's setting assumptions are that redemption / goodness / mercy / etc. are stupid and lame ideas, is just going to be an exercise in frustration.
A setting where demons, undead, etc. can corrupt people, and angels can't heal or redeem them isn't D&D, it's fantasy-themed Call of Cthulhu, all about the existential despair of living in a world where the universe is 'vast, cool and unsympathetic,' anything you do is ultimately meaningless and the best you can hope for is to still have a San point left when you get eaten.
It occasionally boggles me when a self-proclaimed fan of the Paladin class seems openly antagonistic to the principles of good, or to limiting their character's behavior based on any sense of morality, and becomes strident in the defense of Paladins behaving like genocidal madmen.
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Perhaps. In-character is okay, I suppose. Still, difficult to accept.
I think most people ignore that bit anyway, unless they're really hellbent on necromancy always being evil, no exceptions, in their games. ;)
Makes for a good enough excuse for persecution of white necromancers and juju oracles for others though!
Yep, they're banned from stepping foot inside of the Boneyard.
Now imagine the gate from the Boneyard to Abaddon in the Devouring Court like a stone archway containing a black membrane, warped and distorted like choppy water from the pounding of grasping hands, and pushed in by extended claws and leering, screaming, fanatical faces. They aren't allowed in, but they're waiting just on the other side of that gate for the ones being sent to them. And they're hungry.
Yeah, Pharasma's not letting that in. :)
Good to know, because seriously, @#$% those guys. :)
Chilling image too...
There's a tension in our-world folklore and folk religion between a model in which damnation is something you do to yourself, and one in which it's something that's done to you. "Even a man who is pure and good/And says his prayers at night/Can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms/And the autumn moon shines bright." The defenses against having damnation done to you *can* involve being pure and good, but often they are more along the lines of morally-neutral protective magic--garlic can literally save your soul--or somehow winning the protection of a greater being.
The two models are in conflict in our world, and it seems to me that they can be in conflict in Golarion as well. It might be metaphysically *right* that damnation can only be accomplished by your own choices, while not being entirely pragmatically true in the world as it stands. Or the apparent damnations of the innocent may all be flawed damnations, which is the view most of my good PCs have held. Asmodei may claim your innocent soul, but by the very nature of things, his hold over you is innately flawed and someday you may rebel, escape, or be rescued.
Yeah, I've always figured those that have evil forced on them for the most part get a "free pass" of sorts. As in, sins committed due to madness induced by lycanthropy or because of vampiric/ghoulish hunger don't weigh on the soul, at least nearly as much as their lives led outside the boundries of those unnatural and outside forces, generally speaking.
I like that notion of flawed damnations, combined with Todd's approach on the fienderizing process. :)
I am really happy to see Paizo doing more with redemption. In their early APs (especially pre-Pathfinder) good people and creatures fell with great regularity but redemption seemed to be a pipe dream. One AP has a GM note for its final scene to the effect of: "The players may think that such and such is evidence that the BBG could be redeemed-- but they're wrong, he can't." Yucch. I played a paladin in that particular campaign who eventually became an ex-paladin, broken under the cumulative weight of so much evidence that evil is stronger than good.
I'm trying to guess which one this is, but the one that comes to mind has the wrong gender pronoun. But yeah, it did get laid on pretty thick sometimes.
A setting where demons, undead, etc. can corrupt people, and angels can't heal or redeem them isn't D&D, it's fantasy-themed Call of Cthulhu, all about the existential despair of living in a world where the universe is 'vast, cool and unsympathetic,' anything you do is ultimately meaningless and the best you can hope for is to still have a San point left when you get eaten.
I can't punch a +1 through the internets hard enough. The "faling towards evil is cool and interesting"/"redemption is lame/boring" meme needs to be knifed and left to be found in an alley with cats licking at it.
The "faling towards evil is cool and interesting"/"redemption is lame/boring" meme needs to be knifed and left to be found in an alley with cats licking at it.
This. I've always said that the concept that Cosmic Good sits on its laurels whilst the wicked treat the mortal realms as their playground is BS. The forces of light might be less inclined to act with overt force, but it is always there.
Or, as the Solar in my head says:
"Look to the heavens. For every patch of dark, there are a thousand gleaming lights. A rising sun follows every midnight. Every battle fought upon this plane has its echoes across the outer spheres, where a legion of spirits of light wage an unending war against those that would corrupt and destroy. We walk amongst you, though you do not always see. We fight beside you, though you do not always hear. No hatred to which you can sink is beyond the depths of our love for that which you have it in yourself to be. That hope that lingers in the potential of every soul, can never be extinguished. Corruption and death are never the end. When you despair, look to the stars, mortal; you are never alone."
Hope is epic.
But it's universes like that which are the backdrop for heroic struggle. It makes the player character heroes meaningful and gives their struggles importance.Of course, the problem with all this is that since innocence, faith, and goodness are of no actual protective value against being damned to Hell or having your soul outright destroyed... well, that is the problem. What are the good deities and outsiders doing? It seems that only Pharasma and the agathions really have a focus on making sure souls get where they're supposed to go, and it's pretty clear that their efforts aren't enough.
It's not just horrible, it's nauseatingly loathsome and vile in a way that makes me hate, not the fiends, but the authors.
Universes should NOT be ALLOWED to work this way. >.<#
The universe as a whole does not have to be a sickening tragedy in order to set off the PCs' tiny little victories.
Personally, I favor a cosmology - like Buddhism, incidentally, since I'm interested in Asian religions - where any being can be redeemed or expiate their misdeeds (prime examples: Hariti, the Asuras). Only allowing falling toward evil seems asymmetrical - and borne out of the apparent inconsistency of monotheistic beliefs where only mortals have free will but there are fallen angels. It's probably for that very reason that they have free-willed Jinn in Islam include Iblis rather than have him as an angel.
The impression I get from Golarion is that Outsiders have free will. They have deep-seated natures which derive from their alignments, but they do have the very rare option of transgressing these definitions - possibly with divine help. Such beings are 1 in a billion, but they do exist...
Personally, I favor a cosmology - like Buddhism, incidentally, since I'm interested in Asian religions - where any being can be redeemed or expiate their misdeeds (prime examples: Hariti, the Asuras). Only allowing falling toward evil seems asymmetrical - and borne out of the apparent inconsistency of monotheistic beliefs where only mortals have free will but there are fallen angels. It's probably for that very reason that they have free-willed Jinn in Islam include Iblis rather than have him as an angel.
The impression I get from Golarion is that Outsiders have free will. They have deep-seated natures which derive from their alignments, but they do have the very rare option of transgressing these definitions - possibly with divine help. Such beings are 1 in a billion, but they do exist...
One of the mistaken views I see often is that being an inherent alignment somehow prevents or removes free will, as if an alignment were a single choice in every situation instead of broad outlines of behaviors according to variations of ethics, personality, and an act of will.
First, to clarify: free will is only completely "free" insomuch as a creature does not have any guidelines that it follows. Ergo, a will that has any guidelines isn't entirely free. That is to say, alignment is constraining, but only to an extent.
So! In that way even monotheistic cultures have that fallen angels are, in fact, free willed agents (which is how they fell in the first place) and have arrived at a locale from which they cannot leave (because they've broken themselves). There are indications in various monotheistic tenets that angels (fallen or not) have regrets, curiosity, emotions, thoughts, and experiences of their own. This isn't that discussion, but I'm placing that there to counter the fallacy that monotheistic beliefs have a single-slide away from good. :)
Alignment is the general tendency of the application of free will in particular moral or ethical direction (or lack thereof). That's it. It's how its applied.
Outsiders such as demons, devils, daemons and the like are inherently evil, but that's because they're the direct result of free will that's been repeatedly applied to the method of evil. If they do lose "free will", it's because they've already chosen to be evil, long before they achieved their current state. Also, if this argument is made (which I don't think anyone believes in this thread), than good, chaotic, and lawful creatures must have the same restriction.
That good creatures can fall is obvious, but that evil creatures can be redeemed is less so, but, in D&D, at least, possible, if difficult. An evil creature that remains an inherently evil creature while holding to the path of good will always find it awkward and difficult, though they can continue to do so. An analogy I used in another thread, is the idea of us learning to paint with our feet. Can we do it? Oh, yes, and some of the most amazing things have been accomplished... most often by those lacking arms. They lacked the "necessary" tools to perform the things we take for granted, but have adapted and become more proficient that the rest of us. An inherently evil creature doing good is the same: it lacks the basic elements that we might consider necessary to do things, kind of loses out on using some of its most useful talents, but can become far better at it than many inherently good things.
Anyhoo, that's just my thoughts...
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One of the mistaken views I see often is that being an inherent alignment somehow prevents or removes free will, as if an alignment were a single choice in every situation instead of broad outlines of behaviors according to variations of ethics, personality, and an act of will.
While it (mostly) prevents the trope of 'fallen angels,' it's entirely possible to consider an angel or a devil with an alignment subtype to be just as much 'made out of good' or 'made out of evil' as a fire elemental is 'made out of fire.'
If this paradigm is in play, an angel would have as much difficulty stabbing a baby in the face as a fire elemental would have diving for pearls.
I'm all for moral ambiguity in the 'cheap seats' of mortal existence, and for dragons to have whatever alignment they feel like having, and for dwarves, gnolls, manticores and whatever to run the range of ethical and moral possibilities (even if the majority of them follow a certain preference), but when it comes to alignment subtyped outsiders, I'm also fond of the idea that they are spirit-made-flesh, defined and restricted by their alignment subtype in ways that the most dogmatic close-minded Paladin would find 'a bit inflexible.'
And even then, if I, as a GM of such a setting, want to introduce a risen/redeemed fiend or fallen/tarnished angel, I can just wank up some spiritually corrosive (or redemptive) planar somethingorother that has infected this particular outsider, transforming it from within, replacing its own 'elemental' goodness with evil (or vice-versa).
One way that hasn't been mentioned for the innocent to go to Hell is sin eating where the innocent take the sins of the sinners onto themselves so the sinners can go to Heaven.
Now, while I don't know if this is possible in the context of Golarion, since the traditional sin-eating ritual is done by depositing the sins into a feast which the starving then eat, this seems like something Urgathoa would be particularly into, especially if she could get Cayden Cailean drunk enough (not hard there) to agree to take the redeemed souls.
There would likely need to be some extra metaphysics and mumbo jumbo, but it could be workable.
As for the souls of the innocent going directly to Hell, do not pass GO, do not collect $200, I think the only ways to pull this off is legitimately to have some god physically drag someone down to the underworld like Hades with Persephone or else to have the ritual space so damned and Hellish that it is effectively an embassy of Hell and counts as Hell for all intents and purposes. Consequently anyone who dies there is stuck there unless they can escape.
Something which a little more should be made of IMHO is having the souls of the dead occasionally escape from Hell, since a infernal jailbreak is a lot of fun. Moreover, one would think that lighter spirits who do not belong in Hell would have an easier time escaping, making for some interesting storylines.
Another thought is to go with the Egyptian and Chinese models of the soul having multiple parts, which works to explain how Speak with Dead can work with a body which has no soul and so on.
Oh, here's one of my favorite "wait what" spells from Princes of Darkness.
Malediction
School necromancy [evil]; Level cleric 4
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range touch
Target 1 creature touched
Duration 1 minute and instantaneous (see text)
Saving Throw Will negates; Spell Resistance yes
Channeling the blasphemy of the Pit into your hand, you mark your target with a brief but fundamental corruption, causing its soul to be irretrievably damned to Hell should it die within the next minute. Those killed while under the effect of this spell cannot be resurrected by normal means. Only a worshiper of Asmodeus (or of your deity, if you are not a worshiper of the Prince of Darkness) can return a soul damned by malediction to life. Spells like raise dead or resurrection cast by the worshipers of other deities automatically fail, though they do reveal that the target soul has met a perhaps undeserved torment in Hell. The spells miracle or wish return the victim of a malediction to life, regardless of the caster’s deity.
A soul may also be freed by the efforts of someone bodily going to Hell, locating the affected soul, and leading it out of the plane, which allows it to go to its intended destination in the afterlife and be raised normally. You can end the effects of your own malediction by casting the spell again and concentrating on a past target. Doing so frees the past target to its rightful place in death; it does not return the target to life.
Spells such as break enchantment, dispel magic, and remove curse negate this spell if successfully cast before the target dies.
...So any seventh-level evil cleric can not only consign innocents to Hell, he can hold them hostage against anything short of a friendly 18th-level caster. (Or convincing threats applied to his own person, I'll grant you.) He doesn't even have to be a lawful cleric -- in theory, you could have a priestess of Lamashtu throw someone into Hell for the lulz! (This spell needs a lawful descriptor, stat.)
Just to add insult to injury, What Lies in Dust notes that innocent souls don't actually work in the normal system of Hell and can't become lemures... but instead of operating some kind of petitioner prisoner exchange, these poor saps are penned up by the hundreds and reforged into chortov devils, completely impossible to redeem and doomed to guard the frontiers of Hell for all eternity.
...I'm very mad now. I may even be tingling. >.<#
sin eating and the multi-part soul
These are really great ideas, especially the sin-eating/Urgathoa connection.
As far as the multiple pieces of a soul, I think this is best expressed in the spawning of various outsiders (and is especially visible in demons), so, to some extent, this is true in Golarion.
EDITED DUE TO SLEEPINESS AND A FUSSY BABY:
inherent alignments
Eh, I go into more detail about it in this thread, but the idea is that, while exceedingly difficult, with practice and effort, it can be done, again, much like most people and using their feet to pick up a paint brush and make masterwork art. They might be missing the "hands" with which to use their masterstrokes, but if they're dedicated enough, they can do it.
the worst spell ever
... you know, in the Book of Exalted Deeds, there's a spell that does the same thing*...
But yeah, that spell is pretty amazingly awful. I could easily see it as a higher level spell, or with a much larger casting time (so it's a kind of foul ritual-style magic), but being a standard action and a fourth level spell is too much.
* Okay, so that's kind of an exaggeration, as it only targets evil creatures, if I recall correctly, but yeah, it totally sends people straight to hell. It has the [good] descriptor too (I think)!
There's a "sin-eater" archetype for the inquisitor in Ultimate Magic; it's noted that both good and evil religions have the concept, for different reasons.
So someone earlier mentioned that they preferred the idea of the heroic journey to the afterlife. One informed by their choices made as mortals.
I don't know how scripted out the flow of Golarion's dead is (i.e. POOF! I appear in Hell/Pharasma's Boneyard and I am instantly judged and sent on).
But for people who have real problems with the idea that innocents can be sent directly to hell what if it wasn't such a sure thing? What if we look to the Heroic Journey archetype - the finding your way to your rightful afterlife - and consider instead that spells that "send you to hell" cause obstacles and "darken the path" (figuratively and literally) to your true afterlife and make it far easier to find the false one (i.e. Hell) that you are being sacrificed/sold/whatever to.
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Another thought is to go with the Egyptian and Chinese models of the soul having multiple parts, which works to explain how Speak with Dead can work with a body which has no soul and so on.
That sort of thing has been 'kind of' assumed since AD&D, at the minimum, since speak with dead always worked that way.
If animate dead explicitly stated that it used the same 'soul fragment' or 'soul echo' or 'soul residue' that speak with dead uses to create otherwise 'mindless' undead that retained the armor/weapon proficiencies they had in life, it would probably have saved me a lot of arguments. :)
It also creates a precedent for some new necromancy spells that contact or manipulate such 'echoes,' rather than mucking with spirits or souls. A common procedure for some spirit-savvy societies might be to necromantically expunge such echoes entirely, so that nobody can speak with their dead, or otherwise manipulate / interrogate these leftover spirutual residues (and they can't become haunts or poltergeistts or whatever, either). They might even believe (perhaps even correctly!) that large concentrations of such spiritual remnants (such as would be found in graveyards or areas of mass death, perhaps even slaughterhouses or butchering yards!) could attract the undead, making purging them of accumulated 'spiritual debris' a matter of public safety.
'Kosher' rituals regarding the butchering of animals, or the practice of thanking / appeasing the spirit of an animal that has been taken in the hunt, might be very practical things, in a world where even an angry echo of a departed soul can have lasting malignant effects on the hunter/butcher or their community!
there is also being dragged to hell.... or the abyss
Infernal assumption (some outsider grabbing you and plane shifting you away, body and soul), would always remain an option.
The interesting question is whether or not dragging someone to Hell actually consigns them to Hell upon their death. Under the current paradigm, if Pit Fiend Bob grabbed a mortal and dragged him to Nessus, and the mortal promptly died, their soul would go straight to the Boneyard and quite possibly sent on to Mount Celestia, leaving Pit Fiend Bob with a corpse to show for his efforts.
Some sort of Dimensional Anchor effect that prevents souls from escaping could be a useful thing, for these sorts of shenanigans. Put up the circle, and then kill the person within it, and their soul cannot pass on until the circle is dispelled or ends. If their soul can be corrupted before the circle ends, their 'final destination' travel plans can be changed.
But, really, that's a ridiculous amount of effort. It's probably FAR easier to tempt / seduce / corrupt a mortal while they are still alive, than attempting to play nice with their soul after killing their body (since people tend to be uncooperative with those who have already killed them, and ensured that they literally have nothing left to lose...).
So someone earlier mentioned that they preferred the idea of the heroic journey to the afterlife. One informed by their choices made as mortals.
I don't know how scripted out the flow of Golarion's dead is (i.e. POOF! I appear in Hell/Pharasma's Boneyard and I am instantly judged and sent on).
But for people who have real problems with the idea that innocents can be sent directly to hell what if it wasn't such a sure thing? What if we look to the Heroic Journey archetype - the finding your way to your rightful afterlife - and consider instead that spells that "send you to hell" cause obstacles and "darken the path" (figuratively and literally) to your true afterlife and make it far easier to find the false one (i.e. Hell) that you are being sacrificed/sold/whatever to.
As far as I can tell, according to Golarion cannon, the soul travels incoporeally on the ethereal plane (or some such) up through the elemental planes and then through the astral all the way to Pharasma's bone yard in long, slow, strange streams that radiate out from the plane of fire (the "top" of the layered inner planes). How exactly they all lead to the Boneyard... eh, I dunno. At many places along the journey they can be snatched, and so have legions of creatures on most all sides of the alignment spectrum guarding said souls to make sure they get where they're going. Anyway, once they're at Pharasma's court, they stand in line, are judged, and walk through a portal to the proper afterlife. That's what I can tell, anyway.
EDIT: ninja'd by Set
DAG-GUM, Set, why on earth didn't the designers think of that and run with it for animate dead and such?! That would be terrific! INSTA-NEW HOME RULE IN MAH GAMES EVERYBODY!
Another thought is to go with the Egyptian and Chinese models of the soul having multiple parts, which works to explain how Speak with Dead can work with a body which has no soul and so on.That sort of thing has been 'kind of' assumed since AD&D, at the minimum, since speak with dead always worked that way.
If animate dead explicitly stated that it used the same 'soul fragment' or 'soul echo' or 'soul residue' that speak with dead uses to create otherwise 'mindless' undead that retained the armor/weapon proficiencies they had in life, it would probably have saved me a lot of arguments. :)
Same here. But the easiest way to deal with much of it is to say that all the explanations are correct in certain cases. The juju zombies of the juju oracles are inhabited by the various juju spirits they summon which just need a body. Other magics work by shuffling souls around, and it's possible for a soul to have more than one part so a dead person can have their soul up as an angel in Heaven even if there's a creepy undead version causing mischief on earth.
Most likely I am late to the party, but if you want a great fiction example of mind control/white-lighting/forcing evil to become white hats rather then black or spiky helms, try the book Villains by Necessity.
Most likely I am late to the party, but if you want a great fiction example of mind control/white-lighting/forcing evil to become white hats rather then black or spiky helms, try the book Villains by Necessity.
Please elaborate, as I've seen that book, but never had the opportunity to read it.
In Bubba Ho-Tep, the souls devoured by the mummy went into it, and were released at the time of its destruction (though the principal characters feared they were somehow "digested" and flushed down the crapper).
My point being, conceivably an item or creature used in a ritual could "store" the souls, giving the PCs a chance to free them upon its destruction.
Personally, I have always taken issue with stories/films/what-not where the innocent are consigned to hell via nothing more than some evil dude's say-so. But as long as the hero has some means to free them, I think it's fair as a plot point.
In Bubba Ho-Tep, the souls devoured by the mummy went into it, and were released at the time of its destruction (though the principal characters feared they were somehow "digested" and flushed down the crapper).
My point being, conceivably an item or creature used in a ritual could "store" the souls, giving the PCs a chance to free them upon its destruction.
Personally, I have always taken issue with stories/films/what-not where the innocent are consigned to hell via nothing more than some evil dude's say-so. But as long as the hero has some means to free them, I think it's fair as a plot point.
This is similar to a nine-lives stealer, imprisonment, or trap the soul spell, actually.
Enlightening stuff
Good to know, thanks! I'd honestly probably change that somewhat since as I was considering it I found the more creepy "pathways to the afterlife" heroic journey archetype resonated with me. Although I can't imagine many scenarios when it could come up in a standard game.