Go to Hell. Go Directly to Hell. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect 200 Larvae.

Kemrain · Mar 30, 2005

Disclaimer: It was a tossup between General and Off-Topic, but I decided to post this here because of the number of people likley to respond in this forum. This is only mildly DnD related, and vaguely RP related, but I'm putting it here rgardless. I'm not bringing this up to be a discussion of religion, and I don't want it to go there, even though it walks a paralell path for a while.

What I'm looking to do is find out what people think Hell and Demons are like. Not statblocks, not Balors and Cythons, not the Manual of the Planes, but the metaphysical ideas of Hell. Whether 'In Your Campaign', 'In Your Opinion', 'In Your Belief', or 'In Your Imagination', I want to compare and contrast various ideas of Hell as a place, and Demons as a group of creatures.

I've seen Hell described in many ways over the years, and I don't have very firm opinions or ideas. Everyone's familiar with the "Eternal Damnations for Sins - Pit of Suffering - Lake of Fire" sorta deal, but I've always wondered if it wasn't something else. The Lower Planes of the Great Wheel Cosmology are another example of Hell (and I'm referrign to the whole shebang, not merely Baator) that's completely different. It doesn't need to be the Hell various religions of earth speak of, merely a hellish other world. Clive Barker's Hellraiser would be a lovely example of an alternative hell, and any experts on Barker's work are free to go into detail.

I've also heard lots of different ideas about Demons over my two decades and change worth of years. Whether "Indescribably Squamous Horrors," "Inhuman and Evil Incarnate," "Much Like the Most Wicked Men and Women - Very Human," or "Merely Misunderstood," people can't seem to make their minds up about these folks. From DnD Demons (and when I say Demons, I'm including Devils and 'Loths and evetrything else that applies) who seem more conserned with their own kind than the sould of humanity, to the aforementioned Cenobites, to strange creatures that are Demon only in name, the variaties seem endless.

Given that I'm playing in/writing a game/story focused upon a demon, these ideas have been floating about in my mind for a while now. I'm curious to see what sort of ideas EN World can come up with, given the ammount of time others have thought about these things.

So share with me your wicked ideas, and maybe something good can come from all this evil.

- Kemrain the [Evil], but not evil.

Darkness · Mar 30, 2005

Hell is a decanter of endless enemies for the PCs.

barsoomcore · Mar 30, 2005

Hell is other people.

Hell is yourself.

Hell is where the cooks are British, the police are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and it's all run by the Italians.

Savage Wombat · Mar 30, 2005

I always liked the Neil Gaiman - Sandman - version of Hell:

Hell is where you go if you think you deserve to be there.

Staffan · Mar 30, 2005

Strapped in in front of a TV, Clockwork Orange-style, and being forced to watch reality TV for all eternity.

Kemrain · Mar 30, 2005

Savage Wombat said:
I always liked the Neil Gaiman - Sandman - version of Hell:

Hell is where you go if you think you deserve to be there.

I like this answer! I'm not familiar with the series, though; could you elaborate?

To elaborate on my own point I suppose I'm more interested in the Why of Hell then the How. Yes, strapped to a chair forced to watch bad TV for all eternity would be hellish, but why would you be strapped down? By whom? For what purpose? To what end? that is the Why of hell, and that's what I'd like to understand.

- Kemrain the Curious.

Lonely Tylenol · Mar 30, 2005

No Exit, by Sartre, is the best representation of hell I've ever seen. Eternally trapped with someone that has an amazing abilty to drive you nuts, and someone who you have the ability to drive nuts, who has the ability to likewise torment your tormentor. You can never settle into a truce with your opponent, because the third person will always break it up.

But you're not really trapped. There's a door, but you don't know what's out there and there's always the chance that it's worse than where you are right now. Which is worse than being trapped, because you know that the thing that holds you in your prison is just your own fear of what might happen if you left.

I always liked the Neil Gaiman - Sandman - version of Hell:

Hell is where you go if you think you deserve to be there.

Sounds like the Discworld. When you die, whatever happens is whatever you believe will happen. If you think you go to hell, then off you go. Does your hell include fire and brimstone? No? How about nasty monsters that skin you and eat you alive for all eternity? Or perhaps you were planning to reincarnate?

Particle_Man · Mar 31, 2005

In my campaign (using the Arthurian Adventures setting: the nobility score is from them, the afterlife stuff is my house rule), there is the One God (priesty) and then the Old Faith (druidy). When ya die, barring coming back (reincarnation, ressurection, etc.), Old Faithers simply blend their energies into the world, thus keeping the old faith itself going (it is slowly fading from the world -- this is a form of "environmentally friendly" stalling the fading part). (Higher nobility (see below) and higher level generate more power for the "old faith"). So no personal immortality - more at oneness with the universe.

The One God has Heaven (for good folk) and Hell (for bad folk). I actually use a Nobility score as a percentage, and the person's soul splits in two at death, with the "noble" part going to heaven and the "ignoble" part going to hell. Note a score of 100 is a free ticket to heaven for one's entire soul (so allows one to avoid hell even in part), and a score of below 1 is impossible for mortals, barring a Deal with the Adversary.

So a few people go to heaven only, and many go to BOTH heaven and hell, and everyone that doesn't make a deal with the devil but is a New Faither, however corrupt, will have a tiny piece of them in heaven. Thus on the One God plan there is eternal personal salvation for all believers, AND eternal personal damnation for all but the most pure. Neat, eh?

Why Hell? I make the souls that believe in the One God system power up the One God. Even the ignoble parts can generate power for the One God, if they are tortured. However, this is less efficient in generating power, so the One God would prefer that mortals be as noble as possible so that in the afterlife their noble parts are larger and thus generate more power.

(A noble 50% would generate twice as much as the ignoble 50%, for example). Power here is also based on level, btw.

So hell was set up by the One God to generate personal power that would otherwise be lost. Heaven is more efficient, but can only process the noble parts of souls. And Old Faith folk generate no power for the One God.

(note that various demons (including the Adversary, who is the head demon), etc., sometimes cheat (what do they care?), break into the mortal realms, wreaking havoc, corrupting souls, etc.)

Oh, and if one is neither old faith nor a One God supporter, one's spirit simply disipates, the energies lost.

Hope this helps.

barsoomcore · Mar 31, 2005

To address the actual question, the WHY of Hell has to be intimately linked to the metaphysical truth of your campaign setting.

Is Hell punishment for bad people? A natural consequence of an individual's point of view? The inaccurately propagandized alternative to the dominant power's afterlife?

*shrug*

The only sort of Hell I find philosophically interesting is the self-created one -- where you are trapped in pain by your inability to lift yourself out of it. But then that's really just a metaphor for our own daily lives.

Every other definition of Hell really involves insane superheroes running the whole universe. Which involves large numbers of difficult-to-answer-satisfactorily questions, for me. Even for a campaign setting, I find stuff like that very hard to take seriously.

The Sigil · Mar 31, 2005

barsoomcore said:
Hell is where the cooks are British, the police are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss and it's all run by the Italians.

As opposed to Heaven, where the cooks are Italian, the police are British, the mechanics are German, the lovers are French, and it's all run by the Swiss?

I dunno - I like heavy food so maybe heaven is where the cooks are German, the police are French (variant of the "communist russia" joke - in heaven, police always surrender to you), the mechanics are Swiss (army knives, watches, chocolate), the lovers are Italian (Venice, anyone? Grawr!), and it's all run by the British (the same people who gave us Monty Python on public television - they can't be all bad!).

--The Sigil