Kae'Yoss said:
As far as I know, it does mean this in Midnight. I remember reading about all the discorporated spirits swirling around the borders of the world, stark raving mad for not being able to go to heaven.
First editionwas silent on the issue, leaving it open to the ideas of the community as a whole, I read anything posted to both the yahoo group and the AtS site, and this closely resembles a suggestion of a maelstorm of souls, even having some manifestations for the livings. It was not in any midnight book at all.
In 2nd edition they gave the interpretation that 1st edition lacked with the eternal.
They know no other life then swirling around the plane as dead, bodyless spirits?
No other life than living under the shadow and suffering, they do not read or write, the shadow has been around for more than 3 generations.
I know that before Izrador draped the Veil across the planes, they were able to go to their reward.
Before the Veil came upon Aryth we do not even know if there were humans, we know elves and dwarves, as well as any other of the fey races (D&D demi-humans)did not exist. There is very very little knowledge of the times before the sundering, or even of the many ages between that and the birth of the current civilizations. For all we know the religion in Aryth is based on spirits and the world, not outer planes, demons and celestials and gods.
The only group that somehow may diverge from that are the ones who study the lore of the gods said to exist long ago, who could grant powers like Izrador do, of them they know little more then names and few paragraphs of description. They live in caradul, the capital of the elves and are called The Abandoned.
Well, the dying may be a cool thing to them. But the being dead, while not being able to go anywhere than back into your body, succumbing to the Fell's undying craving to feast upon the living, or to haunt people - I guess they can think of better (and that's why they do their elaborate burial procedures)
They do the elaborate because they believe the animation of the body is tied to a restless soul, whether they go somewhere or become somehting else is not known, in Midnight you cannot simply assume that all souls are eternal the way they are, you cannot take for granted that the souls are also sentient to a loss of something, that is not even hinted anywhere, it is not common sense too, it is your preference of interpretation.
And the way 2nd edition dealt with the spirits makes religion and beliefs in Aryth be much closer to how Taoism and other oriental religions deal with things than cristianism and the other ocidental religions do.
There isn't another kind of living in the Last Age.
There is. Dwarves are seeking death, elves try to avoid death as best as they can and kill as many as possible in the process, halflings try to avoid the shadow altogether, living their lives as nomads or agrarian communities, using magic to hide themselves, those who become slaves live without fighting or do what they can by sabotaging what they can and spying on their masters.
The sarcosans who live in the cities use intrigue and assassination instead of direct opposition, using very few of their time to this extent and living normal lifes on the rest. i could go on but the point is that going against the shadow is not what the majority of the people is doing, in fact msot of them have kept going, as if nothing changed, they are poor, uneducated, hopeless and without any strength or willpower to change that. We just do not make PCs out of those.
I do not midn debating though.
