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Not to mention that even if Pharasma could remove mortal suffering then what's the definition of well-being even be? The good things of life are good because we can compare them to the bad stuff. If you are in a constant state of bliss then that becomes the "norm" and even the slightest of bad situations like cutting yourself with a piece of paper would be worse than death in such a perfect world.
It's futile to make sense of interdimensal beings, more so when those interdimensional beings were created by regular people in our world with the idea to make them incomprehensible and philosophical. This is why I prefer PF2e's unreliable narrator because it leaves "canon" up to each GM and their table.
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You are talking about the NPC who got turned into the Liar card, yes?
Firstly, why is referring to an NPC who kept her memories evidence of it being normal to loose them?
Secondly, why would such a bizarre and unique case of the deck claiming her soul be usable at all?
Thirdly, I've not read the GM side of it, but if anything, her getting yoinked out of the river, or from the boneyard, would only support the idea that petitioners can keep their memories and do not get amnesia upon transition to the form of a soul-body petitioner outsider.
And it supports the idea that there is no "need" for identity death, so any system branch outcome forcing petitioners into identity death is one we can now see to be causing "unneeded harm."
You seem to be offering weak-if-usable evidence that supports the position directly opposite your own.
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It's futile to make sense of interdimensal beings, more so when those interdimensional beings were created by regular people in our world with the idea to make them incomprehensible and philosophical. This is why I prefer PF2e's unreliable narrator because it leaves "canon" up to each GM and their table.
Then stop twisting into knots to try to refute or excuse the notion that Pharasma is an amoral being who has and will increase the suffering of mortals on a cosmic scale for the sake of increasing the souls she delivers to (some) gods of (some) realms.
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I'm talking about SPOILERS AHEAD DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU ARE PLAYING STOLEN FATE All-Seein Hajeck. The AP describes she had the choice to "face judgment for a life of lies" or be lured into the Harrow Court, to which she was reborn there as a lamia matriarch.
I'm also not making up souls lose their memories upon death. This is from Bestiary 2 pg. 198:
The petitioner’s memories from their life are typically wiped nearly clean, allowing them to retain only a few hazy fragments akin to half-remembered dreams.
I'm not arguing in favor or against souls keeping their memories or losing them upon death, I'm just noting that there's examples of both things happening in the setting even if the norm seems to be that they should lose them, or at least most of their memories. There's also All-Seein Hajeck's example from above that shows there's alternatives since she clearly avoided Pharasma entirely based on my interpretation of the text. Not to mention phantoms, who as per Monster Core pg. 262, are the souls of those that "prematurely departed from the River of Souls and were shunted into the Ethereal Plane".
Desna has the Cynosure, which is her own demiplane where the souls of her followers are sent upon death. Does that make Desna evil because she claims souls? No. All the gods in the setting use souls for one or another reason. Pharasma's only job is to send them to one realm or another.
The only reason why The Universe exists in the first place is because gods wanted to distribute positive energy in the outer planes too. The reason behind that is totally unknown, but it at least implies that before the First World and The Universe beings couldn't even be born at all. How came the gods into existance then? I don't know, but I honestly don't care that much. Its not relevant for the purpose of playing a campaign within the setting. If Paizo wants to someday explain it then its up to them, but with the information we have that doesn't make Pharasma good or evil. Just someone that keeps existance "alive" and not stagnant like it likely used to be before.
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If you click the little 'Show' button below every post box, it'll show you how to format spoiler tags.
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I think I should stop using the term petitioner here, as this page exclusively limits the petitioner label to souls that are post-judgment, and not pre-judgment.
That said, I'm sad to say that as soon as I checked your source, I've learned that you are being surprisingly dishonest here (possibly unwittingly).
That page explicitly says that the amnesia is part of Pharamsa's procedure for judged mortal souls.
When a mortal dies, their soul travels to the Boneyard in the Outer Planes where they are judged by Pharasma, the goddess of the dead. Once they have been judged, their soul is sent on to their final reward or punishment in the afterlife, and in the process is transformed into a creature known as a petitioner. This process grants the soul a new body, one whose shape is the result of the prevailing philosophical forces of the plane to which it is sent. The petitioner's memories from their life are typically wiped nearly clean, allowing them to retain only a few hazy fragments akin to half-remembered dreams. Regardless of the petitioner's size, power, or nature in life, they're a Medium creature in their afterlife.
So no, you have provided 0 textual reason to think the amnesia is natural to death. It's an artificial thing imposed by Pharasma herself, and happens after the mortal is judged.
This is harmonious with the Spiral of Bones comic where memory-yes Valeros is pre-judgement, and with Stolen Fate who also dodged judgement.
The entire crux of "Pharasma's is amoral, not good" is that she does things like this arbitrarily lol, is it insane that in your (totally honest) attempt to get to the evidence of how the cosmos works, you have uncovered yet another "Pharasma did it" harm to mortals. I had a legit had an honest chuckle at that.
This page makes cannon that all souls that go through her court get wiped. That this is a thing done to mortals by her dictum. (and could be ended tomorrow by her dictum)
Which directly contradicts with the Heaven stuff about being reunited with loved ones and getting to "enjoy your reward" until/if you decided to scale the mountain to transform. The one example where a mortal's autonomy was respected is damaged / retconned by this pf2 bestiary page. Oof.
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To create a spoiler, place the word "spoiler" in square brackets like (spoiler=the title of the spoiler) and then end the spoiler with (/spoiler)
Rather like this:
And then I use the Preview button to ensure I've not misspelled anything.
Unfortunately, I'm short of time (as usual) so I can't even fully read some of these posts, but wanted to add
- I don't think the fact that the gods didn't have mortals in the beginning is proof that the Great Beyond doesn't need mortals or souls at all. A plant grown from a seed contains enough food for it to survive the initial stages of growth before it has to start taking in sunshine to survive. A chick only needs outside food after it hatches. Myths involving the early days of the cosmos have a tone of "back stage before the show starts" that imply to me that the cosmos may have been able to survive without the cycle of souls for a while, but that without that cosmic heartbeat going, would not have been around long.
- That souls lose their memories on judgement is my least favourite aspect of the LO afterlife. James Jacobs has said a significant (but likely not only) reason it was introduced was to prevent certain types of power gamer from giving themselves a free level up into an outsider etc. I've never had this problem at my table, so while I wouldn't argue it doesn't exist in the lore, my home Golarion can get away without it. My preference is a similar trope, where the deceased more or less remembers, but distantly, and the details don't matter all that much anymore. (Another good reason for memory haze/loss being in case players think to go interrogate the soul of a historical figure about plot)
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There is also no evidence that Pharasma is responsible for this (from this source at least). Like most of your arguments, as far as we know this is an inherent part of the system outside of anyone's control, and you have not provided any evidence that other systems wouldn't lead to much worse outcomes.
It directly puts the process as the reason why the memories get wiped, the process that Pharasma imposes upon all judged mortals.
We also have enough evidence that mortals pre-judgment have their memories to confirm that there is no memory wipe caused by dying itself.
That would make it pretty awkward to use Resurrection, etc.
We have more than enough evidence to know that when a mortal soul bypasses Pharasma and nativizes to a plane (or to none) without her, they don't suffer this memory wipe.
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We have more than enough evidence to know that when a mortal soul bypasses Pharasma, they don't suffer this memory wipe.
Albeit, evidence also suggests that there is still some memory loss in some judgement bypasses--see the Eldest follower to fey soul pipeline retaining only fragmentary glimpses of their past lives
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We have more than enough evidence to know that when a mortal soul bypasses Pharasma, they don't suffer this memory wipe.Albeit, evidence also suggests that there is still some memory loss in some judgement bypasses--see the Eldest follower to fey soul pipeline retaining only fragmentary glimpses of their past lives
For sure, and I'd imagine the timescales involved in some of this stuff alone would render the mortal life an increasingly distant and small fraction of memory.
That said, "freshly soul-bodied" outsiders seem to not really have memory gaps, either while still in the beyond, or if they get resurrected.
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But I wasn't arguing that Pharasma was involved in the process or not, just that its a thing that happens regardless. Like Pronate11 said, there's no source saying "Pharasma takes away your memories" anywhere either, so as far as we know it could be something that happens naturally. After all, if you throw a soul into the blender to create a new being that isn't even "real" as we understand it but rather metaphysical could cause that.
I also said like 100+ comments ago that I find dumb that Pharasma sends souls to Abaddon when, in a literal interpretation of the knowledge we have, daemons eating a soul wouldn't be much different than a necromancer putting their own soul into a soul cage to become a lich. This is why I been saying that I think its futile to interpret this literally because then every god is going to be a piece of s#it and also because we don't even have the full picture.
I personally I want to believe that when a daemon eats a soul it isn't destroyed but rather its forced into reincarnate as a daemon, kinda like how when you sign a devil contract you are forced into Hell upon death. I don't claim this is canon because it could certainly not be, but that's the excuse I made up to justify Pharasma's actions here, because like it or not, Pharasma is depicted in a positive light in Pathfinder, so unless this is a big scheme from Paizo's part to turn her later on, the most likely answer to her sending souls to Abaddon has to be positive or at least not blatantly evil. Most of your stances here are similar because you are cherry-picking the worst things about Pharasma while ignoring the rest, which is totally fine for your own Golarion, but that doesn't make it canon or something that everyone should agree.
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Like the reason that all the horrible things exist in the world, and that death ends your existence is that these are also true of the real world, and indeed the point of the Pathfinder setting is to allow you to tell stories that are recognizable and fun for players who exist in the real world.
So there's no point in having a fictional roleplaying setting that is utopian, since these stories necessitate some manner of conflict and stakes, and "you really don't want to die" is also the fundamental stake of the human condition.
Like "that resurrection is possible" is all you really need to make death significantly less horrific in Pathfinder than it is in reality.
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Like the reason that all the horrible things exist in the world, and that death ends your existence is that these are also true of the real world, and indeed the point of the Pathfinder setting is to allow you to tell stories that are recognizable and fun for players who exist in the real world.
So there's no point in having a fictional roleplaying setting that is utopian, since these stories necessitate some manner of conflict and stakes, and "you really don't want to die" is also the fundamental stake of the human condition.
Like "that resurrection is possible" is all you really need to make death significantly less horrific in Pathfinder than it is in reality.
You put this in much better words that I did a few comments ago. Thanks.
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So... Am I the only one that finds it hypocritical of Rahadoum treats the gods as tyrants
AND YET THEY PRACTICE SLAVERY!?
Gods may not be allowed to be tyrants, but mortals can be tyrants!
also if the sun is tied to Sarenrae, then they should be plotting to do second darkness but bigger. ie blow it up death to sarenrae. if they want to oppose Caydan cailan they should implement total prohibition on booze. Also ban all sex, romance, art, and passion to stop Shelyn. Ban anything to do with undeath and disease to stop Urgathoa, ban all infernal stuff to stop Asmodeus, be a ruthless industrialist to oppose Gozreh but also be a a breaker of laws and supporter of thieves but a supporter in a way that also has lots of punishments so that you don't help out either Norgobor or Abadar. so on and so on for all the gods.
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For more on this you should read Death's Heretic and the Redemption Engine, both by James Sutter. Two novels about a Rahadoumi man pressed into service as an inquisitor of Pharasma
This is why I understand sapient undead who seek that out!
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I'm not insisting anything should / has to be done. I think the pathfinder setting would be much more boring if it were more utopic, and I think "unambiguously good" gods are a big problem for fantasy stories. The setting already has enough issues around "why don't we get some high level __ to help us?" type problems. If Pharasma actually cared about moral suffering, then you'd have to invent reasons why systemic injustices would be allowed to continue, and things like devil contracts would be nullified in her court.
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What I am attempting to do, is to call a spade a spade.
yet the moment I dare say that "Pharasma hurts mortals, actually."
And explain how she needlessly harms mortals and makes them suffer for the sake of consuming more souls, I have gotten every form of excuse and denial possible.
Again, Pharasma is an amoral god who does not see mortal suffering as a problem in need of fixing.
She has an entire sub-realm of souls she denies an afterlife to, who are wasting away in neglectful agony. A basement full of people, left to rot because they don't measure up to her standards. Note that *all* of them could have gotten an afterlife if they had pledged their soul to a god.
That "crime" of remaining unpledged, while having "not enough ethos" is how they end up locked away in her Gravelands, trapped until their soul-bodies eventually give out.
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When too many mortals were not jumping up to die at their Pharasma-appointed time, she invented a new god to afflict every mortal with aging. With the express designed intent of aging being slow creep of growing torture so that mortals would welcome the release of death as an escape from life. She literally added untold suffering to all mortal life because there were too many death-dodgers for her liking.
She dictates a system that could be changed to reduce suffering without even reducing souls in the cycle. Such as letting those Graveyard mortals out, or allowing mortals to choose to leave and not be judged, or the proposed judgement inversion that improves agency.
As the one who claims the spot as ruler, she can make any of those changes at any time. Instead, she will continue to be a hypocrite and leave the daemon court empty, and will send good souls to hell when they don't match ethos.
That is an amoral god, who many would judge to be "doing evil."
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But if you dare call a spade a spade, and it'll take ya 2 pages of cutting through the ink clouds before that core thesis can come out the other side unbroken.
Amorality is not neutrality. Because amorality is to completely ignore any concept of morals 99/100 it means "does some evil."
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https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Graveyard_of_Souls
The rare souls that do find peace with their ultimate fate instead serve the graveyard as its custodians or guardians.1
This is more a form of quarantine than a punishment, out of a belief that these souls would be ill-served by a continued existence in the Great Beyond.
(totally going to take your word for it narrator. Way to fail the lampshade attempt and get the reader to think about how fvcked this sentence from Phar is)
Instead, here they remain forever dormant, eternally separated from the fabric of the Outer Planes and the rest of the multiverse. Those souls that still have the will to rouse themselves here are usually either those that have recently arrived or those consumed by emotion over their fate; some wander emotionlessly and in a haze, while others might beg visitors for aid or simply lash out at them in their rage.
The vast field of graves is seemingly without end, stretching for over a thousand miles and filled with cold, quiet crypts that feel suffused with a sorrow unlike Pharasma's graveyards in the Universe. This sadness comes from the quiet reality of the fate of the souls at rest, for no glory in an afterlife nor rebirth will ever be given the souls that have been sent here.3
All of them could have gone to another afterlife. And the afterlife they have is not some horrible hellscape, its a peaceful spot. And if you do not want that spot, you can just go elsewhere.
No. No. Aaaand No. They didn't have a choice to go anywhere else, it's a pretty horrific place, and when you're the one locked inside that coffin, it sure as hell is not "peaceful." At least, not until the mind is completely made mush via decades or centuries of neglect.
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If a soul is sent there by Pharamsa, they are stuck there until they fall apart into essence. Instead of allowing them to go out into the great beyond, Pharasma ends all those people right there. Locks them up and does the outsider version of starving them to death. Most have been there so long that they have become catatonic and do not act, just wait for oblivion. That's pretty fvcked. And yes, they are forced to stay there; the rare few that don't consider it a horrible fate end up as custodians/guardians of that specific sub-realm, keying the reader into the fact even they cannot leave it.
If a mortal never pledged themself to a god in life, there are in danger of this fate, as a pledge is the only ethos-independent way to get to a destination. This includes things like devil contracts.
If a mortal is a no-pledge "atheist" and rejected the gods, and that mortal doesn't have enough ethos for Pharasma to judge them to a destination anyway, then the mortal gets sent to the Graveyard.
We don't need to see inside Phar's head to know that this is seriously fvcked up. The page deliberately informs the reader that she could let them go out into the cosmos without being sent/judged to a proper plane, and that Phar instead chooses to kill these people via neglect. This is not a city-within-a-sub realm. It's a literal graveyard of headstones and no activity / "living" to speak of.
Still wonder if that "feeds atheists to Groteus to weaken him" thing was ever declared non-cannon. Or the secret vault of mortal soul gems she's got stashed away. Again, just about every rule she imposes, she herself has broken the moment she thought that she has something to gain.
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When a mortal dies, their soul travels to the Boneyard in the Outer Planes where they are judged by Pharasma, the goddess of the dead. Once they have been judged, their soul is sent on to their final reward or punishment in the afterlife, and in the process is transformed into a creature known as a petitioner. This process grants the soul a new body, one whose shape is the result of the prevailing philosophical forces of the plane to which it is sent. The petitioner's memories from their life are typically wiped nearly clean, allowing them to retain only a few hazy fragments akin to half-remembered dreams. Regardless of the petitioner's size, power, or nature in life, they're a Medium creature in their afterlife.So no, you have provided 0 textual reason to think the amnesia is natural to death. It's an artificial thing imposed by Pharasma herself, and happens after the mortal is judged.There is also no evidence that Pharasma is responsible for this (from this source at least). Like most of your arguments, as far as we know this is an inherent part of the system outside of anyone's control, and you have not provided any evidence that other systems wouldn't lead to much worse outcomes.
Say what you will about the current system, but its efficient, and if it stops being efficient the universe ends. Could there be some way thats just as efficient, or even slightly less efficient but way more moral? Maybe, but no one in universe seems to think so. I can't think of any cannon characters that think the current system needs to be replaced except like Ugathoa, and I would expect any that do exist to be similarly evil.
Well Pharasma is full-fledged creator of majority of Great Beyond so its fair to say she is responsible for how things works in most cases unless it directly said otherwise as for opposition there was already said that most character in universe don't even know how afterlife works in fist place to have their perspective on that matter and those who do usally biased to some degree(gods priests outhersiders )
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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.
You could theoretically argue that shades and mortals that they once were at least have same consciousness due their shared quintessence even if can't prove that is possibly best guess.
And as i already pointed out even if shades and mortal souls were fully same being it still won't change fact that both good and evil action can lead you to good afterlife if you know to whom you must pledge| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I personally I want to believe that when a daemon eats a soul it isn't destroyed but rather its forced into reincarnate as a daemon, kinda like how when you sign a devil contract you are forced into Hell upon death.
Well, it's not strictly canon (both because I don't have a text citation, and because James isn't terribly fond of his posts being wielded out of context to win internet arguments) but I do recall mention in the Ask James Jacobs thread from a few years ago that the consumed soul isn't completely annihilated, and that something of it remains to fertilize the earth, in a metaphorical manner of speaking.
Of course, this was speaking for pre-judgement souls bypassing the Boneyard because they were devoured and so skipped directly to the stage where their essence joins with the Great Beyond, albeit in a place perhaps not intended. Pharasma doesn't love this, but soulstuff still arrives somewhere, even if not where it was meant to. By contrast, already judged souls arriving in Abaddon as the Hunted are basically exactly where they should be and whether they get eaten within moments of arrival or not doesn't really change what happens after a soul is judged except that the shade gets composted a lot faster than for other final destinations.
But again, the ecology of daemon excrement has never (and probably will never) been published as canon lore for the setting, so it's up to us to decide what happens to the soul components after consumption by a soul-eater. Even so, I think a naturalistic lens is supported.
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I personally I want to believe that when a daemon eats a soul it isn't destroyed but rather its forced into reincarnate as a daemon, kinda like how when you sign a devil contract you are forced into Hell upon death.Well, it's not strictly canon (both because I don't have a text citation, and because James isn't terribly fond of his posts being wielded out of context to win internet arguments) but I do recall mention in the Ask James Jacobs thread from a few years ago that the consumed soul isn't completely annihilated, and that something of it remains to fertilize the earth, in a metaphorical manner of speaking.
Of course, this was speaking for pre-judgement souls bypassing the Boneyard because they were devoured and so skipped directly to the stage where their essence joins with the Great Beyond, albeit in a place perhaps not intended. Pharasma doesn't love this, but soulstuff still arrives somewhere, even if not where it was meant to. By contrast, already judged souls arriving in Abaddon as the Hunted are basically exactly where they should be and whether they get eaten within moments of arrival or not doesn't really change what happens after a soul is judged except that the shade gets composted a lot faster than for other final destinations.
But again, the ecology of daemon excrement has never (and probably will never) been published as canon lore for the setting, so it's up to us to decide what happens to the soul components after consumption by a soul-eater. Even so, I think a naturalistic lens is supported.
Aren't souls quintessence simply merge with demon upon consumption?
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Aren't souls quintessence simply merge with demon upon consumption?I personally I want to believe that when a daemon eats a soul it isn't destroyed but rather its forced into reincarnate as a daemon, kinda like how when you sign a devil contract you are forced into Hell upon death.Well, it's not strictly canon (both because I don't have a text citation, and because James isn't terribly fond of his posts being wielded out of context to win internet arguments) but I do recall mention in the Ask James Jacobs thread from a few years ago that the consumed soul isn't completely annihilated, and that something of it remains to fertilize the earth, in a metaphorical manner of speaking.
Of course, this was speaking for pre-judgement souls bypassing the Boneyard because they were devoured and so skipped directly to the stage where their essence joins with the Great Beyond, albeit in a place perhaps not intended. Pharasma doesn't love this, but soulstuff still arrives somewhere, even if not where it was meant to. By contrast, already judged souls arriving in Abaddon as the Hunted are basically exactly where they should be and whether they get eaten within moments of arrival or not doesn't really change what happens after a soul is judged except that the shade gets composted a lot faster than for other final destinations.
But again, the ecology of daemon excrement has never (and probably will never) been published as canon lore for the setting, so it's up to us to decide what happens to the soul components after consumption by a soul-eater. Even so, I think a naturalistic lens is supported.
Again, taking answers from a trawl of the Ask James Jacobs thread, some of which may not reflect the latest word that made it to publishing and could easily have changed between then and now, a soul is actually not made of quintessence until after it is judged and sent to a plane. Even so, looking through a naturalistic lens, it would make sense if some part of the soul was incorporated into the daemon's body while the rest was left behind, much like biological creatures take components they need and leave the rest as waste. Perhaps one might say the 'energy' of the soul gets consumed and what essence remains is compatible with being incorporated into the plane it gets left on, or else simply flushes down the drain to the Antipode to supply building blocks for a new soul.
(That said, as far as answers go "converted wholly into daemon biomass" is perfectly viable and functions similarly to the suggestion above, only with the soul being deposited with the daemons corpse instead of earlier)
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The pf2 stuff on soul gems (via Cacodaemon) at least seems to imply that:
when an outsider pops a gem, they gain some sustenance (via a brief fast healing effect) but most of the soul is sent directly to the home plane of that outsider. Because there's no mention of the soul being destroyed, it seems the soul is left recoverable. If someone were to travel to that plane, they could find / rescue the soul.
A fiend can Interact to ingest a soul gem it is holding, condemning the soul to the fiend's home plane. The fiend gains fast healing 5 for 1 minute.
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Still wonder if that "feeds atheists to Groteus to weaken him" thing was ever declared non-cannon. Or the secret vault of mortal soul gems she's got stashed away. Again, just about every rule she imposes, she herself has broken the moment she thought that she has something to gain.
Not to keep invoking our friendly Directorsaurus in every breath, but as it happens, James has expressed on a number of occasions how annoying it is that there presently isn't a way to decanonize or errata any lore element right how aside from publishing new lore that directly contradicts or overwrites the old lore (an agonisigly slow process subject to the whims of publication needs) or simply never mentioning it again (which is elegant but lacks definitiveness).
In any case, the idea does come up in Planar Adventures (2018) but has been reframed as a rumour that explains why Groetus' decaying orbit alters at times. He is likewise said to be somehow repelled by the "damned and despairing spirits" of the GoS.
Interestingly, the city of Spire's Edge is likewise a place where unaligned souls may end up, with not particular attachment to any deity, cause, or morality, said to continue on their daily life. The majority population are shades (ie petitioners) so it seems they've probably been judged already. It seems there mag be a place for true neutral atheists in the Boneyard aside from haunting the Graveyard of Souls, albeit the text doesn't confirm what exact region of the Boneyard the city lies in. ... aside from, I guess, the Edge
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And not for nothing, but I recommend trying to avoid misspelling certain expletives, lest it seem you are trying to circumvent the swear filter. It would be better not to bother the mods with such a thing.
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Still wonder if that "feeds atheists to Groteus to weaken him" thing was ever declared non-cannon. Or the secret vault of mortal soul gems she's got stashed away. Again, just about every rule she imposes, she herself has broken the moment she thought that she has something to gain.
I wonder if James Jacobs can clear that up and any other issues you seem to have?
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I wonder if James Jacobs can clear that up and any other issues you seem to have?Still wonder if that "feeds atheists to Groteus to weaken him" thing was ever declared non-cannon. Or the secret vault of mortal soul gems she's got stashed away. Again, just about every rule she imposes, she herself has broken the moment she thought that she has something to gain.
I'm fine with Pharasma being amoral and hurting mortals, that's the whole point of her character, "ends justify the means" and what not.
Things like hypocritically not granting an afterlife and feeding certain people to Groteus are (imo) there precisely so that even the most "but Phrasma is the good god" readers get second thoughts. And while I understand the worry about "going too far" in some ways with how it's very anti-atheist, that kind of "yikes" radar isn't really being triggered by this lore bit for me.
From every angle, I find the Groetus thing actually "well made." (in the micro! Macro it's a baaad idea)
Feeding Groetus atheists is a very dense example of Phar breaking her rules about sending souls to an afterlife, while her justifications are clearly spelled out in the same lore bit, to repel Groteus.
If anything, that lore bit actually gives Pharasma far too much leeway for people to assume good intentions for her other misdeeds.
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I'm honestly way more intrigued by the Graveyard of Souls (which seems to be where Phar gets the anti-Groteus souls from).
That whole deal is one of the rare instances of Phar being arbitrary against her own self interest of the soul cycle. (Another being the empty daemon court*)
People excusing / downplaying the Graveyard are forgetting about the maelstrom and the cycle. By locking those souls up, she's adding to the spire's growth (bad thing), *and* preventing the mortals from getting recycled into new souls.
Pharasma is the kind of god willing to curse mortals with aging for more souls, yet she condemns the unpledged mortals with too little ethos to a horrible fate?
This is why I kinda think the lore would be improved without the Groteus feeding, because it gives Pharasma a clear excuse. If Groteus is constantly trying to end the verse, and is being constantly delayed by the "anti-feeding" done by Phar, it's incredibly easy to "justify" nearly any harm/evil done for the sake of that delay.
The Groteus feeding being such a "now" doomsday problem also kinda fundamentally shifts a lot of other things in imo a worse way, and give Pharasma *even more* of an excuse for hurting so many people, when she otherwise would appear to have no need or reason to inflict such suffering.
Because, if Phar *needs* souls who hate the gods to stop the apocalypse, then she has a "justifiable" reason to make mortals hate her.
(and it's also another why for her to lock away the Graveyard mortals to rot, she's waiting for the sub-set that will stew in their growing hatred of Phar, then shoving them into G when their god-hate is at its max.)
It also make Groteus into a chump, and kinda makes a lot of soul mechanics questionable. Because the concept requires that Groteus is unable to defend against this, and somehow has to absorb/eat these souls against his will. (also kinda makes the Phar-Groteus connection a bit too "secretly a dual-identity god" to ignore, but I don't think that's intentional. (How do you force feed anti-souls to a god? Well, if you are also G, then you just eat them yourself to damage that half of your self.))
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So while the "horrible crime" of denying atheists an afterlife by obliviating them via feeding is "perfectly Pharamsa" and very much justified in it's narrow context, it causes waaaay to many lore problems in the wide context of Pharasma.
Without the Graveyard there as an example of Pharasma unambiguously "being a dick to atheists" when it would be in her own soul-cycle interest to let them out, there is little "easily visible lore" for readers to slowly figure out that Pharasma is not benevolent, and that she does not think mortal suffering is a "bad thing worth minimizing."
The first clue being the empty court is still really well done lore, but imo a lot of the old "smoking guns" like the gnomes and bleaching, and that aging is a post-hoc edit inflicted by her upon mortals, are either too old to be noticed/found, or seem to have been solidly ret conned out.
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My main "concern" is that Pharasma was always intended to be an amoral and flawed tyrant who already knows she's doomed to fail, and that the longer pf2 goes on, the more of her "yikes" acts will be *factually* white-washed in canon, or outright erased.
This isn't just by retcon, it's super common in settings like this to be "absolved by addition" of a "greater harm" that her evil act avoids, like feeding Groteus.
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Overall, still more than enough reason to imo delete the feeding groteus thing from canon. Even without looking at how it affects Phar's character, things like "the universe is one missed feeding from annihilation" add waaaay too many "grimdark points" for being such a hidden tiny bit of info. It's way too much 40K "the Emperor needs a thousand souls a day to sustain his half-life" for the kitchen sink fantasy of pathfinder, imo.
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If I were to ever think of bothering James Jacobs with a direct question, it would be about the timing of the Graveyard and Groteus-feeding lore being created.
I'm honestly super curious to learn if feeding Groteus was originally a retcon/excuse to give Phar a pragmatic reason to keep the atheists under lock and key, or if it was originally intended as just a way to make G have a "real" threat while being such a distant god.
More to ask /learn if:
the Graveyard + G feeding were written together, if the G feeding was added 2nd as a "yikes" reduction for the Graveyard, if the Graveyard was written 2nd as a "yikes" reduction for the G feeding, if they were conceptualized completely independently, etc.
I've even found an old player blog conspiracizing that there's an even yet more important and special "need" for those atheist souls beyond Groteus, lol. People seem to hook onto this area of the lore.
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A thing I'm struggling with understanding the objections is that if you're the GM, then you control the gods, then you can decide what happens to any soul that comes into Pharasma's court. So you can have her overrule infernal contracts, reincarnate atheists, or whatever- make whatever makes the story the most interesting happen. Paizo is never going to drill down too deeply on "what happens when you die and for what reasons" because we don't want players to be optimizing their character's post-mortem (you're supposed to want to stay alive.)
So everything Paizo has said about souls and Pharasma's judgement etc. is in the interest of "serving the sorts of stories you can tell." But like everything, you don't have to use any part of it that you don't think benefits the story. Pharasma is, above all else, mysterious.
Like Shelyn has an anathema of "destroy art or allow it to be destroyed" but if you don't think this should come up in the context of a Shelynite pastry chef whose delicate and beautiful creations are, in fact, intended to be eaten then you can just say that Shelyn understands and appreciates ephemeral art as well.
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I feel the existence of Phlegyas, someone who Pharasma personally elevated to the rank of Usher, who also is tasked with handling the souls of Atheists, does imply that Pharasma doesn't feed Atheists to Groetus.
Friendly reminder that Pharasma is NOT the sole judge of all souls, most are getting judged by Yamaraj and Ushers, it's a whole ass legal system, and Pharasma leaves much of it's running to the discretion of those beneath her.
Also, iirc, there was an incident when Axis demanded Pharasma strip all Psychopomps of personality and free will and just make them drones, but she obviously refused; hardly the actions of a Tyrant.
And briefly on the memory thing, that's definitely not something Pharasma does that's not part of the normal process of Judgement; otherwise, I doubt one of the most powerful goddesses would be stumped by a Demigods sabotage (Soul Anchor)
I'm here now, gonna defend the Lady of the Graves.
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I feel like they have retconnedwhite-whashedor rather memory-holed most of the things she did wrong. However, because those things were part of her character, it doesn't work. It's like if they erased everything that Asmodeus did, would you suddenly trust him?
I don't know that this comparison really holds up. Like, Asmodeus is meant to be the archdevil, one of the biggest bads of the cosmos. If the King of Hell, presented as a villain, didn't have any evil acts to his name, it would be odd, because who he is supposed to be doesn't match with who he is. And yet, I would fully expect people to decide "well, if Asmo is 'evil' but doesn't actually do anything evil, then he's just a badboy" and like, that's fertile ground for fan favourite rebel antihero type despite the fact that this is as much the opposite of who Asmo is as possible.
By contrast, Pharasma is intended to be a neutral arbiter who cannot take sides in any conflict in the cosmos because she is the next best thing to a fundamental, natural process vital to its ongoing existence, given a face. If there are deeds that make Pharasma no longer fit that role, it doesn't make sense not to reconsider unless aiming to create the image of a 'neutrality' that is a balancing act of random good and evil acts... which itself is a foolish project, since acts that cause suffering tend to stand out and not to balance very well with acts of not-suffering.
As somebody who enjoys that there's a lot of 'creepy/dark but not evil' going on with the psychopomps, when it comes to aspects of Phrasma's chaaracter that failed to toe this line and came off harsher when examined too closely (as we fans are wont to do), it doesn't make sense to treat these 'actually kind of evil' moments as fundamental aspects of her character without something to soften them back. There are attempts (like Teshallas' aging being not only loss of ability, but also the very thing that gives mortals the ability to grow with experience) but they don't always pan out like that.
Of course, that said the Concordance of Rivals seems to be at least partly written from the perspective of the in-universe angel Tabris, so I half wonder if taking its claims as hard fact rather than mythopoeia is missing the point? But then, James already said in this thread to make our own interpretations of canon based on what has bene published, so that line of thinking was already at work, really.
... Would be neat to try some day going through the references notes for each of the wiki pages related to Pharasma, the Boneyard, and the River of Souls and compile an actual list of esoteric lore of what has actually been said (and when) to see what things have been blatantly contradicted and never repeated in 15 years, and what things are still seeing regular references in new books.
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I'm not really sure how her lobbing Atheist souls at Groetus like snacks were a core part of her character, that was 3.5 D&D-ancient character from like one module iirc, and from a time when she was legit the only judge in the Boneyard we had ever heard of, but now she has a whole pantheon and worship or not her one and only concern is making sure the River of Souls flows correctly and the cycle of life and death is not perverted. Chucking souls at Groetus and presumably destroying them flys in the face of her character, and I don't consider hypocritical, actually evil all along characterisation as particularly interesting.
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Chucking souls at Groetus and presumably destroying them flys in the face of her character, and I don't consider hypocritical, actually evil all along characterisation as particularly interesting.
I mean, I would consider it as an option that Pharasma allows committed atheists. To wit, your options are:
- Judgement, like everybody else.- Quietude
- Oblivion
Since most people don't get any sort of choice presumably, this seems more than fair. If you prefer being immediately reduced to the quintessence of the boneyard for some reason, they will make that accommodation.
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IIRC I read somewhere that the Groetus thing was only for unfaithful atheists, just like unfaithful believers had their own dooms. Whereas faithful atheists were allowed to rest peacefully or roam creation as they wished, just like faithful believers had their own rewards.
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IIRC I read somewhere that the Groetus thing was only for unfaithful atheists, just like unfaithful believers had their own dooms. Whereas faithful atheists were allowed to rest peacefully or roam creation as they wished, just like faithful believers had their own rewards.
I suspect the choice of vocabulary here might cause a misunderstanding. Perhaps you meant it this way, but 'faithful' in English carries a strong connotation of religiosity. It means a variety of things, but the one most likely to come to mind in this context is "having belief in the divine" rather than "being dedicated to a cause".
In that way, I suspect people upset with Pharasma's treatment of atheists would take exception to the idea that atheists who show sufficient religious feeling are rewarded over those who don't. I don't know French, but I suspect you may have been aiming for a different nuance, perhaps closer to "dedicated" or even "just" or "moral"
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IIRC I read somewhere that the Groetus thing was only for unfaithful atheists, just like unfaithful believers had their own dooms. Whereas faithful atheists were allowed to rest peacefully or roam creation as they wished, just like faithful believers had their own rewards.
Like from Pharasma's perspective there are probably multiple kinds of Atheists, who can be handled differently.
- Metaphysical Nihilists, i.e. "life is meaningless, the Gods are meaningless, the afterlife is meaningless."
- Misotheists, i.e. "the Gods do not deserve my respect."
- Irreligious, i.e. "I just never give the Gods a thought."
etc.
The irreligious can just be treated like everybody else, they can't stop God from telling them "you have to go over there now" any more than they could stop a King from doing the same thing.
The Misotheists and Nihilists might instead prefer oblivion or quietude.
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Being irreligious isn't thoughtless (like this is like 90% of people in China, which is a LOT of people), it's that things other than religion occupy the places in your life that other people might think religion is important for.
Like some people praise Jesus when they find their lost keys, but other people just "are happy to have found their keys and don't bother to wonder if Jesus applied to this situation in any way."
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On Earth, atheism most often means lack of a belief in gods (w/ a small portion believing in a lack of gods). On Golarion I think one would add the misotheists like Rahadoun/Ezren as well as those with a lack of worship of any god (since it's rarer there to lack a belief).
In all it's a much bigger umbrellas than those categories. On Facebook I wrote a post called "50 Shades of Atheism" making a list I thought I would have to pad to fulfill, but I'd had to trim. Among the missing here are the most common "I did research gods, and meh." That meh could represent a lack of evidence, a lack of a good fit w/ the gods they know exist (on Golarion), or a greater appeal elsewhere (perhaps via philosophy or simply thinking divine questions are overrated/irrelevant). So not the hate of the misotheist, implied lack of religious knowledge of the irreligious, and without falling into nihilism (which is more a pitfall for those whose religion failed them than for atheists themselves).
I wonder if there are more existentialists than those in Rahadoun. Hmm.
Maybe some cultivators in Tian?
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Like the reason that all the horrible things exist in the world, and that death ends your existence is that these are also true of the real world, and indeed the point of the Pathfinder setting is to allow you to tell stories that are recognizable and fun for players who exist in the real world.
So there's no point in having a fictional roleplaying setting that is utopian, since these stories necessitate some manner of conflict and stakes, and "you really don't want to die" is also the fundamental stake of the human condition.
Like "that resurrection is possible" is all you really need to make death significantly less horrific in Pathfinder than it is in reality.
I mean if you go directly into meta-reasoning we can use problem of evil and Euthyphro dilemma to deny legitimacy of gods authority in Golarion
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On Earth, atheism most often means lack of a belief in gods (w/ a small portion believing in a lack of gods). On Golarion I think one would add the misotheists like Rahadoun/Ezren as well as those with a lack of worship of any god (since it's rarer there to lack a belief).
In all it's a much bigger umbrellas than those categories. On Facebook I wrote a post called "50 Shades of Atheism" making a list I thought I would have to pad to fulfill, but I'd had to trim. Among the missing here are the most common "I did research gods, and meh." That meh could represent a lack of evidence, a lack of a good fit w/ the gods they know exist (on Golarion), or a greater appeal elsewhere (perhaps via philosophy or simply thinking divine questions are overrated/irrelevant). So not the hate of the misotheist, implied lack of religious knowledge of the irreligious, and without falling into nihilism (which is more a pitfall for those whose religion failed them than for atheists themselves).
I wonder if there are more existentialists than those in Rahadoun. Hmm.
Maybe some cultivators in Tian?misotheism is hatred of gods.
Not worshiping = hatred?
I listed them as two separate subcategories: These/A (hate gods) as well as these/B (don't worship any) to be included with the typical atheists. I don't think either of those made my list of 50 types since both groups do in fact believe gods exist. But they work for Golarion's lore which uses a broader definition of atheism which wouldn't be useful on Earth. That's the way Paizo went with it; I would prefer Ezren (et al) was labeled a misotheist instead. And there's probably a Greek or Latin word we could apply for "believes in gods, but doesn't worship any" though it'd probably end up being something we use as an insult in English, so never mind.
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On top of that, the Graveyard of Souls isn't the only option for athiest souls. Some train under Phlegyas and become psychopomps themselves, some find peace, some still go to an outer plane as a petitioner and some get reincarnated.I always thought this, along with the book where an atheist begs Pharasma for help, was particularly insulting. It's almost as if it's saying that atheists can't hold to their ideals and end up bowing to the gods. If you become a psychopomp or beg a god for help, then you were never an atheist to begin with.
And even if it was the only option for athiests, the Graveyard of Souls is still an afterlife and the Boneyards is still part of the Outer Planes and the Cycle of Souls - the existance of which isn't a bad thing, anymore than Heaven and Hell existing is bad for the universe.Yes, it is bad if you are a real atheist because the gods supposedly created your kind when the previous world clearly had immediate reincarnation for dubious purposes. They deliberately cursed your kind with aging and did everything to prevent you from escaping this curse. When you died, they trapped your souls in a graveyard. If you are a true atheist, you would be furious at the gods, especially that goddess.
I would caution you against comparing Golarion Atheism to real world Atheism, because within the context of the game world there aren't really any Atheist, in the way we traditionally define Atheism.
You can argue about whether the beings called gods/deities are worth of respect or deserving of being called "god" but they undoubtedly exist (although having concrete proof is out of reach of most people).
So Atheism, as in "I doubt the existence of god(s)", doesn't really make sense in Golarion. Especially so for high level adventurers when they could travel to other planes and potentially meet those beings.
Instead (and for the worse) they lump together different groups (such as nihilists, misotheists, and probably a lot of others I'm not thinking of at the moment and label them all as "atheists".
I don't mean this to be insulting, but the way this post comes across it feels like you're injecting some complicated real life feelings about religious issues into the game world. It comes across very much like a misotheist, angry because they found out gods are real (in a fictional setting).
I consider myself an agnostic atheist in many respects, and if I found myself in Golarions afterlife...well I think I'd probably respect and accept Pharasma's judgement. Because the reason I'm an atheist is that there is no proof of god(s) in the real world. But as someone that believe is science and evidenced based reasoning, coming face to face with an absurdly powerful being would definitely be cause to revisit my position and at least explore what I'm experiencing.
Although, maybe I would become a misotheist angry with the way the gods control things (although how much understanding I would have of that is questionable anyways).
Anyways, my point is being an atheist because you doubt the existence of gods and have no proof is one thing. Knowing the gods exist but rejecting them because you don't find them worthy of respect or adoration, and rejecting their control and being angry about being subjected to it (could be considered reasonable) but is very different from the first.
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Thank you, Claxon, because yes, an atheist Earthling faced with the existence of gods says, "Huh, I guess I was wrong." And then loses their atheism, perhaps after verifying who knows how. There's no dedication to stay "true" to. Most often Earth-atheism's rooted in ambivalence or critical thinking, both which favor accepting a god's existence when confronted.
Even spellcheck doesn't recognize misotheism and who knows what "acknowledge exist, but ignore-ism" is called, so Paizo went with the closest common category. It's unfortunate IMO because many apologists aggressively assert atheists do believe, citing their religious texts that tell them so. Reminds me of a list of political systems in an earlier edition of D&D that I found educational, and which included many only useful on a magical world, i.e. magocracy. There's a similar opportunity available re: religion & philosophy, which would be cool if it included magical notions too...except it's dawning on me many Earthlings do embrace magical notions so maybe it's too tough a topic to tiptoe through. Yet it'd be academic denotation, right? So maybe fine.
ETA: Strength of Thousands would've been a fun place for that!