Where do all the evil petitioners/souls come from? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Where do all the evil petitioners/souls come from? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Mazaron
04-30-07, 12:43 PM I have always been a huge fan of the cosmology of AD&D back in 1E days with the Manual of the Planes and even more so with Planescape. So this is not a slam by any means.
Been reading through some of the stuff on the Lower Planes. They mention the vast hordes of imps, quasits, larvae, dretch, etc. Larvae, the souls of evil mortals, not only provide the source of future fiends, but are used up in spells and eaten, both of which I understand utterly destroys the soul.
Are evil souls THAT common? It makes it sound like most of the Prime Material Plane should be awash in evil people (that, and the fact that there are 9 hells and an apparently near infinite number of layes to the Abyss, while, by comparison, there are only seven heavens and Bytopia is but two layers).
Where do they come from? Are there prime material worlds that are mostly evil (particularly CE?). Should the FR have many more evil nations and evil citizens?
CzarGarrett
04-30-07, 01:49 PM And I am reminded, on this holy day, of the sad story of Kitty Genovese. As you all may remember, a long time ago, almost thirty years ago, this poor soul cried out for help time and time again, but no person answered her calls. Though many saw, no one so much as called the police. They all just watched as Kitty was being stabbed to death in broad daylight. They watched as her assailant walked away. Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.

Evil isn't necessarily a pervasive, puppy-killing, orphanage-burning type of evil. There are much more subtle forms of evil.

Plus, there is in theory multiple material planes that all channel into the cosmology of the Abyss/Nine Hells/etc. 1% of several trillion can still be a lot.
JulesCARV
04-30-07, 02:02 PM Gajillions of short-lived CE orcs just prior to dying at the hands of low-level good adventurers.
Mazaron
04-30-07, 02:13 PM Gajillions of short-lived CE orcs just prior to dying at the hands of low-level good adventurers.

But that only supplies the evil dead of Acheron. Orc souls don't go to fill the infinite expanses of the Abyss and Baator.
Mazaron
04-30-07, 02:16 PM And I am reminded, on this holy day, of the sad story of Kitty Genovese. As you all may remember, a long time ago, almost thirty years ago, this poor soul cried out for help time and time again, but no person answered her calls. Though many saw, no one so much as called the police. They all just watched as Kitty was being stabbed to death in broad daylight. They watched as her assailant walked away. Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.

Evil isn't necessarily a pervasive, puppy-killing, orphanage-burning type of evil. There are much more subtle forms of evil.

Plus, there is in theory multiple material planes that all channel into the cosmology of the Abyss/Nine Hells/etc. 1% of several trillion can still be a lot.

True and true. Planescape made it clear that there are many, many other Prime Material worlds, whether in alternate planes or not, that were only hinted at. Some of the factions were big on prime material worlds only mentioned in passing and in Hallowed Ground it was clear that many of the pantheons, particularly the 3 Asian ones, had billions of followers on many worlds, just not on Toril, Oerth, Athas, etc.
Having said that though, it still seems most people, even the quietly selfish ones, don't necessarily belong in the Abyss or the Nine Hells! Not to such a high percentage as seem to go there. What a bleak view of mortals.
Shemeska the Marauder
04-30-07, 03:35 PM But that only supplies the evil dead of Acheron. Orc souls don't go to fill the infinite expanses of the Abyss and Baator.

Not all orc deities are in Acheron. And not all orcs will worship one of the major orc gods as patron gods, so they won't all go to Acheron, Gehenna, etc.
Return of the Flumph
04-30-07, 03:48 PM Its been said by other posters, but I'll repeat it; the Great Wheel as presented in the standard cosmology is built around the assumption of numerous prime worlds. Planescape goes hand in hand with Spelljammer in terms of continuity.
ArcTan
04-30-07, 05:24 PM Its been said by other posters, but I'll repeat it; the Great Wheel as presented in the standard cosmology is built around the assumption of numerous prime worlds. Planescape goes hand in hand with Spelljammer in terms of continuity.

It sort of does, although the question of how the existence of spelljamming vessels and planeswalkers interact with each other is an open one, and one that Planescape (the later setting) doesn't even really try to answer.

Spelljammer.org is doing its part to try to provide an answer -- last time I checked, they were going with the idea that the Phlogiston is itself a kind of Transitive Plane.
Mazaron
04-30-07, 07:54 PM Its been said by other posters, but I'll repeat it; the Great Wheel as presented in the standard cosmology is built around the assumption of numerous prime worlds. Planescape goes hand in hand with Spelljammer in terms of continuity.

Right, that was never doubted and in fact have stated that myself in other posts. The real question is are there really that many evil mortals, particularly Chaotic Evil, to fill so many Lower Planes? I don't get a sense that a high percentage of humans on Toril or Oerth are LE or CE. Is the answer simply that there are very evil planets that no one knows about or aren't at least discussed in gaming material?
Mazaron
04-30-07, 07:55 PM Not all orc deities are in Acheron. And not all orcs will worship one of the major orc gods as patron gods, so they won't all go to Acheron, Gehenna, etc.

So you think these vast numbers of evil souls then are goblinoid/orcish? I got the impression most were formerly human.
Shemeska the Marauder
04-30-07, 08:08 PM So you think these vast numbers of evil souls then are goblinoid/orcish? I got the impression most were formerly human.

No, I was just addressing the specific case of orcs/goblinoids not being restricted to only one or two of the lower planes. But I didn't mean to imply that they alone were responsible for why the lower planes appear to have more fiends than the upper planes have celestials.

I think an important thing to remember is that the tanar'ri in the Abyss don't always require mortal souls to make more of themselves. They can breed conventionally, and the Abyss will spawn them spontaneously from time to time. And then the 'loths in Gehenna, the Waste, and Carceri, and Demodands/Gehreleths in Carceri don't -ever- require mortal souls to make more of themselves. Their coffers, so to speak, grow fat on each and every evil thought and action on the prime, even if those things are coming from neutral or good people.

If we want to compare numbers directly, we might want to compare the Archons to the Baatezu, because both races are entirely dependant upon mortal souls to make more of themselves. We might then compare Bytopia or the Beastlands to Gehenna and Carceri (not including the 'loths or demodands because they're immigrants). Such more direct comparisons I think might be more useful.
ArcTan
04-30-07, 08:15 PM Right, that was never doubted and in fact have stated that myself in other posts. The real question is are there really that many evil mortals, particularly Chaotic Evil, to fill so many Lower Planes? I don't get a sense that a high percentage of humans on Toril or Oerth are LE or CE. Is the answer simply that there are very evil planets that no one knows about or aren't at least discussed in gaming material?

My sense is that the world at large is evenly divided, alignment-wise -- with some variation, 1/9 of the world is LG, 1/9 NG, 1/9 TN, 1/9 CE, etc. About a third of everyone is evil enough to be Evil and a third of everyone good enough to be Good, at least in my book.
Mazaron
04-30-07, 08:29 PM No, I was just addressing the specific case of orcs/goblinoids not being restricted to only one or two of the lower planes. But I didn't mean to imply that they alone were responsible for why the lower planes appear to have more fiends than the upper planes have celestials.

**You are right, I am reminded that some goblinoid deities reside outside o f Acheron. One of the bugbear deities for instance, well THE bugbear deity, lives on Pandemonium.

I think an important thing to remember is that the tanar'ri in the Abyss don't always require mortal souls to make more of themselves. They can breed conventionally, and the Abyss will spawn them spontaneously from time to time. And then the 'loths in Gehenna, the Waste, and Carceri, and Demodands/Gehreleths in Carceri don't -ever- require mortal souls to make more of themselves. Their coffers, so to speak, grow fat on each and every evil thought and action on the prime, even if those things are coming from neutral or good people.

***The tannari I thought did require souls to make more, and even if they didn't some source books made it sound like an entire ecologies were based on consuming larvae, which are destroyed when eaten. That's pretty common!
You do raise good points, particularly with the yugoloth (the books are quite clear they have nothing to do with mortals) and also not ever lower plane is packed (large parts of Acheron and especially Pandemonium are virtually empty), but still there are so many fiends, so many larvae, and so many uses for them.

If we want to compare numbers directly, we might want to compare the Archons to the Baatezu, because both races are entirely dependant upon mortal souls to make more of themselves. We might then compare Bytopia or the Beastlands to Gehenna and Carceri (not including the 'loths or demodands because they're immigrants). Such more direct comparisons I think might be more useful.

***Carceri has quite specific types of people sent there, largely liars and betrayers, and from what I read though towns exist there the plane and its layers are largely wilderness. That fits. There are lots of devils and they live in cities but there aren't billions of them, at least pre-Planescape there weren't, but there have to be lots to have a Blood War. But then you get to the never ending layers of the Abyss, cramed with demons. Huh?
It's not a huge problem I guess, this is just an intellectual exercise on my part and I was curious as to what others thought.
Luis_Dragunov
04-30-07, 08:46 PM Well, lets just do some simple math. A single material world is filled with sentient souls. Aside from humans, there are elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, not to meantion all the half-breeds, templates, aquatic variants, sentient monsters and all sorts of strange things a simple material plane has.

In fact, if there are as many creatures in a material plane as there are humans in our world, at least, then about 4 souls go somewhere, each second, while about 4 or 6 are born. Add war, famine, numerous families and adventuring to the mix and you can easily say that, every second, about 10, 20 souls get sent to a plane while 20 or 30 get born, maybe more.

If half of those souls are evil, then each second the ranks of evil hosts grow and grow and grow. And that's from a single planet in a single material plane, without adding other planes to the mix or even reminding you that the Universe is the material plane, not just the campaign world.
Then think of the time it takes for fiends to mature from mere petitioners to trully frightful creatures, think of the evil cults around, of how many evil creatures you fight each campaign, of the endless hordes of minions, all that compared to how many trully good-hearted people there are in the world, of how the good armies always tend to be at a disadvantage.
The source of all your fiends is right there.

And what about dead fiends? True, they are more souls made flesh than actual living beings but, when you kill them, their essence has to go somewhere. Where? To back to the planes that spawned them, of course, to create all the fiendish animals and plants you see decorating the hellish scapes of the abyss and hell and the other lovely lower planes.
Gray Richardson
04-30-07, 09:05 PM It seems to be a basic assumption in Greyhawk's Great Wheel cosmology that the population divides pretty evenly in 9 parts based on the Cartesian alignment system. It would seem that LG, CG, NG, LN, TN, CN, LE, NE, and CE each command one ninth of the population of that universe and/or setting.

Roughly a third of the souls that come from deceased sentient beings (or whatever qualifies a critter to have a soul) will gravitate to the evil planes (by hook or by crook) upon their death.

According to the Great Wheel cosmology, there is rough parity between all the alignments, and no one philosophy is considered better than any other (well, of course their individual adherents will think that theirs is the best) but objectively speaking they all carry equal weight and are pretty much fungible, from a morally relativist perspective.

The ring shape is able to maintain its equilibrium as a ring because all the alignments are in balance. If any one philosophy or axis gained more adherents than another then the Wheel would become lopsided, or more oval.

There appears to have been a time long ago when the Great Wheel was more square-shaped, and this may have been because there were more adherents of pure good, pure law, pure evil, or pure chaos than there were of the mixed alignments at the corners. But that was long, long ago and there is more of an even mix in the modern era. :schemes:
El_Machinae
05-01-07, 02:09 PM Well, lets just do some simple math. A single material world is filled with sentient souls. Aside from humans, there are elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, not to meantion all the half-breeds, templates, aquatic variants, sentient monsters and all sorts of strange things a simple material plane has.

Yeah, exactly. Earth has about 150,000 people dying every day (about 2/3 of that is due to age related degeneration and diseases). That's a LOT. Of course, Earth has a better population density than most fantasy worlds on the surface (though we get creamed on what goes on underground in those same worlds)
Eric888
05-01-07, 04:18 PM In the old AD&D first edition book they included a random alignment table for NPCs (not monsters) that the players may come in contact with. the table, as written in dungeons and dragons first edition, is below:

LG 98-00
NG 94-97
CG 91-93
LN 81-90
N 71-80
CN 61-70
LE 41-60
NE 21-40
CE 1-20

That breaks down to 60% of people being evil.

When you include the savage races, most fantasy worlds are completely overrun by evil. By, like, a 10 to 1 margin.

Fantasy worlds are a dangerous place.
JulesCARV
05-01-07, 04:51 PM I go with the following distribution for the general populace:

L N C
G 6.25% 12.5% 6.25%
N 12.5% 25% 12.5%
E 6.25% 12.5% 6.25%

Humans and halflings broadly follow the above paradigm. Elves, while not homogenous, have some tendencies toward chaos and good. Kobolds similarly have tendencies toward law and evil. (incidentally, elves and kobolds have approximately the same proportion of lawful good and chaotic evil members)
Return of the Flumph
05-01-07, 04:53 PM Who says the common races provide most of the petitioners in the lower planes anyway? Seriously, gnolls, goblins, orcs, and the like being as common as they are solve all your petitioner needs, even without the countless criminals, tyrants, betrayers, con men, and bandits who arise among the "civilized" folk.
Elana
05-02-07, 01:09 PM I don't get quite the problem.

One infinite plane has the same storage place as 1000 or infinite number of infinite planes.

It is room for an infinite number of creatures.

And ergo each plane that has less then an infinite number of beings on it would appear empty.

so yes, souls are cheap. After all there is an infinite number of them. (on every single plane)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Mazaron 04-30-07, 12:43 PM	I have always been a huge fan of the cosmology of AD&D back in 1E days with the Manual of the Planes and even more so with Planescape. So this is not a slam by any means. Been reading through some of the stuff on the Lower Planes. They mention the vast hordes of imps, quasits, larvae, dretch, etc. Larvae, the souls of evil mortals, not only provide the source of future fiends, but are used up in spells and eaten, both of which I understand utterly destroys the soul. Are evil souls THAT common? It makes it sound like most of the Prime Material Plane should be awash in evil people (that, and the fact that there are 9 hells and an apparently near infinite number of layes to the Abyss, while, by comparison, there are only seven heavens and Bytopia is but two layers). Where do they come from? Are there prime material worlds that are mostly evil (particularly CE?). Should the FR have many more evil nations and evil citizens?
CzarGarrett 04-30-07, 01:49 PM	And I am reminded, on this holy day, of the sad story of Kitty Genovese. As you all may remember, a long time ago, almost thirty years ago, this poor soul cried out for help time and time again, but no person answered her calls. Though many saw, no one so much as called the police. They all just watched as Kitty was being stabbed to death in broad daylight. They watched as her assailant walked away. Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. Evil isn't necessarily a pervasive, puppy-killing, orphanage-burning type of evil. There are much more subtle forms of evil. Plus, there is in theory multiple material planes that all channel into the cosmology of the Abyss/Nine Hells/etc. 1% of several trillion can still be a lot.
JulesCARV 04-30-07, 02:02 PM	Gajillions of short-lived CE orcs just prior to dying at the hands of low-level good adventurers.
Mazaron 04-30-07, 02:13 PM	Gajillions of short-lived CE orcs just prior to dying at the hands of low-level good adventurers. But that only supplies the evil dead of Acheron. Orc souls don't go to fill the infinite expanses of the Abyss and Baator.
Mazaron 04-30-07, 02:16 PM	And I am reminded, on this holy day, of the sad story of Kitty Genovese. As you all may remember, a long time ago, almost thirty years ago, this poor soul cried out for help time and time again, but no person answered her calls. Though many saw, no one so much as called the police. They all just watched as Kitty was being stabbed to death in broad daylight. They watched as her assailant walked away. Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. Evil isn't necessarily a pervasive, puppy-killing, orphanage-burning type of evil. There are much more subtle forms of evil. Plus, there is in theory multiple material planes that all channel into the cosmology of the Abyss/Nine Hells/etc. 1% of several trillion can still be a lot. True and true. Planescape made it clear that there are many, many other Prime Material worlds, whether in alternate planes or not, that were only hinted at. Some of the factions were big on prime material worlds only mentioned in passing and in Hallowed Ground it was clear that many of the pantheons, particularly the 3 Asian ones, had billions of followers on many worlds, just not on Toril, Oerth, Athas, etc. Having said that though, it still seems most people, even the quietly selfish ones, don't necessarily belong in the Abyss or the Nine Hells! Not to such a high percentage as seem to go there. What a bleak view of mortals.
Shemeska the Marauder 04-30-07, 03:35 PM	But that only supplies the evil dead of Acheron. Orc souls don't go to fill the infinite expanses of the Abyss and Baator. Not all orc deities are in Acheron. And not all orcs will worship one of the major orc gods as patron gods, so they won't all go to Acheron, Gehenna, etc.
Return of the Flumph 04-30-07, 03:48 PM	Its been said by other posters, but I'll repeat it; the Great Wheel as presented in the standard cosmology is built around the assumption of numerous prime worlds. Planescape goes hand in hand with Spelljammer in terms of continuity.
ArcTan 04-30-07, 05:24 PM	Its been said by other posters, but I'll repeat it; the Great Wheel as presented in the standard cosmology is built around the assumption of numerous prime worlds. Planescape goes hand in hand with Spelljammer in terms of continuity. It sort of does, although the question of how the existence of spelljamming vessels and planeswalkers interact with each other is an open one, and one that Planescape (the later setting) doesn't even really try to answer. Spelljammer.org is doing its part to try to provide an answer -- last time I checked, they were going with the idea that the Phlogiston is itself a kind of Transitive Plane.
Mazaron 04-30-07, 07:54 PM	Its been said by other posters, but I'll repeat it; the Great Wheel as presented in the standard cosmology is built around the assumption of numerous prime worlds. Planescape goes hand in hand with Spelljammer in terms of continuity. Right, that was never doubted and in fact have stated that myself in other posts. The real question is are there really that many evil mortals, particularly Chaotic Evil, to fill so many Lower Planes? I don't get a sense that a high percentage of humans on Toril or Oerth are LE or CE. Is the answer simply that there are very evil planets that no one knows about or aren't at least discussed in gaming material?
Mazaron 04-30-07, 07:55 PM	Not all orc deities are in Acheron. And not all orcs will worship one of the major orc gods as patron gods, so they won't all go to Acheron, Gehenna, etc. So you think these vast numbers of evil souls then are goblinoid/orcish? I got the impression most were formerly human.
Shemeska the Marauder 04-30-07, 08:08 PM	So you think these vast numbers of evil souls then are goblinoid/orcish? I got the impression most were formerly human. No, I was just addressing the specific case of orcs/goblinoids not being restricted to only one or two of the lower planes. But I didn't mean to imply that they alone were responsible for why the lower planes appear to have more fiends than the upper planes have celestials. I think an important thing to remember is that the tanar'ri in the Abyss don't always require mortal souls to make more of themselves. They can breed conventionally, and the Abyss will spawn them spontaneously from time to time. And then the 'loths in Gehenna, the Waste, and Carceri, and Demodands/Gehreleths in Carceri don't -ever- require mortal souls to make more of themselves. Their coffers, so to speak, grow fat on each and every evil thought and action on the prime, even if those things are coming from neutral or good people. If we want to compare numbers directly, we might want to compare the Archons to the Baatezu, because both races are entirely dependant upon mortal souls to make more of themselves. We might then compare Bytopia or the Beastlands to Gehenna and Carceri (not including the 'loths or demodands because they're immigrants). Such more direct comparisons I think might be more useful.
ArcTan 04-30-07, 08:15 PM	Right, that was never doubted and in fact have stated that myself in other posts. The real question is are there really that many evil mortals, particularly Chaotic Evil, to fill so many Lower Planes? I don't get a sense that a high percentage of humans on Toril or Oerth are LE or CE. Is the answer simply that there are very evil planets that no one knows about or aren't at least discussed in gaming material? My sense is that the world at large is evenly divided, alignment-wise -- with some variation, 1/9 of the world is LG, 1/9 NG, 1/9 TN, 1/9 CE, etc. About a third of everyone is evil enough to be Evil and a third of everyone good enough to be Good, at least in my book.
Mazaron 04-30-07, 08:29 PM	No, I was just addressing the specific case of orcs/goblinoids not being restricted to only one or two of the lower planes. But I didn't mean to imply that they alone were responsible for why the lower planes appear to have more fiends than the upper planes have celestials. You are right, I am reminded that some goblinoid deities reside outside o f Acheron. One of the bugbear deities for instance, well THE bugbear deity, lives on Pandemonium. I think an important thing to remember is that the tanar'ri in the Abyss don't always require mortal souls to make more of themselves. They can breed conventionally, and the Abyss will spawn them spontaneously from time to time. And then the 'loths in Gehenna, the Waste, and Carceri, and Demodands/Gehreleths in Carceri don't -ever- require mortal souls to make more of themselves. Their coffers, so to speak, grow fat on each and every evil thought and action on the prime, even if those things are coming from neutral or good people. The tannari I thought did require souls to make more, and even if they didn't some source books made it sound like an entire ecologies were based on consuming larvae, which are destroyed when eaten. That's pretty common! You do raise good points, particularly with the yugoloth (the books are quite clear they have nothing to do with mortals) and also not ever lower plane is packed (large parts of Acheron and especially Pandemonium are virtually empty), but still there are so many fiends, so many larvae, and so many uses for them. If we want to compare numbers directly, we might want to compare the Archons to the Baatezu, because both races are entirely dependant upon mortal souls to make more of themselves. We might then compare Bytopia or the Beastlands to Gehenna and Carceri (not including the 'loths or demodands because they're immigrants). Such more direct comparisons I think might be more useful. **Carceri has quite specific types of people sent there, largely liars and betrayers, and from what I read though towns exist there the plane and its layers are largely wilderness. That fits. There are lots of devils and they live in cities but there aren't billions of them, at least pre-Planescape there weren't, but there have to be lots to have a Blood War. But then you get to the never ending layers of the Abyss, cramed with demons. Huh? It's not a huge problem I guess, this is just an intellectual exercise on my part and I was curious as to what others thought.
Luis_Dragunov 04-30-07, 08:46 PM	Well, lets just do some simple math. A single material world is filled with sentient souls. Aside from humans, there are elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, not to meantion all the half-breeds, templates, aquatic variants, sentient monsters and all sorts of strange things a simple material plane has. In fact, if there are as many creatures in a material plane as there are humans in our world, at least, then about 4 souls go somewhere, each second, while about 4 or 6 are born. Add war, famine, numerous families and adventuring to the mix and you can easily say that, every second, about 10, 20 souls get sent to a plane while 20 or 30 get born, maybe more. If half of those souls are evil, then each second the ranks of evil hosts grow and grow and grow. And that's from a single planet in a single material plane, without adding other planes to the mix or even reminding you that the Universe is the material plane, not just the campaign world. Then think of the time it takes for fiends to mature from mere petitioners to trully frightful creatures, think of the evil cults around, of how many evil creatures you fight each campaign, of the endless hordes of minions, all that compared to how many trully good-hearted people there are in the world, of how the good armies always tend to be at a disadvantage. The source of all your fiends is right there. And what about dead fiends? True, they are more souls made flesh than actual living beings but, when you kill them, their essence has to go somewhere. Where? To back to the planes that spawned them, of course, to create all the fiendish animals and plants you see decorating the hellish scapes of the abyss and hell and the other lovely lower planes.
Gray Richardson 04-30-07, 09:05 PM	It seems to be a basic assumption in Greyhawk's Great Wheel cosmology that the population divides pretty evenly in 9 parts based on the Cartesian alignment system. It would seem that LG, CG, NG, LN, TN, CN, LE, NE, and CE each command one ninth of the population of that universe and/or setting. Roughly a third of the souls that come from deceased sentient beings (or whatever qualifies a critter to have a soul) will gravitate to the evil planes (by hook or by crook) upon their death. According to the Great Wheel cosmology, there is rough parity between all the alignments, and no one philosophy is considered better than any other (well, of course their individual adherents will think that theirs is the best) but objectively speaking they all carry equal weight and are pretty much fungible, from a morally relativist perspective. The ring shape is able to maintain its equilibrium as a ring because all the alignments are in balance. If any one philosophy or axis gained more adherents than another then the Wheel would become lopsided, or more oval. There appears to have been a time long ago when the Great Wheel was more square-shaped, and this may have been because there were more adherents of pure good, pure law, pure evil, or pure chaos than there were of the mixed alignments at the corners. But that was long, long ago and there is more of an even mix in the modern era. :schemes:
El_Machinae 05-01-07, 02:09 PM	Well, lets just do some simple math. A single material world is filled with sentient souls. Aside from humans, there are elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings, not to meantion all the half-breeds, templates, aquatic variants, sentient monsters and all sorts of strange things a simple material plane has. Yeah, exactly. Earth has about 150,000 people dying every day (about 2/3 of that is due to age related degeneration and diseases). That's a LOT. Of course, Earth has a better population density than most fantasy worlds on the surface (though we get creamed on what goes on underground in those same worlds)
Eric888 05-01-07, 04:18 PM	In the old AD&D first edition book they included a random alignment table for NPCs (not monsters) that the players may come in contact with. the table, as written in dungeons and dragons first edition, is below: LG 98-00 NG 94-97 CG 91-93 LN 81-90 N 71-80 CN 61-70 LE 41-60 NE 21-40 CE 1-20 That breaks down to 60% of people being evil. When you include the savage races, most fantasy worlds are completely overrun by evil. By, like, a 10 to 1 margin. Fantasy worlds are a dangerous place.
JulesCARV 05-01-07, 04:51 PM	I go with the following distribution for the general populace: L N C G 6.25% 12.5% 6.25% N 12.5% 25% 12.5% E 6.25% 12.5% 6.25% Humans and halflings broadly follow the above paradigm. Elves, while not homogenous, have some tendencies toward chaos and good. Kobolds similarly have tendencies toward law and evil. (incidentally, elves and kobolds have approximately the same proportion of lawful good and chaotic evil members)
Return of the Flumph 05-01-07, 04:53 PM	Who says the common races provide most of the petitioners in the lower planes anyway? Seriously, gnolls, goblins, orcs, and the like being as common as they are solve all your petitioner needs, even without the countless criminals, tyrants, betrayers, con men, and bandits who arise among the "civilized" folk.
Elana 05-02-07, 01:09 PM	I don't get quite the problem. One infinite plane has the same storage place as 1000 or infinite number of infinite planes. It is room for an infinite number of creatures. And ergo each plane that has less then an infinite number of beings on it would appear empty. so yes, souls are cheap. After all there is an infinite number of them. (on every single plane)