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Fenrs 1249096862|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Well, tried thinking about it, but I couldn't really figure it out, so I decided to ask: How does Hell and the Afterlife and that sort of stuff work in the MK universe?
A traveling wolf is me.
RavenB 1249115456|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
There are Nine Hells that souls go to after they die. ("Hell" is a non-pejorative term in MK; it implies a place of the dead, but not necessarily a place of punishment.) Each hell is overseen by one of the daedra lords.
The First Hell is Nocturna's, and is a place of peace and rest for virtuous souls. The Ninth Hell is Ba'al's, and is a place of darkness, cold, and ceaseless torment for the vilest souls in history. In between:
Second Hell: Lilith (a forested wilderness — souls must face fiendish predators and work to prosper here)
Third Hell: Tallakath (a place of plagues and diseases — Tallakath's testing ground for his ideas about pestilence and suffering)
Fourth Hell: Klepnos (a realm of Lewis Carroll-like madness — Klepnos's playground)
Fifth Hell: Oblineth (This is where "neutral" souls go, those who never took a strong stand for good but have no dark deeds to pull them further down. It includes the Wastelands of Kilyarnie, where one of the Titans is imprisoned.)
Sixth Hell: Revonos (the souls of the wrathful must fight for the lord's amusement)
Seventh Hell: Suspira (the souls of the lustful serve as food for young incubi & succubae)
Eighth Hell: Agemnos (the souls of the avaricious and prideful are distilled into black soul-tar, which is then used as a fuel source and a currency of trade among the Hells)
Souls do not persist in the Hells forever. Once they have worked off their karmic balance — either through suffering for their wickedness or experiencing comfort and pleasure for their good deeds — then they slip beyond the reach of the Nine Hells, into Oblivion.
What is Oblivion? No one knows. Some say that souls are reincarnated. Some say they join with the All-Father. Some say that they lose their individuality and become part of the universe, or one of the archetypal forces of the universe.
The servants of Eli, for their part, seem to have their own afterlife that is beyond the reach of the daedra lords. One who acknowledges Eli as Creator and does not acknowledge the daedra lords cannot be held by the Nine Hells; their soul slips through and proceeds straight to Oblivion, where Eli judges it according to his own criteria and assigns either blessing or perdition. These souls cannot be contacted by Lightbringers or Necromancers, though they may be able to send messages back to Earth if Eli permits it. For a long time the Lightbringers thought that the heaven and hell of the Ecclesia were a fantasy, but there is enough anecdotal evidence for their existence that the Lothanasi have had to admit that Followers' souls do get treated differently by the universe.
The Nine Heavens are the abodes of the gods and their celestial servants. Mortal souls do not set foot there, though in rare cases a mortal has been apotheosized (raised to divine status) and been given a place in the Heavens. Many commoners believe that Elves go to the Nine Heavens when they die, but the Elves themsElves deny this.
Ryx 1249127642|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Yes, this has always confused me to no end as well…
Where do the souls that lack a negative karmic balance go? The good guys? There is no concept of any Heavens, so where then do the Aedra hold sway and shepherd 'good' souls toward their final rest (or reincarnation)?
Pontos 1249139205|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Since Raven just said that no mortal soul can set a foot on the nine heavens (save for a few counted cases), most likely the "good" souls will end up in the first hell, Nocturna's, in a long and pleasant dream or something along those lines, until the moment they fall into Oblivion.
This vision seems a lot like Dante's vision of Hell (sans Oblivion).
I could also say that it follows the theory of the Greek mythology that every soul goes to the underworld after dying, being no place such as a heaven for the souls (Only the Elysium fields also in the underworld)
RavenB 1249144935|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Yes, truly good souls go to the First Hell. There they receive comfort and the companionship of their fellow good souls. It is a world much like ours, but with no pain, sickness, or suffering, and blanketed in an endless starry night. Nocturna's dream walkers sometimes also take these souls into the Dreamlands — a kind of parole where they can experience new things and speak into the dreams of the living.
Souls that were mostly good but have the stain of some evil for which they have not atoned will be pulled down into the second through fourth hells, depending how much their bad deeds weigh them down. These souls still gain the pleasure of companionship from their fellow souls, but must endure increasing dangers and/or inconveniences in the lower hells. There is a chance, for example, that souls in the Second Hell may be devoured, which results in a fairly brief and agonizing extraction of their remaining soul-energy as they are eaten and digested. What's left of them — the nucleus of individuality that makes up the soul — then passes on to Oblivion.
All actions have karmic balance, for either good or bad. If your bad karma and your good karma precisely balance each other, you end up in the icy desolation of the Fifth Hell, forced to wander in solitude because you never took a stand for anything.
Yes, this version of hell was strongly inspired by Dante's.
Ryx 1249180443|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Well… that kinda sounds lousy for 'Lightbringers'… no matter how good you are you're going to Hell. And it's always night.. no more sun, no more green things.. heck, no more color other than nightlit silver?
And there is absolutely no prospect of ascension to a higher plane… you've got one fate: Uncounted years of purgatory (1st hell) or misery (all the rest) until you get pulled into a spiritual Singularity?
We…. really might want to look into that a tad more carefully. Heck, I bet the Aedra get awful darn lonely in their sparkling heavens while their faithful pack into Nocturna's realm like sardines in a can (consider it… there are 8 Hells to distribute all the bad folk, but only 1 for the good guys??)
RavenB 1249183439|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover
Well… that kinda sounds lousy for 'Lightbringers'… no matter how good you are you're going to Hell. And it's always night.. no more sun, no more green things.. heck, no more color other than nightlit silver?
You're projecting your cultural preconceptions onto the situation. For the Lightbringers, the First Hell is considered a place of peace, rest and comfort, a reward for a just life well-lived. The full moon of Nocturna's realm shines on a land of great beauty, and the journeys into the Dreamlands provide a source of variety and excitement. And there are plenty of plants in the First Hell; they just don't have mortal metabolisms that depend on sunlight.
And there is absolutely no prospect of ascension to a higher plane… you've got one fate: Uncounted years of purgatory (1st hell) or misery (all the rest) until you get pulled into a spiritual Singularity?
Please see above. As I said, no one knows the fate of souls passing into Oblivion. Belief in reincarnation is quite common, and the possibility of being joined with the Divine Absolute is considered a type of "ascension to a higher plane". But the Lightbringer faith, like many RL faiths, is primarily about what you do in this life, not about what happens to you when you die.
Anyway, the Second, Third and Fourth Hells aren't all misery. Daedra aren't tasked with tormenting these souls, and much of the time they're left alone to associate with one another and seek their fortunes in a vast and eternal realm. Not wonderful, but way better than what the ancient Greeks presupposed for the Halls of Hades.
We…. really might want to look into that a tad more carefully.
The Hells have been part of the LB cosmology from the beginning, long before even the Starchild arc. The LB philosophy toward the afterlife is intimately tied together with their attitudes toward everything, and particularly toward the Ecclesia.
Heck, I bet the Aedra get awful darn lonely in their sparkling heavens
With thousands upon thousands of their celestial offspring around? Not very likely. Plus, they're frequently busy involving themselves with affairs on Earth.
while their faithful pack into Nocturna's realm like sardines in a can (consider it… there are 8 Hells to distribute all the bad folk, but only 1 for the good guys??)
A few points in response to this.
1.) Service to the gods is for this world. They offer no promises about the next. Lightbringers view the Ecclesia's flowery promises of heaven as a sort of slick marketing that they'll never have to deliver on, while the LBs see the benefits of serving their gods.
2.) The realm of the gods was not made for mortals, and mortals would not be safe or content there. This is a theme you see in a lot of polytheistic religions, but especially in the Greeks' Mount Olympus.
3.) The gods aren't all that attached to their mortal servants. Sure, they may appreciate their service and even like them, but they don't want to take them home for forever. Ant farms may be interesting, but you don't want the ants loose in your bedroom.
4.) The Nine Hells are basically a way of entrapping the souls of the dead in order to squeeze every last bit of magical power out of them. Ba'al let Nocturna create her place of peace and safety for the virtuous because he couldn't figure out any other way to trap souls that were that pure. (Nocturna's motives in the matter seem to have been much more compassionate, making the best of a bad situation.)
5.) The Hells are, in theory, infinitely expandable, so space is no issue.
6.) Realistically, there aren't that many truly good people in the world. The first four hells are full of people who are "more good than bad", the bottom four are the people who were "more bad than good", and the Fifth Hell is for those whose karmic scales are evenly balanced. Put another way, Hells 2-4 have extrinsic hardships that mirror the problems people already face in their environment, while Hells 5-9 have intrinsic hardships that mirror the darkness in a person's own heart (apathy, rage, lust, avarice, and pride).
I set out from the beginning to make the Lightbringer religion similar to polytheistic religions in the real world, and part of that was reexamining our preconceived notions about the afterlife. I wanted the LBs to be a very pragmatic religion that was based on "what have you done for me lately", both for the gods and the worshipers. I was interested in a setting in which the gods did not use vague and ill-described promises of future bliss to persuade people to serve them, particularly when they are so willing and able to demonstrate their power now. I wanted a setting with a more fatalistic approach to death — one in which the gods did not assign reward or punishment, but souls found their own fates through the weight of their own deeds. We're so used to seeing religion as "fire insurance" nowadays that we forget that most people, throughout history, have not seen their gods in that way. The contrast became starker after Matty introduced Catholicism into the setting, but I kinda like it that way.
