Post/Author/DateTime	Post
MarkusTay63 11-06-07, 11:23 AM	Okay - I'm busily searching through dozens of old books looking for something from another thread, and I happen to be reading several different iterations of Demons/Devils from different editions, and something struck me - When you die and your evil, you become a Dretch or a Lemure. I understand that is really 'core', and doesn't apply so much to FR (which is confusing, because then where does FR get it's 'raw material' from?) Then you can 'work your way up' the fiendish ladder, a become a powerful being once again (maybe after a thousand years or so). So, ignoring the FR cosmology for a moment, doesn't it seem kinda strange that a 35th level evil wizard suddenly finds himself a Lemure - a creature he could have taken on hundreds of just the day before? It almost seems kind of fruitless to achieve anything while you are alive, since everyone starts out at lev 1 again when they die. You might as well just slit your wrists early on and get a jump on your outsider ascension. :eek: Now, like I said, I'm ignoring the fact that various PCs and NPCs get rewarded and go to specific divine realms - but even taking that into account, does that mean a GOOD 35th level wizard is the equal of a Cormyrian Farmer once they die and enter Mystra's Realm? I haven't really looked through either of the 3e Fiend books, so I'm not sure if its covered there. If it is, enlighten me. Right now I think there should be some sort of system in place that a mortal becomes an outsider of a CR level equal to ½ his CR when he/she was alive. Just a rule of thumb, there, but then a 32 level evil being would start out as a Horned Devil, and not a Lemure. In that way, at least they would get some credit in the afterlife for 'achievments' made while alive. What do the rest of you think?
Stigger 11-06-07, 05:15 PM	Personally, I'd say that in the case of the lower planes, if you didn't make preparations and sign on the dotted line for a better deal, the fiends couldn't care less how your soul ended up power-wise... resetting to a level 1 tabula rasa creature is my idea of irony, and certainly not something the fiends would be upfront about. And really, how many mortals would really know for certain what awaited them in the afterlife? Sure the Kelemvorites might be honest about what they knew, but are they really certain of it? And why would some wizard trust a spellbeggar in the first place? All of this confusion works to the fiends advantage, so... yeah.
Storm_Silverhand 11-06-07, 06:33 PM	Heya, The Afterlife in Dungeons and Dragons is neither reward or punishment. It is just a way for the gods to cycle souls into them (or their plane). Ultimately all souls end up merging with the plane they end up on (or the god they go to). Being a Dretch or a Lemure is just on expression of that merger. I'm sure evil people spend some time as petitioners before their ultimate transformation. Also, no one remembers anything of what they did in their life as their memories are stripped from them when they die. (This is all stuff I recall, so it may be inaccurate.)
Suin Bahhar 11-06-07, 07:19 PM	Yeah I advize to just keep all levels on the souls of dead as a sort of memory within the body of the dead individual. The soul departs and has no real levels or a negligable challenge rating. When a soul snaps back into its body it obtains back its musclememories that hold his levels. This way a lich or vampire parasites on the musclememories of their mortal bodies for their levelbound skills and powers. A ghostly creature retains his full levels because on death they painfully memorize their duties or emotions with such negative force they copy and take a snapshot of the bodies emotions or duties to remember their levels. They are mere reflections of the dead body and soul. Does a soul go to his divine realm when it has a ghost still wandering the primes?
Rinonalyrna Fathomlin 11-06-07, 08:34 PM	Heya, Also, no one remembers anything of what they did in their life as their memories are stripped from them when they die. Just a comment--I always thought that was the dumbest, most anti-climatic rule.
MarkusTay63 11-06-07, 10:40 PM	Thank You, thats part of what I am getting at. Your living existance becomes rather pointless. :uh-huh: Maybe it's just my western Judaeo-Christian upbringing, by WHY be faithful if there is no reward? :confused:
Dark Wizard 11-06-07, 10:49 PM	I recall hints that the more powerful individuals broker deals with fiends and other outsider sorts near death or while being sorted out, they get quick promotions through the ranks because their souls are inherently more soulful than others. I can't recall where I read this, might not even be officially rumored, so take this with a handful of salt.
Rinonalyrna Fathomlin 11-07-07, 09:00 AM	Thank You, thats part of what I am getting at. Your living existance becomes rather pointless. :uh-huh: Maybe it's just my western Judaeo-Christian upbringing, by WHY be faithful if there is no reward? :confused: Yeah, and that rule seems to kill a lot of good ideas for planar roleplaying.
Mula 11-07-07, 01:04 PM	Just a comment--I always thought that was the dumbest, most anti-climatic rule. It is. Petitioners in Elysium, however, retain some of their former knowledge and memories. It's easy to just say that this applies on all planes.
MarkusTay63 11-07-07, 01:14 PM	I would say that it applies to all planes, but over time everyone would start to lose their memories of their former lives. on certain planes this would occur MUCH faster. Figure in Elysium it would take centuries for someone to start losing touch with their mortal memories, but in Baator they would lose them much faster (probably due to the river Styx). However, I would take whatever figure a DM came up with for each plane, and then allow DOUBLE that for a person to be able to 'recall' their past life, if confronted by someone or something from it. You know - Prime: "Uncle Ernie... it's me, Jonny... Elvira's boy..." Spirit: "You look familiar..." That sort of thing. Everyone forgetting is just silly, and doesn't work with established lore, from both RW folktales and religion, to FR novels.
GothicDan 11-07-07, 01:34 PM	From RW stuff, the recently dead tend to retain their memories, but it seems like in time they DO fade, or are only echoes of who they once were - much like petitioners. Unless you're something 'more' - an angel, demon, etc.
Suin Bahhar 11-07-07, 01:49 PM	In several novels you see powerful heroes coming back as ghostlike guardians. In multiple manuals dead or drowned humanoids come back as incorporeal undead depending on their relative power as a mortal; i.e. high HD creatures come back as wraiths with full knowledge of their past and abilities in stead of ghosts who can be mere figments of lesser mortals. Banshees are spirits of powerful female elven spellcasters who sing their lifesong with eery chilling pitch as the arcane spell of their name. Also, in the FRCS I see no reference to the stripping of memories upon arriving on the fugueplane, the petitioners even retain their ability to discern their proper divine patron "taxidriver". The memories will start to degrade as time goes on. I suspect this process even goes on on the respective diefic realm as you slowly merge with the dieties essence or plane performing eternal duties untill you fade in the light.
Storm_Silverhand 11-07-07, 08:08 PM	Heya, In several novels you see powerful heroes coming back as ghostlike guardians. In multiple manuals dead or drowned humanoids come back as incorporeal undead depending on their relative power as a mortal; i.e. high HD creatures come back as wraiths with full knowledge of their past and abilities in stead of ghosts who can be mere figments of lesser mortals. Banshees are spirits of powerful female elven spellcasters who sing their lifesong with eery chilling pitch as the arcane spell of their name. Except that undead are undead, not souls who have moved on to the afterlife (I was about to write "to their final reward", but as the after life isn't a reward or a punishment, I guess that doesn't really apply). Also, in the FRCS I see no reference to the stripping of memories upon arriving on the fugueplane, the petitioners even retain their ability to discern their proper divine patron "taxidriver". The memories will start to degrade as time goes on. I suspect this process even goes on on the respective diefic realm as you slowly merge with the dieties essence or plane performing eternal duties untill you fade in the light. It was part of the lore for Planescape aka the Great Wheel, so I'm not surprised to find inconsistencies.
Stigger 11-07-07, 09:18 PM	The concept of Final Rewards don't really mesh too well with the idea of reincarnation either... which is kind of a staple of the setting in a lot of ways.
Charles Phipps 11-08-07, 06:22 PM	Actually, I haven't seen too much hint of Reincarnation in the Realms. Have you? Frankly, a lot of FR's cosmology is screwed up. "Wall of the Faithless" and all that. I prefer Order of the Stick's Mount Celestia ;-)
Suin Bahhar 11-08-07, 06:54 PM	Heya, Except that undead are undead, not souls who have moved on to the afterlife (I was about to write "to their final reward", but as the after life isn't a reward or a punishment, I guess that doesn't really apply).Undead have negative energy copies of their souls as far as I understand it. Where their real souls are depends on the type of undead. An intelligent undead I could see stil actually having his "own" soul, a skeleton is animated while that persons soul is partying in the afterlife :dancin: It was part of the lore for Planescape aka the Great Wheel, so I'm not surprised to find inconsistencies.WotC made the memory loss similar but with a delayed effect, so it's not entirely inconsistant.
Stigger 11-08-07, 08:16 PM	Well, the spell is still in the 3.5 PHB, so presumably reincarnation is for the moment still a theme present in the Realms...
Charles Phipps 11-08-07, 08:28 PM	Yes, but I wouldn't mind some hint that souls actually go through recycling at Kelemvors.
Stigger 11-08-07, 08:30 PM	Kinda presumed it was there given the lore and such that points towards it.
Charles Phipps 11-08-07, 08:37 PM	There's lore that points that way? I thought there was just the spell.
Storm_Silverhand 11-09-07, 05:59 AM	Heya, Undead have negative energy copies of their souls as far as I understand it. Where their real souls are depends on the type of undead. An intelligent undead I could see stil actually having his "own" soul, a skeleton is animated while that persons soul is partying in the afterlife :dancin: WotC made the memory loss similar but with a delayed effect, so it's not entirely inconsistant. Do skeletons have their memories intact? No? Well, there you go. The souls of intelligent undead, on the other hand, have never really moved on to the afterlife, hence they still have their memories.
Stigger 11-09-07, 06:52 AM	I seem to recall several mentions somewhere in a 2e sourcebook... not sure at the moment, as its almost 4am and the brain isn't working quite as well as it should for me to go poking through books.
Suin Bahhar 11-09-07, 10:23 AM	Heya, Do skeletons have their memories intact? No? Well, there you go. The souls of intelligent undead, on the other hand, have never really moved on to the afterlife, hence they still have their memories.Agreed.
GothicDan 11-09-07, 11:34 AM	Stigger is correct. I think it was in Planescape: Torment, that mentions of "non-intelligent undead" with Negative Energy imprints of their souls were mentioned. They were still un-intelligent - it was more like a wall echoing an actual shout. But the game wasn't canon, I don't think, but I like the idea.
HVulpes 11-09-07, 11:51 AM	For souls of powerful figures who become weak outsiders... There is likely a part of the Divine hierarchy which judges the soul by a case by case status about what kind of use it will be used for. Low level creatures like commoners would be used for common uses, like powering the deity or feeding the fiends. More powerful creatures would likely be changed into a useful form like a higher level celestial or fiend. Why waste the power of your worshiper as a lower level being? So if a choosen of Mystra was to die, I could see them turned into something equal to a Solar in her service. Even if she didn't remember anything of her life.
Charles Phipps 11-09-07, 01:30 PM	I think it makes a certain amount of sense. Take Jon Irenicus in the Throne of Bhaal games. Not to spoil the ending but killing him results in him being consigned to Hell without his magic. In other words, we have the satisfaction of knowing that the Mighty have At last Fallen and he'll be spending the rest of eternity as a lesser being without any power. This way, if player characters kill Ssass Tam they don't have to worry about gaining a Pit Fiend enemy.
HVulpes 11-09-07, 02:31 PM	I think it makes a certain amount of sense. Take Jon Irenicus in the Throne of Bhaal games. Not to spoil the ending but killing him results in him being consigned to Hell without his magic. In other words, we have the satisfaction of knowing that the Mighty have At last Fallen and he'll be spending the rest of eternity as a lesser being without any power. This way, if player characters kill Ssass Tam they don't have to worry about gaining a Pit Fiend enemy. With the realm, it seems to be the god's choice what happens to a soul after death. Besides Jon was a special case.
Rinonalyrna Fathomlin 11-09-07, 04:17 PM	And Jon in the Baldur's Gate 2 game isn't canon, either. It's been a while since I read the books, so I don't recall if something similar happened to him in the BG2 novel.
Suin Bahhar 11-09-07, 05:43 PM	Very interesting, that patron gods judgement part. But there is mention of divine "evolution" of lesser petitioners who can achieve greater forms, for example most pitfiends dont spring into existance they attain that rank through ruthless competition. Celestial being have similar divine hierarchies, but attain higher rank by eternally performing duties or whims. I like the stripping of all power part as a fitting end to ones mortal existance, why fear death if it could make one equally strong and ethereal? But that part that holds the information of your character levels and powers must be stored somewhere in the multiverse. I seem to recall that the souls lifecord and dream(or ethereal)form have something to do with the storage of memories. Upon death the dreamform is flung as an eddie of wind in the astral plane with all memories of the person and the soul sucked into its respective aligned plane. Upon resurrection the dreamform or astralcord and the persons soul merge with the body again, blending memories, emotion and blood to form life. In the realms the dreamplane doesn't exist so there has to be another place these memorystorages remain?
MarkusTay63 11-09-07, 05:53 PM	Stigger is correct. I think it was in Planescape: Torment, that mentions of "non-intelligent undead" with Negative Energy imprints of their souls were mentioned. They were still un-intelligent - it was more like a wall echoing an actual shout.Oh no... Shadowsouls... :nonono: In the case of 'evil', I can see the point that a deal would have been brokered ahead of time to insure a heightened status in the afterlife, but in the case of 'good' beings I would think it would be a reward system based on your faithfulness. Also, if you make a deal with a devil, he will stick to the letter of the agreement, but in the case of demons, I can see one of them just turning around after you die and saying "I LIED". :D After all, the soul of a 35th level necromancer is just too tastey to pass up. ;)
Stigger 11-09-07, 06:06 PM	What greater reward could there be than to merge with your chosen deity? Just think of them as absorbing your memories, hopes, dreams, and nightmares, to achieve union with them. Though thinking about it, spells like True Resurrection do muck up things a bit when it comes to reincarnation...
Suin Bahhar 11-09-07, 06:15 PM	Immagine you come back as a blank slate as your memories still reside in your gods essence. Thats what I thought on traveling back along his astral cord towards its body the soul retrieves this extradimensional package that hold this memorylight from somewhere within the astral plane only he can unlock. (...DARN WICH BOOK WAS THIS...thousand doorways to ...something...)
Charles Phipps 11-09-07, 09:12 PM	Though thinking about it, spells like True Resurrection do muck up things a bit when it comes to reincarnation... George Thompson, Baker: So, I was talking to Steve about.... *GURK* *DIES* *wakes up in crypt surrounded by adoring fans* Findalrin the Elf King: I have this oddest urge to bake bread.
MarkusTay63 11-10-07, 03:29 PM	What greater reward could there be than to merge with your chosen deity? To me? Hell sounds preferrable... :smirk: Yeah, thats what I want as a reward for being good - I get to be absorbed into something greater and basically become a non-entity. :bored: On another note - I remember being told that a person's memories reside in little bubbles somewhere (the Astral?), but I HATE that. I think the physical memories of a person reside inside the BRAIN, and therefore when you creat a 'thinking' undead, they are able to access those memories - thats why some are able to speak and still function in a very basic manner (Brains!). Maybe it also explains why spirits 'forget' after awhile - they still have a tentative link to their bodies, but as the brain rots away, so do their memories. What makes a person a person - their 'soul' if you will - is what moves on. The soul also holds a record of what the person was, but from a completely different perspective. The soul would be the personality, without all the added 'baggage' the actual memories would bring. You would have the 'person' you know, but they would only have 'shadow-memories' (gawd, I HATE that) of their life before. They could meet one of their worst enemies, and merely feel indifferent. The real kick in the head is that you can have two seperate undead representing the SAME person - a ghost AND a zombie! I think they may have done something like that in one of the Xanth novels. A person dies and, for whatever reason, becomes a ghost. Then someone turns around and re-animates their corpse in the local Graveyard. How horrifying would THAT be for the spirit? To encounter their own rotting corpse? Is it possible to scare a ghost? :confused: What happens if the ghost 'posseses' the zombie? Would we then wind up with a self-aware, intelligent form of undead? Could a Ghost that was a former Mage raise his own body as a zombie, just to accomplish that? (How gross would that be?) And what if you found the 'preserved' corpse of a Ghost thats been haunting an area for quite sometime, and then you ressurected it? Would the spirit then be sucked back into the body? Would that be a viable work-around to confronting the Ghost itself? Will I ever stop being confused by the D&D afterlife? :thinks:
Suin Bahhar 11-10-07, 04:46 PM	I perused some from lore from the Ghostwalk campaign option book. In it souls are turned into ethereal ghosts 10 minutes after dying. They land in the ethereal and start to get sucked into these winds that blow them to their "final destination". Only strong souls (intelligent humanoids) can go against the current and stay on the material. The elves in this campaign option merge their souls with spirit trees instead of leaving the ethereal and material planes by being blown by the ethereal current. The setting has some interesting ideas for a more locally scaled afterlife. The spirits can even get ghostclass levels called eidolon or something that you can convert to new class levels when raised or resurrected.
Stigger 11-10-07, 06:08 PM	My own personal favorite is that when you're dead, the enormity of the Planes and the Afterlife become perceptible, and the shock of the limited perceptions of entering the mortal world wipes away memories of that greatness and make it hazy at best. Entering the afterlife however frees you of your mortal perceptions and expands at such a dizzying rate that the shock divorces you from much of your past, and the new perceptions makes reconcilling that past with your current situation difficult at best, so that the past is hazy as its details become lost in a haze of sensory input... if that makes much sense.
Suin Bahhar 11-10-07, 06:21 PM	oO Omniscience. I sure like that.
Stigger 11-10-07, 07:21 PM	Well, I wasn't quite getting at being anywhere near omniscient, but if that works for you...
MarkusTay63 11-11-07, 01:13 AM	I get it now! It's like when my 5 yr old is parked in front of the 6' TV with Cartoon Network on. The whole world could go to hell in a handbag and he would never even notice. The massive amount of INPUT overwhelms the senses and blots out any peripheral information coming in. :P
Stigger 11-11-07, 01:35 AM	Couldn't say, don't watch television. Kill your TV and go buy a book is what I say. :P
Storm_Silverhand 11-11-07, 07:18 AM	Heya, What greater reward could there be than to merge with your chosen deity? Just think of them as absorbing your memories, hopes, dreams, and nightmares, to achieve union with them. I don't know what to make of my feelings on this... I just feel horrified. It's the complete destruction of the self, essentially.
Suin Bahhar 11-11-07, 08:08 AM	Stigger, I mean omniscience regarding your expanding senses (omnivision?). Near death experiences of real people usually are described with leaving and hanging over your body, being able to see your own corpse and going to the light above (this has to do with the scrambling of the spatial awareness in the brain). The soul rises to a higher viewpoint and can overlook the world from a higher scale. In your version the leaving of the body goes hand in hand with an expanding viewscape of the material, ethereal and the astral plane. When arrived on the fugueplane the total death experience and the current sensory input blots out and makes it difficult to acces any residual memories from the material. A souls patron god has influenced the soul to pick up sensory input from his home plane more readily. The main point is that the transistion from lifeform to spiritform changes your viewpoint and senses and must be quite the traumatic experience. Depending on the speed of the process a soul that has arrived on his patrongods plane will at first be quite a nutcase if it's not familiar with the planes. This could also explain why ressurrection costs the subject mental experience, the shift in perspective is so jarring to a soul it gets slightly damaged. It can also be explained as leaving a small part of a souls essence to merge with his god or plane, or the deluting of the soul through the brief astral travel it experiences. The inherent time limit in the resurrection spell surely points in the direction of the souls absolute merging with the divine over time. MarkusThay's idea that the brain holds the memories is interesting too, but than superold ghosts would not be able to hold on to their sense of self without locking or imprinting their memories somewhere. There could perhaps be objects or people that fetter the spirit to its own copy of its memories. If ghosts are mere reflections of souls a ghost could encounter his own resurrected self.
Stigger 11-11-07, 10:27 AM	Yeah, that does sound closer (almost exactly, except you put it a lot better, but shhh on that one...) to what I had in mind. Sorry, tend to think of Omniscience as a deity-level sort of word that I wouldn't really use for 99.9% of the Deities in the Realms (closest would be Savras, and not really even then). As to Zandilar, destruction of the self doesn't bother me to be honest, at least not in that context. That, to me, is the purpose of religion, to live your life in a way that emulates and hopefully approaches the level of whatever you revere as divine, to become so close to it that in death there is no difference between you and it. You exist as a minor part of your deity of choice, your thoughts, experiences, and such going to shape and become part of the whole... kinda like borg on a spiritual/metaphysical level without the freaky/horror parts of it. Which would really bother me were I alive, but for some reason I find it oddly comforting in death.
MarkusTay63 11-11-07, 01:40 PM	Not me... I'm not going anywhere - I'm gonna hang around a few centuries as a ghost and scare the cr@p out of people until my energy finally disapates completely into the ether. :P
Storm_Silverhand 11-11-07, 04:18 PM	Heya, As to Zandilar, destruction of the self doesn't bother me to be honest, at least not in that context. That, to me, is the purpose of religion, to live your life in a way that emulates and hopefully approaches the level of whatever you revere as divine, to become so close to it that in death there is no difference between you and it. You exist as a minor part of your deity of choice, your thoughts, experiences, and such going to shape and become part of the whole... kinda like borg on a spiritual/metaphysical level without the freaky/horror parts of it. Which would really bother me were I alive, but for some reason I find it oddly comforting in death. Maybe I'm just too egotistical (or arrogant), but I think I'd better serve a deity by still being myself - as a separate entity. (Being merged with a deity, though, is definitely preferable to being merged with a plane.)
Stigger 11-11-07, 06:12 PM	Heh, were I of a meaner stripe I might just join you there Markus... but I just can't get worked up enough about anyone to bother, so its off to the Great Perhaps with me after I die. As to better serving a deity, I look at it as them seeing the sum whole collection of your thoughts and experiences and incorporating them into itself, so that in some respects you do still live on, just not necessarily distinctly, unless that's required (read as a Resurrection/Raise being cast and allowed). Certainly not anywhere close to canon, but it makes sense (and appeals) to me at least.
MarkusTay63 11-11-07, 08:21 PM	Heh, were I of a meaner stripe I might just join you there Markus... but I just can't get worked up enough about anyone to bother, so its off to the Great Perhaps with me after I die.It has nothing to do with angry - I just think it would be really fun. :D I could become invisible, sneak up on John Edwards during a show taping, and whisper in his ear - "you are SO full of s__t!" Can you imagine? He'd jumped right out of his skin if he ever heard a 'real' dead person. :P
Stigger 11-12-07, 12:56 AM	Guess you're just less ebil than I am then... I'm more the vindictive, make your life hell type generally... hmmm... gotta get a few addresses before I buy it come to think of it...
Fingoldfin 11-12-07, 01:00 PM	It has nothing to do with angry - I just think it would be really fun. :D I could become invisible, sneak up on John Edwards during a show taping, and whisper in his ear - "you are SO full of s__t!" Can you imagine? He'd jumped right out of his skin if he ever heard a 'real' dead person. :P That guy is such a joke...I sense that someone here has a dead loved one with a name that starts with D...R..M...S...J..P...N...or ahh some other letter. Smart people fall for crap like that because they want to believe they are talking to their dead family members. That guy is a weasel.
Mula 11-12-07, 01:19 PM	Maybe I'm just too egotistical (or arrogant), but I think I'd better serve a deity by still being myself - as a separate entity. (Being merged with a deity, though, is definitely preferable to being merged with a plane.) You're already dead by then, so what's the problem? :D
Storm_Silverhand 11-12-07, 04:06 PM	Heya, That guy is such a joke...I sense that someone here has a dead loved one with a name that starts with D...R..M...S...J..P...N...or ahh some other letter. Hmm... Well you got the initials of one person in my family who died this year in that lot (sequentially and in the correct order). Spooky coincidence. :P Smart people fall for crap like that because they want to believe they are talking to their dead family members. That guy is a weasel. Well that's right. You can't really blame them, can you? Death is the last great unknown in our lives, and people want to believe that there is something afterwards. I've seen and experienced too much in my life to be a complete skeptic about the supernatural... But I still won't trust anyone who sells their "skills" like that... Especially since I've also seen enough to know some of the tricks behind what the charlatans are capable of (advanced ways of reading people and things like that - in short, psychology rather than psychic power)... So, as a rule, I don't trust psychics. You're already dead by then, so what's the problem? :D Oh well, the problem is I'm dead. :) If I lived in such a magical world, I can assure you I'd be seeking ways of extending my life. ;)
Stigger 11-12-07, 05:04 PM	Bloody necromancers and their life extensions...
Mula 11-12-07, 11:25 PM	Oh well, the problem is I'm dead. :) If I lived in such a magical world, I can assure you I'd be seeking ways of extending my life. ;) If I lived in the Realms, I'd probably do that too. I mean, undeath can't really be THAT bad, can it...?
Stigger 11-13-07, 10:04 AM	Heh, somehow I seriously doubt she was referring to undeath, despite my obnoxious commentary. Just isn't Zandilar's style. ;)
Fingoldfin 11-13-07, 12:14 PM	If I lived in the Realms, I'd probably do that too. I mean, undeath can't really be THAT bad, can it...? Just be an Elf and become a monk so you stop aging. :)
Mula 11-13-07, 01:20 PM	But even monks (and druids) die of old age. :(
Suin Bahhar 11-13-07, 04:35 PM	Other ways are questing for the fountain of youth. Using the Ensull's soulsteal spell in W:CoS or get your grubby hands on potions of longevity. As a human I prefer to wish for the lifespan of an elf. 700 years is plenty long. Obtaining lichdom would be my last resort, if I could take that step (after 700 years of life who knows how you view undeath).
Rinonalyrna Fathomlin 11-13-07, 05:21 PM	Having a very long life might actually suck though. I'd be careful what you wished for...
Suin Bahhar 11-13-07, 05:25 PM	Who wants to live forever?
Shemeska the Marauder 11-13-07, 06:38 PM	There are examples of evil mortals acting on behalf of archfiend patrons in life in exchange for a leapfrog up the fiendish hierarchy after their death rather than starting at the bottom and having to work their way up. I recall one case of a mortal being advanced to Cornugon status rather than starting as a lemure. Similarly on the good side of things, some mortal petitioners upon death have become various aasimon or other types of divine servitors by virtue of exceptional service to a deity in life, and a desire to risk their eternity by venturing beyond the range of their patron's deific domain.
Bonzai 11-13-07, 07:48 PM	Hmmm.... I thought that when a soul gets sent to the abyss or the hells, it became a larva or maggot. In this form the soul retains all it's memories, but is trapped in a relativley helpless form. Then these souls are captured, bartered, tortured, or otherwise consumed by the native fiends. Those that are stronger and more clever avoid such a fate, and eventually undergo a metamorphosis into a Dretch or Lemure. This process robs them of their former identities, and they become a native of the plane. Then, over the centuries, they may eventually transform again into a higher level of fiend. This is unless there are prior arrangments made that allow a soul to skip the Larva/maggot phase and directly become a native of the plane. As for the process of losing your identity, you lost your soul to an incarnation of evil, did you expect to be rewarded? Thats why so many of those that sell their soul, do so for temporal power. Might as well enjoy life now, because in the after life your screwed. They don't care who you are. Unless you deserve special torment at a particular fiends hands, you are going to become pocket change to them. To be used to fuel their growing power, barter, or whatever whim suits them. Why let you keep your individuality or asmodeus forbid, your humanity? Better to put you through the fiendish version of boot camp, and grind you under the machine. Once you are through it, you will be stripped of all you preconcieved notions of morality, your independance, and your will. Better to have you reborn into a new form, ready to embrace the tenants of your particular fiendish ethnicity, and subservient to your betters. An epic wizard would be a powerful tool yes, but also a dangerous one. One that could grow into a rival. Better to have an army of Dretches that fear you, and obey your every comand.
Zireael 11-19-07, 02:29 AM	I don't think the souls lose their identity - remember when Aliisza met the ghosts of Greyanna Mizzrym and Shobalar captain in the Astral? They fully knew who they are or where they are going. That's Greyanna who told the alu the Spider Queen has moved.
Shemeska the Marauder 11-19-07, 03:06 AM	I don't think the souls lose their identity - remember when Aliisza met the ghosts of Greyanna Mizzrym and Shobalar captain in the Astral? They fully knew who they are or where they are going. They won't have lost their mortal memories till they've already passed through the Astral, so that's not necessarily in conflict with the planar lore on the topic. Of course it's also possible that the author wasn't aware of that particular convention, or chose to downplay it for plot purposes.
Zireael 11-19-07, 09:22 AM	What's got the Astral to do with losing memories??:confused: :confused: I do think anything. You have your memories until you reach your god's plane, if we stick with losing them, or you don't lose them at all!
Shemeska the Marauder 11-19-07, 12:09 PM	What's got the Astral to do with losing memories??:confused: :confused: When petitioners pass through the Astral plane after death, it's during that passage that they lose their mortal memories. In Faerun's case with the presence of the Fugue as a sort of transitory demiplane, that process of purification wouldn't start till they had left the Fugue and crossed the Astral on their way to the domains of their specific patron deity (or to one of the lower planes if they'd dealt with fiends).