NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sunshadow21" data-source="post: 6781006" data-attributes="member: 6667193">Why would it be terrible? What if your perfect version of 'Heaven' is oblivion or true, complete, unquestioned rest? It's terrible to our modern sense where individuality is dominant over group identity, but for most of the real life societies that the Realms is based on, there are several positive interpretations one could put on it. One, if someone had a crappy life or felt really guilty about their life choices, chances are they aren't looking forward to an eternal afterlife of any kind, so the Wall with it's loss of identity and/or oblivion probably wouldn't bother them. Two, depending on what they were taught the Wall was for and how strong their sense of community was, many might accept that fate, surrendering their own comfort and identity for the good of the world as a whole. Just because an afterlife is far more likely in the Realms doesn't mean that more people will want it over oblivion and/or the end of their individual consciousness. Real world religions usually offer rather enticing afterlifes as a carrot to get followers, and it's still usually the stick of a bad afterlife that gets people to behave; even that stick isn't enough to get a lot of people's attention. I would imagine life in the Realms wouldn't be terribly different. There would be a lot that would be absolutely drawn to the promise of the afterlife, even more that would prefer a nice afterlife to a bad one, but not enough to change their behavior here and now, and a still notable minority that would prefer oblivion over anything else. I touched upon this earlier before in a limited context, but there are a lot of people that would absolutely not be bothered by the concept of the Wall. Even people who spent their lives doing good and supporting the gods may well appreciate the idea of true rest or oblivion over going to live in the realms of this or that god or that outer plane. This thread has delved quite deep into how people react to the gods, but very little about how people might react to the thought of an afterlife, and the two issues are not the same. One might reject the gods but want an afterlife, one might reject the gods and want nothing more than oblivion, one might be an active cleric (or even paladin) that wants oblivion/rest when their time on this world is over, or one might be an active cleric that wants to eternally support their god.</blockquote>

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