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It wouldn't be a "final" judgement in that case, and would be a waiting time for new evidence, resurrection, etc.
Trying to put the waiting time before the trial of the soul would conflict w/ too much existing canon I think, but it is certainly more intuitive to do it that way and have a standard time delay before the trial itself.
There is an NPC in the first book of Tyrant's Grasp that lived during the Shining Crusade and hasn't been judged yet. It seems normal and standard to me that while many souls move through judgement quickly, some linger for possibly centuries.
For that matter, I feel like any soul who would immediately turn back and try to continue their life is one that wasn't ready for jugement in the first place, and in fact probably is in position to become a ghost as they try to cling to their mortal life. It doesn't really seem to me like a contradiction that the afterlife is a separate life (whether you retained memory or not) because that seems pretty standard to mythologies across the world. In Greek mythology, it was pretty common for heroes to travel to the afterlife, the fact that shades technically have the label "living creature" for the purposes of game mechanics doesn't change the fact that this stage of their existence is after their (mortal) life in the universe.
For that matter, maybe I'm just not religious enough to see the difference, but I don't feel like "you were created as a sapient packet of energy that was allowed to choose which plane it was sent to based on your beliefs and actions in the world" is really much different from simply decomposing when you die? Like, sucks that there's no such thing as infinity I guess. The gods didn't make mortals to melt them down for their purposes, they just gave the energy flowing through the universe the ability to sort itself. Whether the gods benefit from this in any way subsides the continuation of the universe largely depends on that energy choosing to worship a god, and then that just puts their soul on a plot of land in that god's realm where eventually their soul-body will decompose like their physical body already did a thousand years prior
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The thing is that fundamentals like bodily autonomy and informed consent are being violated; Petitioners who reach the Boneyard are forced into 1/8 portals, or are judged to be worthless to the gods and held prisoner in the Boneyard until they fall apart.
Petitioners could make a boat and set sail across the cosmos if they were allowed. But, then some gods/planes would be fed fewer souls, so such a "set sail for the unknown" fate for petitioners is arbitrarily deemed a crime punishable by soul oblivion.
It's an interesting "accidental" that earth religions don't deal with. Those religions claim exclusivity; there is *only* the one/two/ect destinations for souls. This makes it so that there is no agent/tyrant limiting / eliminating choice, because there is no where else the souls *could* go.
As soon as the pathfinder cosmos has destinations / fates beyond those permitted, it needs some hella solid "reasons" why petitioners cannot set sail for a destination of their choosing. Instead, every oversight becomes "because Pharasma said so."
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"you were created as a sapient packet of energy that was allowed to choose which plane it was sent to based on your beliefs and actions in the world" is really much different from simply decomposing when you die? Like, sucks that there's no such thing as infinity I guess. The gods didn't make mortals to melt them down for their purposes, they just gave the energy flowing through the universe the ability to sort itself.
If it were true, then fresh petitioners should be free to leave and opt out entirely. If it's not about the gods personally gaining souls for their own power / expansion, then simply adding more total outsiders to the universe should be enough, and they should be free to go where they please, and join any plane willing to have them.
Instead, petitioners are claimed as chattel by Pharasma, and then she hands each soul to a god / plane of her choosing. This is explicitly explained as a measure that works against the maelstrom's erosion. Note that it's the maelstrom that recycles soulstuff into the motes that later become new souls. No plane directly participates in this, and all seemingly fight against it as best they can. Smaller, easier to erode, indie planes would logically then be *more* "cycle friendly" than the big ones like Elysium.
Even if Phar deems the soul invalid for any destination, she forcefully keeps it in her Boneyard, where it will eventually fall apart and add to her domain/power. If it's tainted by Apollyon, she'll eject it to the one place she's trying to hurt, Abaddon.
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That is not true. I would be very interested to see where your claim that she ‘invented the concept of mortals’ comes from. My understanding is that the First World was the original experiment by many of the gods - not just Pharasma - and the concept of souls and primessence (is that the correct term?) was created when the gods realized they needed a balance to the chaos of the Maelstrom and the growing demonic plane.
This is spread out a bit, and I want to clarify this was not Phar alone, and is often credited in ways like "primordial deities."
But 100% yes. The concept of a mortal soul, mortals themselves, and the whole life-death cycle, was an invention of the gods. POSIWID (The purpose of a system is what it does) and all the gods benefit from Pharasma's system feeding them souls. We can easily say that the outcome of this soul cycle feeding the gods is "why" it was invented.
Or you can easily say that the creation of the universe with a stability that also balances the planes was a benefit to both the gods and mortals. The gods (the vast majority of them) don't eat souls. Mortals did not exist before the gods created them. Mortals were not created just to be eaten by the gods. You keep making hyperbolic statements that don't reflect the actual original impetus, nor the current state of affairs.
I did learn/re-learn just now that apparently Gnomes made the switch from immortal fae to mortal beings because Pharasma waved her hand in an act of collective punishment and made it so. In hindsight, something like that would need the intervention of a rather "Big Gun" god to change the fundamental nature of a whole species like that.
Kinda wild to think about all the gnomes that had their immortality taken away like that, and that Phar is capable of doing it to other fae species if she wants. Don't try to copy her River of Souls idea guys, else she might enslave your entire species in her soul-cycle and give yall the...
Once again the hyperbole. In one paragraph you say how the gnomes made the switch - note the active agency there. Then in the same sentence you put the blame on Pharasma, when in fact, the bleaching occurs because SOME gnomes decided they wanted to live in the Universe rather than the First World. Some gnomes got to the boring world called Golarion and they discovered that their souls were so tied to the exciting, constantly changing First World that they would die if they didn't do something to keep themselves occupied, like collecting things. All the gnomes who stayed in the First World never had this problem. That sounds more like a disease of the soul, much like many races in our real world are affected specifically by their environments. Yet, you want to pin it on your favorite straw god.
I'm absolutely fascinated by how much of all the woes in Golarion you are placing at Pharasma's feet. From what I'm reading, all of this hate is based on reading a couple novels, wikipedia pages, and comic books. The setting is a lot more interesting than this very black and white vision you have that a neutral deity is at the root of all evil. It's unfortunate you can't see the wonderfully rich tapestry that is the Pathfinder setting.
There's a story about how the gnomes gained mortality, in that long ago a group of gnomes were so amused by the notion of death they managed to redirect part of the River of Souls to the First World so they could have their own little fiefdom of life and death. Pharasma was not amused. But in an ironic punishment, rather than a cruel one, she simply changed them to have souls so that they would experience the river of souls like every other mortal. The nature of everything in the First World is, after all, to be irrevocably changed by something more powerful who feels like it.
But like most stories about things that happened eons ago, it might simply be apocryphal or metaphorical.
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The thing is that fundamentals like bodily autonomy and informed consent are being violated; Petitioners who reach the Boneyard are forced into 1/8 portals, or are judged to be worthless to the gods and held prisoner in the Boneyard until they fall apart.
Petitioners could make a boat and set sail across the cosmos if they were allowed. But, then some gods/planes would be fed fewer souls, so such a "set sail for the unknown" fate for petitioners is arbitrarily deemed a crime punishable by soul oblivion.
It's an interesting "accidental" that earth religions don't deal with. Those religions claim exclusivity; there is *only* the one/two/ect destinations for souls. This makes it so that there is no agent/tyrant limiting / eliminating choice, because there is no where else the souls *could* go.
Ah, now I think I'm understanding where the hate is coming from. "All earth religions claim there is only one/two/etc. destinations for souls"? Should we start with one of the real world religions from which much fantasy has been inspired? The Greeks said that the underworld consisted of Tartarus, Asphodel Meadows, and Elysium. More than the one or two you seem to think is the norm. Many animist religions believe that the spirits of the deceased stay and continue to influence the world of the living. I could go on and on about the diversity of religions and their beliefs, including how the gods manipulate mortals or mortals' agency is tied into where they end up in the afterlife. However, we're talking about a game that also draws on the diversity of humanity as we know it.
I'm wondering where you are getting the idea of soul oblivion. Merging with other souls to create a stabile realm of like-minded souls seems to sound pretty peaceful to me, especially once you're beyond the pain and suffering of the Universe.
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Among other theories, an aspect of the Eldest Shyka is said to have shared a rationale for the gnomish exile, in a tale told to the gnome Jubilost Narthropple about an unnamed Eldest who ruled the First World's gnomes. In this tale Shyka claims that this Eldest sought to create their own cycle of souls removed from Pharasma's River of Souls and granted their souls mortality. In retaliation, Pharasma removed the Eldest from the First World and moved gnomes to the Universe.
The Eldest Shyka believes that a large group of gnomes was expelled from the First World to the Universe by Pharasma for worshipping another Eldest, whose name has been long since forgotten, who stole a piece of the River of Souls to create a semblance of mortality on the First World as a game.
Presuming the main anchor point is true, then yeah. "Pharasma did it."
I neglected the detail that in both versions, the gnomes seem to have little blame, and it was their non-gnome ruler Eldest that angered Pharasma. Regardless of how many individual gnomes were invovled, collective punishment for the whole species is rather "yikes."
Might want to actually read the text provided at a source link before you attempt to nitpick my words apart.
I neglected the detail that in both versions, the gnomes seem to have little blame, and it was their non-gnome ruler Eldest that angered Pharasma. Regardless of how many individual gnomes were invovled, collective punishment for the whole species is rather "yikes."
I mean, it's only punishment from a certain perspective. Yes, gnomes can die now, but they also have souls when they didn't before. This means that eventually their existence will come to an end, but it also means the Lantern King can't freely just transpose your eyes and your feet whenever it amuses him. Fey are even more subject to the whims of the powerful than mortals are, so "not being Fey anymore" is a good thing from a certain perspective.
I neglected the detail that in both versions, the gnomes seem to have little blame, and it was their non-gnome ruler Eldest that angered Pharasma. Regardless of how many individual gnomes were invovled, collective punishment for the whole species is rather "yikes."I mean, it's only punishment from a certain perspective. Yes, gnomes can die now, but they also have souls when they didn't before.
I would like to reiterate that fey already have souls. By some accounts all living creatures in the cosmos have or are souls, but treat this as a fairly broad blanket statement that may be contradicted by specific lore.
Incidentally, regardless whether one believes mortality was a punishment or gift to the gnomes who received it, it's worth noting that it was not inflicted/given to the entire species...
During the Age of Anguish (beginning in -4202 AR),910 many gnomes left the First World and migrated to Golarion, although some gnomes remained behind and continue to live an immortal existence there to this day.
You can go to the First World today and find gnomes who were not involved and remain functionally immortal. Then again, this comes from the same overwritten lore source that fostered the idea that fey have no souls, so regard it, as well as the notion that fey, gnomish or otherwise, are immortal (rather than just functionally so as long as they stay in their lane) as potentially dubious.
Meanwhile, while it wouldn't surprise me if the Kingmaker CRPG (where Jubilost Narthropple comes from) cooked up a bit of haphazard lore for gnomes, it appears that the story given by the avatar of Shyka appears in the Companion Guide for Kingmaker 2e, lending much greater credibility to the claim. Even so, Shyka there regards the gift of mortality (given by their Eldest) to those gnomes who received it as freedom from the First World and her siblings' predilections. Pharasma's role in this story seems to be punishing the Eldest who did the deed, not the gnomes given mortality, although that they were left in the Universe rather than remaining mortal in the First World may or may not be regarded as a punishment in itself--though they almost certainly lived longer in the Universe than they would have back home.
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It's always a knife's edge when engaging in discussions like this, because you need to present concrete data points like the gnome thing, but then nitpicking the example is used to cloud and prevent discussing the core issue the datapoint was there to support.
That Pharasma has and will continue to violate all notions of informed consent, and she has and will continue to make "finger snap" style demonstrations of power whenever she feels personally slighted.
It's completely buck wild that we literally, non sarcastically, have people playing defense and claiming that [being transformed into a mortal inside Pharasma's cycle and gaining a bloodline curse to suffer from horrible super-dementia] is actually "a good thing from a certain perspective."
Like, holy s*~!.
This "defense":
* makes a false equivalence between the pre-gnome boss experimenting w/ the creation of their own soul-cylce VS actually being put into Phar's soul cycle
* dodges the most well known gnome-fact caused by this, the Bleaching. If Phar could finger-snap the change, she could fix this, or have chosen to not cause it in the first place. Phar has outright causal blame/responsibility for the Bleaching, period.
* requires one to forget or refute the concept of informed consent. It "doesn't matter" that the gnomes had no say in this, because it's "a good thing from a certain perspective"
* lampshades the "certain perspective" required for it to be a good thing. Chiefly, from the pharasman PoV, it's a good thing to disrupt the immortal race of inquisitive folk who genuinely have a chance of reverse-engineering, or even replicating, your own monopoly.
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Because yeah, from a "certain perspective" it looks like when some fickle fae ~god started messing with ideas Pharasma claims exclusive rule over, she decided to nuke the competition from history and enslave their servants. While also cursing them with a horrible form of mortality to ensure no gnome could make real progress toward that forbidden knowledge.
Time and time again, it seems Pharasma leaves scarred / cursed survivors to act as examples. The gods and their agents cannot forget about what happened to Abaddon, because the empty Devouring Court and the permanent eclipse are still there to serve as examples.
Anyone on Golarion trying to research the soul cycle will likely come across the gnome's story because Pharasma leaves survivors / scars to tell the tale.
How chilling would it be for some old elven wizard, thinking his research is completely unrelated, to accidentally learn that his closest friend's slow decay into bleached maddness was due to the inherited sin of his history-erased Eldest ruler?
I don't think many actually think about how seriously bad it is for an extremely long-lived species to be damned to slow bleaching like that. How many bouts of "I cast Fireball" maddness is an old gnome permitted before someone has to intervene? There are entire Gnomish organizations like Wonderseekers with a self-descriptive name. Their entire culture revolves around this inherited disease we now know is directly Pharsma's fault. Gnomes have to deal with not just the chance, but the certainty of eventual madness, and friends of gnomes have to genuinely think about the "Old Yeller" gut-punch of a duty they may need to one day perform.
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Ancient earth Egyptians knew how to write a god when they wanted them to be seen as a positive, pro-social good. You construct their arbitrary systems to minimize and remove all godly agency and bias. Pharasma's system is built for the opposite.
Anubis' scales are the empty tool most known for fair and unbiased measurement. He takes the ~heart and weights it against a feather of truth; even if he has personal beef with a mortal for committing his anathema, that does not change how the scales fall.
Even though this god has plenty of shenanigan stories to show how flawed he is, (like the time Anubis' almost killed his own brother, but quick moment of chopping off his own penis shook Anbuis into believing his bro's story.) that
when a flawed god like Anbuis puts on their uniform and does their job, his godliness serves to enhance the fairness of judgement in a way mortals can only dream about (wouldn't it be great if we had magic scales to see the good/evil in one's heart?).
Pharasma's system was set up to be the complete opposite, every system is constructed to maximize and echo her own agency and personal judgements across the cosmos. Even which cases are adjudicated by her, is itself her decision. So yes, a shocking amount of the time, things, including needless sufferings and grave injustices, are directly the result of Pharasma's arbitrary choices.
Time and time again, it is made abundantly clear that Phar does not care about mortal choice or agency, nor about any "rule." Every self-imposed rule and system she has established, she has herself broken. From rezzing random mortals who'd very much like to die to be stuck as her agents for eternity, to punishing the Daemons and leaving 1/8 of her own courts empty, etc.
Even when stories about "known as a fair arbiter" Anbuis can get a wild as that tale of two brothers, no Anbuis story would dare dream of writing that Anbuis would see the heart measure lighter than the feather (good outcome) and toss the soul to be devoured by Ammit anyway. Or even something like bypassing judgment via finessed technicality; when he's on duty, he and his powers are genuinely acting for the benefit of others via the pro-social system he runs.
Yet we've got Pharasma over here enslaving mortals into her enteral service because she thinks their skill set will be useful to her investigations. And damning noble souls to Hell for coerced contracts.
We already know that Pharasma herself knows that her plan is doomed. Likely in part due to this hopelessness, her first priority is always her (forever slipping) control over the cosmic order she created. Due to how recently Phar lost her power over prophecy, I'd be extra careful not to piss her off, as she's due for another "example" reminder to keep all who would oppose her in check.
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It would be rather fair to compare the river of souls to Dune's spice. "Control the flow of souls, control the universe" would be a rather deep aphorism, or it would, if anyone could conceptualize of a cosmos where Pharasma's control were not exclusive.
Fate is also semi-built on D&D too. The author Nasu plays D&D and if you read the original VN there's a ton of D&D concepts in it like alignment.
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Have you considered creating a faction to represent these people? Because, if you ask me, the problem isn't so much Pharasma herself, but the fact that every alternative to her is evil—like the asura, the undead, or the sahkil. Maybe if there were a neutral or chaotic neutral faction to represent people who feel this way, others would side with them and champion their cause, much like how some people play the Bellflower Network.So here's the thing: Pathfinder, and by extension Golarion, is a made-up world where the gods are real, and magic is a fundamental part of existence. That sort of thing changes how religion and faith works on a deep, fundamental level, and it gets worse if you approach it from an omniscient perspective as a writer of a fantasy world or a reader of a fantasy world.
Keep in mind that no one who lives in Golarion exists in a reality where they can pick up the books we create about Golarion. They don't have those resources, and it's not really appropriate to assume everyone who lives on Golarion has read every book about Golarion that has been published.
As for Pharasma... the key there is to remember she's not human, nor does she have a human mind. She is, as are many deities, unknowable by human minds, including those that invent her. That's part of the mystery and terror and beauty and problem with matters of belief and mythology when they're presented as fantasies by a content creator, and not presented as guesswork from an in-world author.
My own personal take about the OP's question (and this, I MUST STRESS, is my take alone and IS NOT MEANT to be "canon" for Golarion in any way):
** spoiler omitted **
There's no longer alignment in the setting, so TN/CN isn't a meaningful distinction any longer, but you might be interested in The Lady of the North Star, a Tian deity who is a huge enemy of Pharasma's - to the extent that Pharasma and her servants go out of their way to remove all evidence of her existence. She allows her servitors to become Holy, but not Unholy - closer to the good end of the spectrum under the old alignment rules, she's pretty upstanding morally IMO - and her entire thing is about gifting immortality to mortals. I think she's an example of the setting moving away from the idea that Pharasma's justice is unquestionable.
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I'm mainly here to point out what of the several lore errors being used as examples I can confirm, whether its fey not having souls or the idea that Pharasma cursed the gnomes with mortality, or even that atheists are forced to stay in the Boneyard against their will. That you turn these misunderstandings and objections into further evidence of your own arguments calls to question where exactly the goalposts went and how much you understand the examples you are using to prove your point, but other people can make those arguments. I only have time to read and respond to so many assertions and I have no desire to convince you out of a position you've deeply convinced yourself into. I'd merely like to make sure the facts the argument has been based on are presented accurately as possible so that readers can come to their own conclusions based on the actual evidence and not what was taken out of context, misunderstood, or brought in from a lore error 15 years ago when the writing of the lore was less closely managed and writers might introduce concepts that don't fit the Age of Lost Omens or its characters.
There's no longer alignment in the setting, so TN/CN isn't a meaningful distinction any longer, but you might be interested in The Lady of the North Star, a Tian deity who is a huge enemy of Pharasma's - to the extent that Pharasma and her servants go out of their way to remove all evidence of her existence. She allows her servitors to become Holy, but not Unholy - closer to the good end of the spectrum under the old alignment rules, she's pretty upstanding morally IMO - and her entire thing is about gifting immortality to mortals. I think she's an example of the setting moving away from the idea that Pharasma's justice is unquestionable.
Oh, and here I thought I'd checked out most of the Tian deities by now! That's pretty cool. I wonder how much she has to do with cultivation--another pursuit that's supposed to be disfavoured by the gods and which leads to low level bureaucratic god hood and immortality. Goddess of becoming a god as it were...
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If you know that I've said something that is incorrect, I'm only happy to learn the truth of it.
As I'm not inventing things out of thin air, it is kinda essential to point to a source during a correction / callout. Even if you don't have the exact page or book on hand, giving everyone enough of a lead to follow is super important/helpful, like you did with the Kingmaker stuff.
I didn't know about the whole "erased Eldest attempted to copy Phar's river of souls" gnome history bit before this thread, so if Phar did not actually make that change to the gnomes, that's an important detail.
And if it's the most recent word on what happened (with or w/o retcons) then it's likely the canon intent / current canon that the Eldest did it, and Phar did not.
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[]I would like to see your source for that because the wiki clearly contradicts that Graveyard of Souls []
Holy crap, "respect atheists" my ass.
An entire region of headstones and slowly maddening shades to make an example out of those that refuse. Torture via neglectful imprisonment on a timescale mortal minds can't handle.
I'll bet it's a crime to help them in any way. Might even cause a problem if you "defend yourself" and grant a suffering soul an end one too many times.
It even double-confirms that if a god has a claim to you, or you've got a strong enough ethos, Phar's just gonna hand your leash to another god anyway for forced assimilation.
If your soul has enough quantifiable value, you get consumed, like it or not. Only those souls judged as not being useful to her ends are allowed to rot in such a cruel manner.
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Unfortunately, the wiki is a scattershot when it comes to correcting for adjustments or changes to the lore, and readily cites 15 years old sources with ones from last year which correct them. Hopefully the first post I made in this thread (adding citation re: Planar Adventures here, the most up to date word I have yet encountered, but still 5 years old at this point I think) confirming that atheist souls have the same range if afterlife as any other should suffice. Indeed, perhaps James Jacobs describing the graveyard of souls as the hell-equivalent punishment in a now very old post suggests that the idea that all atheists are crammed into purgatory regardless is a misconception born of outdated lore. I simply do not gave the hours in the day right now to research more fully than this right now, sadly
I think some of this is just small fish being annoyed that much bigger fish don't care what they think.
But the Graveyard of Lost Souls, as written up in Planar Adventures is for people who Pharasma cannot judge for whatever reason, or who refuse her authority to judge them. Any atheist can just say "there's really nothing I can do at this point to change your mind, so I'll file this under things I can't control" and end up in the same range of afterlives as anybody else. The Golarion atheist has to acknowledge that as much as they do not wish to worship a God, there is precious little they can do to prevent a God from doing something including something done to that atheist.
But the Graveyard of Lost Souls can be presented as horrific, or simply peaceful, depending on what the author wants to do with the portrayal. I would assume a lot of the "raving and madness" is with souls who weren't judged because they were critically flawed in some way.
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Funnily enough, the best way to ward off dementia (et al) is to seek out new experiences, learn new skills, and otherwise act like a gnome. Not that they'll live forever, but I do know some elderly who live like that, nay thrive. :-)
As for objective moral systems, those all (as far as I can tell) fall apart when examined with rigor. Either they're created (subjective) or arose (super-)naturally, which will strike many as arbitrary, especially to those that disagree. And since there's never been absolute consensus, these objective systems will feel wrong to some, as down to their bones wrong. You could literally have a platonic form of morality that plane-traveling wizards can point to (in whatever form that makes sense) and have people reject it as not what they mean when they say morality. Because it's still primarily a word reflecting values, and values depend on the one valuing. To that let's add sapient creatures with all kinds of physiology and alien psychologies. Oy.
I don't think a team of gamer-philosophers acting in good faith could construe a game world with metaethics that align with all players(and my has Paizo tried their best!). Karma, given as an example, would require a balance between intent, consequence, negligence, ability, and more with measured responses toward...what goal? Whose goal? And you'd have to hide any such algorithms for players! Gamers gonna game.
Ultimately, players (at the table level) kinda have to adjust matters for themselves, and accept the plurality of views Paizo's exposed to. So Pharasma as written will be a neutral arbiter at one table and a borderline-unholy tyrant at another depending on how much one feels she's culpable or interprets the various retcons. Enough tables thought Erastil's antiquated values demanded a change in them, or in his alignment, and so his values changed (to what they've always been! See: Religion on Earth). And we got other retcons, like with fey souls and other dehumanizing traits on sapient creatures (unless Lovecraftian).
Anyway, loving the thread.
Cheers.
The whole point of the afterlife in Golarion is that each soul ascends to one of two fates—reward or punishment. Pharasma is the manifestation of how that fate plays out for every soul; whether she knows it before hand or makes that decision on the spot is something no one, likely not even her, knows for sure, but as with every other mortal, an athiest's soul will either be rewarded or punished in the afterlife. And as with all souls, the exact details vary from soul to soul.
THAT SAID...
While I still stand by what I said in the above quote, in those 13 years, a lot has changed—including my role at Paizo. The company is MUCH bigger than it was 13 years ago, and I'm no longer the creative director of it all—there's far too much for one person to cover in that role at Paizo's scale of being a small company in a niche industry but simultaneously one of the biggest proverbial fish in that industry. Today, we've got multiple creative directors, creative officers, and creative leads who all work together to create Paizo's products. It's a more inclusive and more diverse method but it's also one that's a bit less efficient, and results in no one person really being in the position of being able to off-the-cuff "issue canonical proclamations" about any of the settings we produce.
My advice for folks who are deep-diving into topics like this is to chat with others, look over the things we've said before in print and in public or online, and then decide what's best for your personal game. I've tried to step back from issuing large world-building things like the one above and prefer to let these discussions play out among folks as they have been, but since I know once you say something online it's there forever, I felt the need to step in and provide some context to the above.
Well that is rather ambiguous since it seems that those rewards and punishment are not in sense of some universal justice because both good and evil can be rewarded in sense of desirable afterlife prime of example of that is Calistria since in her realm both liberators and antipaladins ended up in Elysium so i wonder then for what souls punished or rewarded if not for their moral character ? Is that rewards for undestanding system well and finding suitable places for yourself in it ?
My problem with the notion that "the afterlife in Golarion is to send each soul to reward or punishment" is that I see a discontinuity of identity once you are separated from your memories at which point either reward or punishment becomes impossible. This to me works since if "how the afterlife works" became well-known there'd be no reason to for a rational person to choose "evil" or any other life-path that results in punishment rather than reward. "Choosing evil" makes so much more sense to me when the reality of the afterlife is that "you" cease to exist when you die. Something else that was affected by your actions exists and what happens to that thing might be good or bad from that thing's perspective, but that's like tracks you leave in the mud or ripples you leave in the water after you have passed by.
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My problem with the notion that "the afterlife in Golarion is to send each soul to reward or punishment" is that I see a discontinuity of identity once you are separated from your memories at which point either reward or punishment becomes impossible. This to me works since if "how the afterlife works" became well-known there'd be no reason to for a rational person to choose "evil" or any other life-path that results in punishment rather than reward. "Choosing evil" makes so much more sense to me when the reality of the afterlife is that "you" cease to exist when you die. Something else that was affected by your actions exists and what happens to that thing might be good or bad from that thing's perspective, but that's like tracks you leave in the mud or ripples you leave in the water after you have passed by.
I don't know. Like, you can assume throughout history people generally believed in their religion, but evil doesn't suddenly stop existing just because people believe there will be bad things happening to them later. Frankly, humans in general are really bad at making that kind of trade of short term gain for long term pain. If evil is more expedient or advantageous in the short term, the eventual punishment is a very distant calculation to make. Even if we assume most people on average prefer to be good people, there's always someone who would take that trade.
Aside from that, there's the question of whose reward is what. Even if the people of Golarion had a perfect, objective standard or morality (they don't anymore, just a holy side and an unholy side and the understanding that holy gods prefer being nice and the unholy gods prefer self-serving pursuits), there would still be those who hoped to gain something from evil without suffering the consequences. After all, if your deity determines what is reward and what is punishment for theistic mortals, if you serve an evil god faithfully enough maybe you get a place at their side watching people who aren't you suffer for your benefit. I don't want to get political on the forums, but I can think of a lot of people in positions of power in the real world who are fine with profiting from others' suffering, and likewise people who would help them promote suffering with the expectation that they won't be the one who suffers in the end.
Maybe an irreligious person has reason to worry since they'll just be sent to Hell or the Abyss (if they know and/or believe the priests who told them), but then that still leaves some amount of ambiguity what behaviours are objectively evil (again post-remaster) when there are plenty enough direct contraditons between what different folk belive is good or not.
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Not to mention there's people in the world (both in Golarion and ours) that would prefer Hell or the Abyss over Heaven every day of the week. There's people in the world that function like that even if we wan't to deny it, so for them those places are much more preferable for their not-so-eternal afterlife. Also, the lower planes in PF aren't even full of torture and suffering like most people would expect. It is very likely that someone that worshipped Asmodeus eventually is sent to Hell after death and they become just a regular lower level devil that serves a stronger one that from time to time sends you to kill some low level adventurers. Not much different than a low level angel that serves an empyreal lord who eventually sends them to kill a party of evil adventurers or fiends if you ask me.
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For me, the crazy part is the realization that the person who committed acts of good/evil isn't actually the same person who ends up receiving the "reward or punishment". It's a little fuzzy about when souls lose their memories, but it does seem like by the time the soul reaches their final planar destination with their deity, they don't remember their previous life in such as a way to say "that was me".
So I don't view it as a reward or punishment at all.
It's more that the soul is being sorted into the place/deity that most aligns with the moral outlook they had in their previous existence.
Kind of a Harry Potter sorting hat thing almost.
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For me, the crazy part is the realization that the person who committed acts of good/evil isn't actually the same person who ends up receiving the "reward or punishment". It's a little fuzzy about when souls lose their memories, but it does seem like by the time the soul reaches their final planar destination with their deity, they don't remember their previous life in such as a way to say "that was me".
So I don't view it as a reward or punishment at all.
It's more that the soul is being sorted into the place/deity that most aligns with the moral outlook they had in their previous existence.
Kind of a Harry Potter sorting hat thing almost.
Yes. The mortal existence of a given soul merely serves to give it an orientation that, when the mortal dies, helps sorting which outer plane it will go to strengthen.
Which is why I am baffled by the idea that mortals are batteries / food for the deities a la Matrix.
Mortals are just part of an elaborate system that strengthens the whole of reality against its final ending.
And yes, deities (at least some of them including of course Pharasma) designed it this way. But if they had not, mortals would not exist at all.
And The Laws of Mortality state that "Let no mortal be beholden to a god."
Not that mortals will ever be more powerful than any deity. Why waste energy resenting the judgement of Pharasma just because she's a deity ?
Note also that AFAIK many deities actually do not REQUIRE worship. Some are not even aware of it.
Now the true question : where do the souls of animals go ?
Random animals likely go to the boneyard since they are, in a sense, true neutral. Pets specifically go to their owner's plane.
Mortals are just part of an elaborate system that strengthens the whole of reality against its final ending.
I would frame it more as mortal souls are part of a system that delays the inevitable collapse of reality into the Maelstrom, but what were saying isn't that different.
I also view the whole creation of mortals and the cycle of souls as more an experiment by the gods. They saw that the Maelstrom was consuming reality and that by reinforcing reality with quintessence staved that off. But that the rate of sufficient soul energy in the Forge of Creation wasn't enough.
They hypothesized they could grow the soul energy in a different way. The first attempt was the First World, which didn't quite work how they wanted. And the second attempt was mortals.
I don't think deities decided that their goal was specifically to create mortals, but it was a consequence of their attempt to stave off the collapse of reality.
However the details are vague, so I could be wrong.
Yes. The mortal existence of a given soul merely serves to give it an orientation that, when the mortal dies, helps sorting which outer plane it will go to strengthen.
Which is why I am baffled by the idea that mortals are batteries / food for the deities a la Matrix.
Mortals are just part of an elaborate system that strengthens the whole of reality against its final ending.
And yes, deities (at least some of them including of course Pharasma) designed it this way. But if they had not, mortals would not exist at all.
And The Laws of Mortality state that "Let no mortal be beholden to a god."
Not that mortals will ever be more powerful than any deity. Why waste energy resenting the judgement of Pharasma just because she's a deity ?
Note also that AFAIK many deities actually do not REQUIRE worship. Some are not even aware of it.
I'll firstly repeat that mortals had to be invented by the gods.
Meaning, gods existed and survived before mortals. Meaning, they do not require the souls of mortals. Meaning, they "wanted more" than what they would have without claiming mortal souls.
We know that mortals and their odd dual nature w/ a physical body makes for an infinite energy exploit via a soul that grows in total over its lifetime. One mortal soul going through the full cycle can create the soulstuff of multiple new souls due to this growth.
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Next, let's add the insight that Phar's Judgement is not required.
Fresh petitioners could skip judgement and go anywhere without the cosmos collapsing. Petitioners are not "incomplete" in any way, and would not themselves be unhealthy nor short lived without assimilation into a plane.
Even the claim of needing to be sent to a plane matched by one's ethos is proven false by devil contracts. If good souls can be tortured into contributing to Hell, then that already breaks the notion of that "necessity."
We also have the example of Abaddon, where any mortal soul stuck there is considered a "hunted," who will naturalize into becoming a daemon just by surviving there long enough. Zero consideration of ethos / moral character, simple exposure to the corruption of the eclipse is enough.
It's the maelstrom that erodes the outsiders and their domains, recycling them into new souls. Even Basrakal, which disallows gods from even entering, also gets recycled if they don't build fast enough.
Petitioners escaping the boneyard does not starve the maelstrom of the soulstuff needed to create new souls.
This system of forcing souls into afterlives is done because Pharasma wants it to be done.
The entire system could be inverted, where gods and realms judge if they want to allow a candidate soul in, and the soul then is able to pick any of the destinations that would accept them. Phar's system and murder-enforcement could instead revolve around offering protection / filters to these destination realms to *prevent* influx of rejected souls, and this complete inversion would cause nothing to collapse. (I cannot find any mention of a mortal being the tiebreaker vote in a soul's judgement destination, but I think I've heard that somewhere before. If true, the idea of the mortal getting to choose between all the "compatible" destinations is already kinda there, a tiny bit)
The cosmic order would not suffer at all from this inversion, but mortals would gain immense agency.
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Next is this issue of agency, choice, and bodily autonomy. If mortals cannot opt out of the system, then it is some form of slavery, at best. Because the only "labor" the gods care about is the growth of souls, it is more informative to use the metaphor of growing crops.
And to be clear, we know the gods squabble over "powerful mortal souls" precisely because of the disparity between that exceptionally plump soul and those of the common, lesser mortal souls. This can only mean it's the potency/size of the soul that is of value, and completely depersonalizes the mortal of their humanity. The times when it's that specific person who matters, Phar or another god will enslave them into service, like w/ that detective.
Whether quickly or after a long delay, the judged mortal is going to be assimilated into one or more outsiders serving that god. And then or instead of transforming, the soul/outsider will melt into and expand the realm the god rules over.
If the gods were not selfishly motivated by their own empowerment, then the gods would allow new petitioners to treat the realms like how governments treat other nations. Yes, there would be plenty of bureaucracy and rules.
But, petitioners would be allowed to go anywhere still subject to the maelstrom's erosion. Nations that refuse to let their members leave under threat of annihilation are very rare, and are seen as tyrannical, if not automatically considered enemies to "free" nations.
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Sorry for the double-negative, but I strongly reject the notion that this "harvest" is not why mortals exist.
Mortals became part of this system because the gods were not satisfied with their status quo, and were willing to create sapient beings knowing they would suffer unique and alien diseases of the body. All for their own empowerment and expansion. Not even inventing their own ally to court and cooperate with, but creating livestock for forced consumption.
And whoops, looks like the disease of aging itself is canonically a post-hoc edit to mortals, and another "Pharasma did it" explicitly because she did not like how mortals were perfectly happy to stay in their current lives.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Teshallas
When Pharasma saw that mortals were unwilling to let go of life when their time came, she transformed an asp into Teshallas, whose figurative venom (ageing) would eventually cause mortals to welcome death. Because of this, Teshallas is sometimes cursed and regarded as an example of Pharasma's cruel indifference.1
Pharasma is not a "neutral" deity in a soul cycle that just naturally happens.
Pharasma is a thinking agent who saw that some mortals were happy to keep living their lives indefinitely, and then re-wrote aging into all mortals everywhere. Cursing them to slowly weaken and suffer more and more with the passage of time, until their suffering was so agonizing, that they would all welcome the relief of death.
This is textbook amorality: she has a thing she wants maximized, and the very concept of morals is irrelevant. Doesn't matter if the change curses every future mortal to suffer horribly, it only matters that more souls will flow to the gods.
Fvck guys, like how can you white-wash things like this. Pharamsa continues to hurt mortals and cause them suffering for the sake of getting more (unneeded) souls through her judgment process to hand them to those specific gods & realms she approves of. Demons, they are fine, but no daemons allowed.
She is not neutral, and repeatedly makes arbitrary and post-hoc edits to the system she controls when it suits her. Always to maximize the souls flowing through her judgement, not to reduce the suffering of mortals.
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Outsiders exist in a cosmic order where all have a shared, existential danger to their existence in the maelstrom.
Instead of seeing mortals as allies in this, and allowing them to learn of these things and help, or to even so much as retain their identities, mortals are stripped of all possible agency and systemically made into objects to squabble over. We see the systems constantly punishing the acquisition of knowledge and power that might undermine the gods' control. "Cheating" Phar's listed death event was enough to get Maruts sent after you. Staying alive does not harm anyone, and is not a crime, ffs.
The simple freedom for a minority of petitioners to *choose* to live their second life elsewhere in the cosmos is denied to all the mortals with too weak an ethos to be claimed, and they must go mad and rot from forced idleness in Phar's Graveyard.
And no, a subset of mortals being "rewarded" by chilling in Heaven for a time before assimilation (either into outsider or the plane itself) does not justify any of the aforementioned facts. If you see the lack of suffering present in heaven as a good thing, then you have to acknowledge that all the suffering mortals endure everywhere else is a bad thing that should be minimized.
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I have to insist once again that some people are looking at this from a perspective as if this was a real thing that would eventually happen to us. Let's say you were to keep your memories on death. What's stopping the level 20 paladin that died against a lich to accelerate their own reincarnation (a thing that's actually possible in PF) and come back in a few days as an even stronger angel and wreck the unliving s#it out of that lich?
In a setting where the afterlife and resurrection are one spell away, it makes sense to lose memories upon death because otherwise death wouldn't really be a thing if everyone could return on an arguably stronger form. TTRPGs are a vehicle for storytelling and some campaigns and plot hooks require death to be definitive. Even if you want to have your own "Gandalf the White" moment in which you sacrifice yourself only to return on a stronger form later on it is possible because there's examples of people that kept their memories or restored them post-reincarnation. There isn't rules to play as an outsider though, but I guess reflavor works?
I also think people look at this from a Western perspective (makes sense, most of us here come from the west) when the cycle of souls in PF is closer to that of Hinduism or Buddhism (or at least that's what it seems to me, I'm not an expert on the subject). This is IMO the most appropiate kind of afterlife for a TTRPG because otherwise what's stopping the PCs from searching their dead friend in the afterlife? Again, this would IMO ruin all those epic sacrifices that PCs or NPCs could do in a campaign because you could immediately search them in the outer planes and bring them back even stronger.
At that point death stops being an important event and becomes just another way of min-maxing.
If you give every petitioner amnesia, that doesn't fix anything, and it causes many other problems. Which is likely why any such amnesia that was once canon seems to have faded into being non-canon and is contradicted by modern content.
Afaik, right now it's just the waters of the river that induce amnesia, and it takes a variable amount of time after removal from the river to pull your personal history back together.
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You seem to be making your own houserule edit to the pf2 setting in order to make it look "less yikes" when that doesn't actually change any of the foundational yikes present (and imo it would make them much worse).
Petitioners without memory are still independent people with agency, just without experience to draw upon.
It's like how someone can be incapacitated via drunkenness.
The inability for that drunk to properly make informed consent means that culturally we see and consider all notions of violating the vulnerable's autonomy & consent with waaay more scrutiny. For many people, the simple observation of drunkenness removes the possibility of things like tattoos or sex from being allowable.
And we consider those few people who take advantage of people vulnerable like that with even more scorn and derision than normal.
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IDK where the idea of returning stronger comes from, that's very strange. We know you loose your mortal body, and the soul cannot benefit from the growth it would provide. A fresh petitioner traveling to resume a campaign would be needing to adjust to an entirely different mode of existence, it might be call for a level 1 reset (or just an X level minus) w/ rapid regrowth to previous level to represent the acclimation.
Try to put all considerations of pf2 as a game to the side when talking about the setting itself for stories.
Pharasma has inflicted suffering upon all mortals in the universe at a scale my mortal mind cannot comprehend via that aging thing.
From my perspective, that's incredibly evil to do. She continues to inflict harm via her rules that she could change at her whim, as she has done before.
Because she is so able to make changes that would reduce suffering, such as by offering mortals agency in their afterlife destination, or by ending the practice of putting people in that Graveyard, I have to consider these to be ongoing continuous acts of evil.
Otherwise I'd be a hypocrite for giving her a special Pharasma pass, excusing all that unneeded suffering because she also did ____.
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It seems bizarre to blame Pharasma for "well, turns out Hell sucks" since she didn't make it that way. All she's doing is grinding you up, running you through a centrifuge, and seeing what color the resulting slurry is and then putting it in that bin. She is literally sorting the trash, and it's not her responsibility that the cans actually get recycled but the plastic actually gets burned. She doesn't tell the person who receives the glass what to do, she just ships it to them.
It also seems weird to argue "the Gods never should have created mortals in the first place" when it's generally the case that a significant portion of mortals are pleased to exist at least some of the time.
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It seems bizarre to blame Pharasma for "well, turns out Hell sucks" since she didn't make it that way. All she's doing is grinding you up, running you through a centrifuge, and seeing what color the resulting slurry is and then putting it in that bin. She is literally sorting the trash, and it's not her responsibility that the cans actually get recycled but the plastic actually gets burned.
She is forcing people into the grinder when they do not need to be ground up in the first place. Again, she could let petitioners go; if they still get eroded by the maelstrom, they are still in the cycle.
She also discards those she deems not good enough for the slurry, and locks them in a dark room until they literally fall apart via entropy. This is so heinous, that many of these souls would rather be killed, but are denied death in this form of neglect.
She also engineered the first seeds, and created the farm that the souls grew from. She's not a lever puller in a system that already exists, she's the engineer and owner of it, constantly making changes that result in more mortal suffering to increase soul slurry output.
There are also an unknown number of souls falling off the truck after death, and getting stuck who knows where while they suffer. (But because some of these could be valuable in the slurry, she has systems and minions working to minimize this loss.)
and it's not her responsibility that the cans actually get recycled but the plastic actually gets burned.
It literally is her responsibility.
She created the whole system, and had to invent the concept of bins to make it happen. She chooses to remain in that position of power over the system, and could abdicate her throne at any time.If she *can* make changes to reduce the plastic burning (suffering), then that inaction is a choice she makes every single day those souls are still screaming.
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It also seems weird to argue "the Gods never should have created mortals in the first place" when it's generally the case that a significant portion of mortals are pleased to exist at least some of the time.
Right!?!?!?! The opposite position is basically "we should go ahead and end the universe" because I don't like how it works.
We don't know for sure, but if the gods hadn't created mortals, potentially several planes would have already been destroyed, if not all of reality.
In general, parents/creators of things imbued with sapience tend not to be able to control (all) the conditions in which that thing exists.
Do you think being a parent (creating a life that couldn't ask to exist) is evil because you can't control everything about its existence in a way that would please your creation?
Gods are neither all powerful or all knowing in Pathfinder.
It also seems weird to argue "the Gods never should have created mortals in the first place" when it's generally the case that a significant portion of mortals are pleased to exist at least some of the time.
I have never argued that.
Like with parents and children, no one gets "some abuse is free" credit for creating another life.
No human should have their neglect of some of their children excused because 3/4 of them got to an afterlife. The 1/4 locked away in the Graveyard to rot is more than enough to send them to prison for a long time.
The level of "special privilege" being provided to Pharasma here is so alien I don't really know how to approach this. Presuming you are informed of the relevant facts, I fail to grasp what additional "thing" is being added to the considerations that somehow absolves her of all these cosmic-scale acts of needless harm & suffering (evil acts/ harms/ crimes).
Right!?!?!?! The opposite position is basically "we should go ahead and end the universe" because I don't like how it works.
Why the fvck would that be the case. I do not understand this insanity of "well, there are problems, so obviously I'm advocating for nuking everything to dust."
The "opposite position" is to identify where and how harm happens, then fix the thing one change at a time.
Pharasma doesn't even consider mortal suffering to be a bad thing worth fixing. And because she claims exclusive power at the top of her system, that means golarion can have eras of past history where the situation for mortals has gotten worse, like with that new addition of aging.
At the most extreme, Pharasma's got to go. If she cannot make obvious changes that mortals can conceive of, that's going to create conflict that'll get a lot of people hurt, even if it results in less total future suffering when changes are forced upon Pharasma.
Kinda like a certain dead/lost god and the breaking of prophecy, we know that changes can be forced without Pharasma's consent.
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Why do you think that Pharasma is able to eliminate mortal suffering? Not only are Golarion deities not omnipotent (merely "extremely powerful") they are also generally prevented from acting upon reality without inviting the intervention of unfriendly gods. Pharasma's position in the middle of everything makes it particularly awkward for her to stake out a position in terms of divine allies, antagonists, etc.
Like a big difference between "the Universe" and "the First World" is that the dials and knobs to change fundamental settings of reality are only easily accessible in the second. The Universe was created because they stumbled on a pretty good model through iterating the First World, and figured that was the one they could ship.
Because she has made changes in the past.
And many, many improvements could be made outside golarion and on Phar's side of the river.
And even the "hands off the mortal realm" rules we presume seem flimsy, arbitrary, and are violated all the time, whenever the gods feel it "justified."
I think pathfinder lore works where "concept imposing gods" are what maintains that imposed "thing" existing.
Meaning the creation of Teshallas to add aging to mortals could be reversed by their removal/change, and any number of new god-concepts could be born that reduce mortal suffering.
Again, Phar explicitly designed aging to be so horrible a "thing" that all mortals would welcome the relief of death.
She changed the concept of life to become an existence that is slowly overcome with ever-building pain & suffering so unbearable, that if you keep living too long, you will be happy to die just to end that torment.
What the fvck.
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Pharasma doing harm and being an amoral agent only caring about more souls for the cycle is, again, imo a key ingredient as to why the pathfinder setting is such a good place for stories.
Any cosmos full of gods where the "top god" is rooting for the heroes and is unambiguously pro-mortal has the unworkable issue where they either cannot help the heroes for "reasons" or they do help and risk undermining the efforts of the heroes.
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You seem to be making your own houserule edit to the pf2 setting in order to make it look "less yikes" when that doesn't actually change any of the foundational yikes present (and imo it would make them much worse).
I don't know what are you quoting here since I can't see it (I don't know if its a problem from my end or you made a mistake while making the quote), but assuming its the part about people keeping their memories on death, there's an NPC on Stolen Fate that not only kept their memories, but also reincarnated in a demiplane like a few days at best after their death. I don't know if you can make spoiler tags here so I'll avoid mentioning which NPC in case somebody is playing that AP. There's also a two-headed marilith from I believe WotR that's two twin sisters together who also have both of their memories.
This isn't a house rule, that's something that exist in the setting itself.
You are also thinking an angel or devil is exactly the same as a regular mortal. No, they aren't. An outsider is a metaphysical interdimensional entity that doesn't require "prior experience" because those beings are literally born knowing stuff already. Back in PF1e monster creation rules, outsiders were automatically proficient with all armor and weapons, which means even the most magic-inclined outsider is still as good as using a sword than using a laser shotgun from Numeria.
Mortals do have agency on their afterlife. If you follow a deity 99,9% of time you are sent to their plane since you are likely following the tenets of that plane by virtue of following a deity that lives there. Back in PF1e it was possible to be a LG follower of Asmodeus with a trait. Its very likely those souls were sent to Hell anyways, but the devils that were created from that are more on the law side than on the "I will make you sign this to have your soul for eternity".
Ultimately, as I said multiple times before, you are trying to hardcode the rules of the afterlife when its clear these are more like loose guidelines than a monolith that has to be followed strictly. If an NPC from an AP has a strong enough of a tie to a demiplane to be reincarnated into it a few days after their death, you can literally justify whatever you want with your own character. James said it himself, Golarion is a place to make campaigns about heroes or villains that take down threats. I didn't play much APs but the few I did play usually do stuff that would theoretically not be possible in the setting like the "I reincarnate into this demiplane" thing I mentioned earlier.
What I like about Pathfinder (or the Lost Omens like its known nowadays) its thats a very flexible setting even if it doesn't look like it. There's also like 20+ years of content that is frequently retconned in newer books, so cherry-picking what you think benefits your argument when there's other stuff that clearly doesn't IMO is against your case here. Ultimately, the setting is yours to interpret so if you want Pharasma to be interdimensional Fuhrer that's up to you.