Shadowfell, and reworking of undead and afterlife

[hamishspence]

I think good. Shadowfell seems very modifiable: it can be Niflheim or Hel, from Norse, Hades from Greek, an alternate Fugue Plane for Faerun, with some traits of the Shadow Plane. Very clever reworking, and it does pull a lot of things together, with the dead and undead alike all associated with it.

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

Also, the animus and soul thing helps to clarify the types of undead, avoiding the Evil Spirits concept, with the animus instead being something the original living being, intelligent or otherwise, had.

Azure Bonds by Novak and Grubb had this: seperate spirit and soul. Apparently the extra ones like alias, created by Phalse, had souls, but no spirits, so they had no life, until after the fight with Phalse, where they mysteriously disappear, and reappear, fully alive, in the next book. Bringing back that concept is definitely clever.

 

[Voss]

Meh. I like the Shadowfell, but the goofy animus/soul thing is just odd. I like evil spirits. I also like indifferent spirits and and hopeless & terrified spirits. I like blood crazed corpses desiring the flesh of the living. But I also like animated skeletons and zombies that have all the moral implications of any other piece of meat, bulk-laborers without the moral problems of slavery.

I like flesh hungry ghouls that are cursed to lust after the flesh of the living as well as cannibalistic cultures that devour their dead with supreme reverence, in order to protect the deceased from desecration.

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.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I am looking forward to the Shadowfell, I plan on having it as one of the core aspects of the Second or Third Act of my too-be 4e campaign.

In my Shadowfell, I am taking even more then simply death and undeath into it. I am contemplating it being a "wasteland" plane.

Where various different manners of things have come to decay and die (you can see ruined structures, aspects of a destroyed plane, etc. lying there slowly decaying away the "animus" (residual energy of people that came into contact with it) wisping away on a unfelt wind).

This will be especially poinent since various remains of the Feywild inhabit my Shadowfell. Since the Feywild collapsed during the War (aberrants vs. gods). So various parts of it lie slowly dying in the Shadowfell.

As for the whole animus idea, I personally like. I may even bring it into the ordinary world, with certain feats that can see someone animus, ie: Detect Aura.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

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.

What he said, the entire point of having gods that are actual real entities in the D&D context is the tangibility of the afterlife. Having some serial numbers removed Nirvana/Circle of Souls as the afterlife is just terminally uncreative and dumps one of the central bits of D&D lore over the editions. That souls are real and go to a place where these powerful things called gods reside and a powerful enough character can literally go there and meet them in that physical place. And for what? Just a tired old cliche that has been used in so many FRPGs it's become generic. I thought they were supposed to be emphasizing what made D&D unique.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well it is a simple enough thing to change, the place the souls go to after leaving the Shadowfell can be their god's dominion.

I personally like how the gods don't know, I prefer my gods to be less powerful and essentially are care-takers they know how to fix and manage the universe, but do they understand how it works, no.

 

[Raduin711]

But I also like animated skeletons and zombies that have all the moral implications of any other piece of meat, bulk-laborers without the moral problems of slavery.

I agree with you on everything else... Animated skeletons and zombies should be morally abhorrent. In my gaming group characters typically react violently to this kind of undead, but we keep falling back on "you are desecrating the dead" excuse. It feels... weak. But yet we don't want to get to the point where animating bones is okay.

I think that creating undead servants should have all the moral implications of slavery. It gives them a reason for heroic characters to destroy them, and not use them. It's a D&Dism that needs to go, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I personally like how the gods don't know, I prefer my gods to be less powerful and essentially are care-takers they know how to fix and manage the universe, but do they understand how it works, no.

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.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well I think Clerics could still gain power from the Gods even if they didn't create the universe. Like to use an analogy, a janitor may not know how to make a furnace but he can shut-off and turn-on the heat to each room as he chooses.

 

[Voss]

The thing is, even if you're talking about gods like in the Greek or Norse pantheon (which with the whole gods vs primordials thing, isn't a bad parallel) they know exactly what happens to the souls of their worshippers. Valhalla, Hel, Hades, or whatever, they're up to date on the fate of the human soul. So even without being Creators of the Universe and All Therein, they still know whats going on.

As for a Time of Trouble's style divine pyramid scheme with gods and overgods and middle management gods, please, just... no.

About the only interesting thing that occurs to me with the 'unknown fate of souls' thing, is that they are being stolen by demons and devils and dragged to the abyss/hells and shaped into more fiends to fuel their swelling armies, which are gathering to sweep across the multiverse.

@Raduin- its not to everyones taste, I know. But it works out for my homebrew. My eastern nations are... ethically challenged (well, by modern standards. So is everyone else, really, but they stand out on this particular issue, as no one else is all that comfortable with necromancy). And some of the city states have only managed to keep their independence from some very aggressive Empires by mandating the animation of corpses. People grumble, but they recognize that the alternative would be worse, as several groups of refugees and abandoned ruins will attest to. Of course, the refugees ended up as slaves, too, but that just helps emphasize the point.

 

[Incenjucar]

Soul issue or no, I really really like the way they've finally put down a good, solid methodology behind undead.

It just cleans them way the heck up as a concept.