Shadowfell, and reworking of undead and afterlife

[Nahat Anoj]

As for souls that are beyond the knowledge of the gods, thats just crazy stupid. Half the point of religion is knowledge and meaning for the afterlife. Actual gods that you can talk to but just shrug and look confused when such topics come up strikes me as a fairly asinine concept.

I bet some gods, like the Raven Queen or Vecna, know. Or, at least, they have a very good idea.

 

[sirwmholder]

I have always felt that in D&D a mortal's soul continues to the great beyond. However, there are rare occasions of devout faith where a soul attracts the notice of a Deity. If the soul upheld the highest ideals of their God throughout their lives... or the mortal was cut down while in the service of their God... or if their God had taken special notice of them during their lives... then their God would take the disembodied soul back to their home plane. The God would forge a new body for the soul forever linking the new Celestial to their God. However, there was no rest in this Afterlife, it was an eternity of service that one willingly accepted in order to fulfill a burning desire to do what they feel is the right course of action.

With the changes proposed in 4e... Devils make even more sense. Even to the point of enticing souls into service instead of facing the unknown... the greatest human fear. I'm very excited at what I've seen so far and can't wait for the books to be in my hands .

William Holder

 

[sirwmholder]

I did want to add that God's not knowing where a soul goes could play into a greater design of Reincarnation ( the spell or what happens if you cross over into the great beyond... complete with mind wipe )... or why there are time issuses for True Resurrection... or why True Resurrection can not bring back someone who died of "old age".

More food for thought,
William Holder

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Makes you wonder if they really deserve being called "gods" then, as modern people understand the term.

They resemble the place of gods in Buddhism, actually. In Buddhism, gods are beings that can break the cycle of death and rebirth, just like humans in that regard.

Makes you wonder if maybe there are Churches in D&D World that reject "the gods" (meaning Corellon, The Raven Queen, etc.) as just powerful mortals, and instead worship "the true god" who created the universe, and actually knows what happens to souls after they pass beyond the last Shadowfell. Would such persons be "Clerics" (the class)? Would they get spells?

I bet they could, and I bet there is such a place, floating through the Astral Sea. In my campaign, I'd stat up "God" as just divine energy that's obtained sentience

 

[jester47]

I have always played it that to make a skeleton or a zombie you couldn't just animate any old corpse. It needed to be fairly fresh. And to get a fresh corpse, you generally had to kill somthing.

So what makes it evil is the situation. There is the evil necromancer that captures people, kills them and turns them into undead servants. There is the ambiguous necromancer that runs the graveyard and is the local healer. He is called to the place where people are injured, and if they pass on he hastily "buries" them and then animates them later to live in his secret lair cave. Then there are the (good?) priests who when the battle is dire and there is a need for more troops cast animate dead on the corpses of the fallen in the ceremony known as the last march of the dead.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Makes you wonder if they really deserve being called "gods" then, as modern people understand the term.

They seem more like the Greek gods (meaning Zeus et. al.) who did not create the Universe, but lived in it just as much as humans did (and just as prone as men to mistakes and failure of character). They are not like the Abrahamic God at all, omnipotent and all-knowing.

Makes you wonder if maybe there are Churches in D&D World that reject "the gods" (meaning Corellon, The Raven Queen, etc.) as just powerful mortals, and instead worship "the true god" who created the universe, and actually knows what happens to souls after they pass beyond the last Shadowfell. Would such persons be "Clerics" (the class)? Would they get spells?

I guess that depends on (1) whether 4E still has the idea of "alignment" Clerics, and (2) where you think their spells come from.

Um, that's pretty much for precisely how I've always thought of the gods in D&D in 1E through 3E, so I don't really know if you're whole "as modern people would understand them" thing really means much. I mean, what? Because the gods don't match up to real-world monotheistic religion (despite all being polytheistic, and matching polytheistic religions decently), they're not "gods". That's a pretty narrow definition of god there, and it's the narrowness of the definition that's a problem, not the other way around.

When an "Overgod" did turn up in the FR, he did not, as far as I remember grant any ability to those who declared themselves his "clerics".

Any setting where ALL the many gods were "omnipotent and omniscient" wouldn't make any sense on a very basic level now, would it?

I'm all for the gods not knowing where some souls go, too, that seems more USEFUL and SENSIBLE than everyone having a direct express to a certain plane, whether they worship a god or not.

 

[Mirtek]

The retheming of afterlife is interesting too, tolkienesque, most souls go on to places even the gods do not know.

This is one of the parts I dislike the most and one of the first thing that will be changed. The deities take the souls of their worshipper to their divine realms. That's the whole point about attracting worshippers and sponsoring cults and churches

 

[Ciaran]

Except that the actions you just describe contradicts your own point, in order to get the souls they have to know where to go and what to do to acquire them. In which case they know where the souls end up otherwise they couldn't collect.

A prospector can pan for gold in a stream without knowing where the rest of the gold goes when the stream sweeps it out to sea.

 

[pemerton]

I did want to add that God's not knowing where a soul goes could play into a greater design of Reincarnation ( the spell or what happens if you cross over into the great beyond... complete with mind wipe )... or why there are time issuses for True Resurrection... or why True Resurrection can not bring back someone who died of "old age".

All the things you mention are expressly canvassed in W&M, except old age.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A prospector can pan for gold in a stream without knowing where the rest of the gold goes when the stream sweeps it out to sea.

Nice analogy, I may steal it!