Standard D&D cosmology and souls

[Mouseferatu]

Okay, I've been thinking about this, partly just out of curiosity, partly because I'm trying to work out a specific idea in my head.

Assuming the standard D&D cosmology--that is, the Great Wheel or Planescape model--we know where souls go after they die. But where do they come from? Is there a particular plane? Positive Energy, perhaps? Are they created by the gods at the time of conception or birth? (And please, let's not turn this into a "When does life begin?" discussion. Either conception or birth works just fine for this particular instance.) Do they come from the Upper Planes, since newborn souls are (presumably) pure?

I'm not just looking for any official answer that might have been given in a published source (though I'd certainly like to hear about it, if there is one). I'm also interested in differing opinions.

 

[Shemeska]

Okay, I've been thinking about this, partly just out of curiosity, partly because I'm trying to work out a specific idea in my head.

Assuming the standard D&D cosmology--that is, the Great Wheel or Planescape model--we know where souls go after they die. But where do they come from? Is there a particular plane? Positive Energy, perhaps? Are they created by the gods at the time of conception or birth? (And please, let's not turn this into a "When does life begin?" discussion. Either conception or birth works just fine for this particular instance.) Do they come from the Upper Planes, since newborn souls are (presumably) pure?

I'm not just looking for any official answer that might have been given in a published source (though I'd certainly like to hear about it, if there is one). I'm also interested in differing opinions.

It was never really touched upon as far as I know in Planescape, though it made sense that it would be the positive energy plane.

3e touched on the subject in the module 'Bastion of Broken Souls' by Bruce Cordell which introduced places in the positive energy plane where souls seemed to spontaneously generate before migrating to the prime material to enter into each new living thing that had a soul. It makes sense with the conceptualization of the positive energy plane in DnD.

If you don't use the positive energy plane as the source, I could see them arising out of the raw potential of the ethereal much like demiplanes, ethereal protomatter, etc or it might even be tempting to have them bubbling up from the deep ethereal from an unknown and unmapped source, spiralling up into the prime material from 'elsewhere'.

 

[Deadguy]

An interesting thought might be that souls spontaneously generate on the Prime Material Plane. That makes that plane even more important as a battleground of the Gods - where else are you going to get future supplicants on your home plane.

(As an aside, I prefer the notion of reincarnation as the origin of souls, but the Great Wheel model doesn't really support that approach.)

 

[Hand of Evil]

You could base the naming/baptism as a ritual to infuse the soul into the body, aka the gift of the gods being worshipped.

 

[Sammael]

As Shemmy noted, the Positive Energy Plane is the source of souls. In light of the 2E cosmology (not 3E, though), it really makes sense that the souls travel through the Ethereal to the Prime Material, as it would explain why restless souls (ghosts et al.) linger there after death, unable to leave for their final resting place in the Outer Planes. [in 2E, Ethereal connected to the Inner Planes, and Astral connected to the Outer Planes]

Now, still taking 2E cosmology into account, Positive Energy is far enough from the Outer Planes that it makes the souls practically untouchable by powers of the Outer Planes (they'd have to go through the Astral, then the Prime Material, then the Ethereal to reach it), which is why they are a valuable commodity.

 

[fusangite]

Just because the body and soul become separate after death is no reason to assume that they start out separate as well. In my view, souls are generated at the same moment as the body they inhabit from the same substance. Life, essentially, is the process of learning to separate the soul from the body of which it is originally part through the exercise of reason and free will. Thus, to continue to skate around the beginning of life question, those creatures that die too young or inherently lack the capacity to develop reason die with their soul still attached to the body and never make it to the afterlife.

 

[kilamanjaro]

...in the module 'Bastion of Broken Souls' by Andy Collins...

Bruce Cordell, actually. Andy did Lord of the Iron Fortress.

 

[Voadam]

Okay, I've been thinking about this, partly just out of curiosity, partly because I'm trying to work out a specific idea in my head.

Assuming the standard D&D cosmology--that is, the Great Wheel or Planescape model--we know where souls go after they die. But where do they come from? Is there a particular plane? Positive Energy, perhaps? Are they created by the gods at the time of conception or birth? (And please, let's not turn this into a "When does life begin?" discussion. Either conception or birth works just fine for this particular instance.) Do they come from the Upper Planes, since newborn souls are (presumably) pure?

I'm not just looking for any official answer that might have been given in a published source (though I'd certainly like to hear about it, if there is one). I'm also interested in differing opinions.

One view: They are all just recycled. There is the reincarnation spell after all.

Two: souls are created with living creatures that have souls. It is just a natural part of the same creation process. It can just be divided from other parts of the body just like you can drain the blood or remove bones from a body to separate them the corpse.

Three: Interventionist gods, Moradin breathes life into his forged creation. Dwarven souls are just all part of that same initial divine breath that keeps going. Air can be divided infinitely so there you go.

 

[Pants]

As Shemmy noted, the Positive Energy Plane is the source of souls. In light of the 2E cosmology (not 3E, though), it really makes sense that the souls travel through the Ethereal to the Prime Material, as it would explain why restless souls (ghosts et al.) linger there after death, unable to leave for their final resting place in the Outer Planes. [in 2E, Ethereal connected to the Inner Planes, and Astral connected to the Outer Planes]

Nitpick.
When a person dies and their soul departs, they traditionally go to the Outer Planes. If so, the Astral would be the most common place to encounter ghosts, no? Assuming the dying souls don't traverse the Ethereal (why would they? That goes to the Inner Planes.), the Astral would be a better fit right?

 

[Voadam]

Nitpick.
When a person dies and their soul departs, they traditionally go to the Outer Planes. If so, the Astral would be the most common place to encounter ghosts, no? Assuming the dying souls don't traverse the Ethereal (why would they? That goes to the Inner Planes.), the Astral would be a better fit right?

Not necessarily. It can be explained as spirits trying to go back to the familiar ethereal instead of the proper path on toward the outer planes via the astral. So the spirits hang on and are in a place they should not be, instead of the movement transition plane of the astral they "should" go to.