Hell's Inhabitants: Do They Deserve It?

I was thinking lately. What specifically determines whether someone goes to hell or not? There's many gods in Felarya, and believing in them will let you enter their form of paradise, generally, or so it was believed - yet we have heaven and hell both with habitants, and it clearly exists and is connected.

Some of Karbo's characters, okay ALL of Karbo's characters do not depict people who are evil or cruel or general @$$holes who would clearly be going to hell in the first place.

I mean, you cant believe in Kronk, then go to hell because you didn't also believe in the other 1,197 other deities to worship. On the flip side, what about heaven? If people who go to hell dont always deserve that fate, then why do they go there in the first place? What is the deciding function? I do not believe this has really been touched on before, and I think it opens up possibilities of an interesting system.

I will continue to think on this myself while I'm at work. The relationship between Heaven, Hell, the living, and the gods worshiped.

Interesting topic. My theory and headcanon was that Heaven and Hell were guided (In Felarya) by somewhat Christian and Abramic (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God). Basically, If you do good things in your life and accept that, you go to heaven. If you are mean, steal, and kill, you go to hell. Now there is some grey area in the middle, but there might be some sort of neutral judgement done. Like Hades from Greek mythology.

Foremost, I do not mean to stir relegious debate. That is just my theory.

Let's remember, Felarya has many dieties, from the guardians, to the elven trinity, to kronk and oth and countless others that are unlisted. But I think a somewhat karmic approach is taken. Simply do good and go to heaven, do bad and you go to hell. I beleive in the description of heaven in Felarya Karbo stated that it could be different to different people. For the Arborists, it could mean being around the giant tree Mother Fel (and its Angel Crisis) for others, a place of relaxation.

Also, both Heaven and Hell have different areas depending on what the person wants or deserves. My theory is that if you get Heaven, you get to pick. There is a sky area, a water area exc. And in Hell it may be based off of your fears or level of evilness. Main Hell, the bottomless pit ring thing, bland area, ice area, and the worst, the acid zombie place!

Another intesesting thing to note is that Hell is actually acessable to the living. There is a place in the bottom of the Ascaralin mines where you can get to hell, and some demons hang out there. This also complicates things, but I beleive it may be like the Hell from Greek mythology, where mighty heroes could venture there to save their wives and complete quests. It is likely similar in Felarya, but much more dangerous. I do not recall anything like this for heaven, but angels do sometimes come to Felarya. Demons can also come to Felarya as well. As Messyan and Crisis once had a competition to see who is more voracious! (I would have loved to see it! I wonder how many died?)

Anyway, that's Just my theory.

If you want a universe where people worship multiple deities with good like riches,blessings and vices. Then the best way to look at it is like magic or fate series of magic transferring. All your magic an be fueled by the general aligned good or the bad. Or if you want to be one of those that doesn't call thing "good" and "bad" Negative and positive energies.

Your worship or continuous support as a mortal (as you are now or the equivalent of what you might be in felarya) Give's the energy for that individual/s to transmogrify a realm, space, scape, plane, or dimension to the whim of how much energy they're feeding off of that.

Since karbos stance on religion is being that the heaven and hell aren't based on any known ones, the only thing you could assume of people deserving to go their is what type of energy they fondel or get wrapped up in by another through the transmutation of yes, according to their faith and what specific alignments they follow. That's how i always thought of it anyways.

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

I think that the one who decide who will go to hell/heaven must be decided according to the actions of the creature. Surely that humans go to hell/heaven but can someone explain on how predators are divinely judged? The rule of the one who is good goes to heaven and the bad will go to hell isn't applicable. The Purgatory is an idea, but a not really good one. If preds die, though, where would they go?

They get judged like anyone else, though i'm not going into specifics because we aint gods here so i'm leaving this up to authors discretion. However all predators are, are different, but similar and bigger sapient beings raised in different environment and culture. Lets see how that goes with anyone, but that entirely depends on your views of ideology and religion.

ravaging vixen wrote:

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

I think that the one who decide who will go to hell/heaven must be decided according to the actions of the creature. Surely that humans go to hell/heaven but can someone explain on how predators are divinely judged? The rule of the one who is good goes to heaven and the bad will go to hell isn't applicable. The Purgatory is an idea, but a not really good one. If preds die, though, where would they go?

They get judged like anyone else, though i'm not going into specifics because we aint gods here so i'm leaving this up to authors discretion. However all predators are, are different, but similar and bigger sapient beings raised in different environment and culture. Lets see how that goes with anyone, but that entirely depends on your views of ideology and religion.

That brings about disturbing questions regarding that though. What about cultures/races that live upon things aside from vore? Extermination, beings that 'drain' planets to feed, warrior cultures that continue to serve out a warrior lifestyle when weapons... Advance... etc. etc. Are they given a different set of judgements as well? Would the energies of the actions truly change just based on mortal whim?

Well, Preds would likely be judged on actions, not what they eat. After all, for preds eating humans would be as normal as us eating a burger or hot dog.

dragon808tr wrote:

Well, Preds would likely be judged on actions, not what they eat. After all, for preds eating humans would be as normal as us eating a burger or hot dog.

That wasn't the point, dude xD

Personally, I never thought it mattered what you did in life. Whoever found your soul first, angels or demons, and guided it back to their own realm got you for eternity. Sure, it may not seem fair for the mortals, but at the same time, it debases the importance of moral guidelines a little bit, since nobody can really say, "if you do this, you will go to hell".

Then again, if the mortals don't know that the system works this way, then there's really nothing stopping them from engaging in 'religious' arguments, but that's up to interpretation right now. From my perspective, it seems like heaven and hell would be pretty common knowledge in Felarya, given how directly their denizens seem to act within Felarya. I suppose this is yet another thing we need more information on in the wiki: sure, WE have articles detailing heaven and hell, but do people inside Felarya?

Another point: even if the system really is based on who finds your soul first, surely there are methods mortals can use to influence which side can more easily locate your soul after you die. Any of the above could still apply to a degree, from worshipping certain deities, using either positive or negative energies, or a sort of karmic measurement on the overall effect your existence has had on the people around you.

hhhat09 wrote:

ravaging vixen wrote:

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

I think that the one who decide who will go to hell/heaven must be decided according to the actions of the creature. Surely that humans go to hell/heaven but can someone explain on how predators are divinely judged? The rule of the one who is good goes to heaven and the bad will go to hell isn't applicable. The Purgatory is an idea, but a not really good one. If preds die, though, where would they go?

They get judged like anyone else, though i'm not going into specifics because we aint gods here so i'm leaving this up to authors discretion. However all predators are, are different, but similar and bigger sapient beings raised in different environment and culture. Lets see how that goes with anyone, but that entirely depends on your views of ideology and religion.

That brings about disturbing questions regarding that though. What about cultures/races that live upon things aside from vore? Extermination, beings that 'drain' planets to feed, warrior cultures that continue to serve out a warrior lifestyle when weapons... Advance... etc. etc. Are they given a different set of judgements as well? Would the energies of the actions truly change just based on mortal whim?

Again a question I really don't want to get into because i'm not a goddess of that caliber yet. This is the part of fiction you don't really want to get into a philospohical and ideological pondering. That's why since it's based on a fictatious universe, i went with negative and positive energies instead. If you are a warrior that thought he was battling in combat for justice in vahalla then you'll go to a most likely a heaven like that. If you did it for lust and war mongering to ensue chaos and disorder, wouldn't you think you'd be sent to a hellscape since that's the personal/magical energy you're expressing?

ravaging vixen wrote:

hhhat09 wrote:

ravaging vixen wrote:

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

I think that the one who decide who will go to hell/heaven must be decided according to the actions of the creature. Surely that humans go to hell/heaven but can someone explain on how predators are divinely judged? The rule of the one who is good goes to heaven and the bad will go to hell isn't applicable. The Purgatory is an idea, but a not really good one. If preds die, though, where would they go?

They get judged like anyone else, though i'm not going into specifics because we aint gods here so i'm leaving this up to authors discretion. However all predators are, are different, but similar and bigger sapient beings raised in different environment and culture. Lets see how that goes with anyone, but that entirely depends on your views of ideology and religion.

That brings about disturbing questions regarding that though. What about cultures/races that live upon things aside from vore? Extermination, beings that 'drain' planets to feed, warrior cultures that continue to serve out a warrior lifestyle when weapons... Advance... etc. etc. Are they given a different set of judgements as well? Would the energies of the actions truly change just based on mortal whim?

Again a question I really don't want to get into because i'm not a goddess of that caliber yet. This is the part of fiction you don't really want to get into a philospohical and ideological pondering. That's why since it's based on a fictatious universe, i went with negative and positive energies instead. If you are a warrior that thought he was battling in combat for justice in vahalla then you'll go to a most likely a heaven like that. If you did it for lust and war mongering to ensue chaos and disorder, wouldn't you think you'd be sent to a hellscape since that's the personal/magical energy you're expressing?

Lol, easy out. But I get you, yeah. This isn't really something that's meant to be expanded on. As for Bael - some of the people we see do kind of deserve it. I mean shit, most of the prey in Check Mate had mentions of criminal lifestyles. (And the queen was a war mongering brutal tyrant who got visibly giddy at 'reliving' her war days by way of vore.)

Still though. As a point - if we go by your book, Vixen, than that means that the criminally insane would go to heaven for being gleeful about murder/rape, thus releasing positive energy. xD So... Yeah. Again I agree we shouldn't look into it too deeply. It's a small part of Felarya.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

I was thinking lately. What specifically determines whether someone goes to hell or not? There's many gods in Felarya, and believing in them will let you enter their form of paradise, generally, or so it was believed - yet we have heaven and hell both with habitants, and it clearly exists and is connected.

Some of Karbo's characters, okay ALL of Karbo's characters do not depict people who are evil or cruel or general @$$holes who would clearly be going to hell in the first place.

I mean, you cant believe in Kronk, then go to hell because you didn't also believe in the other 1,197 other deities to worship. On the flip side, what about heaven? If people who go to hell dont always deserve that fate, then why do they go there in the first place? What is the deciding function? I do not believe this has really been touched on before, and I think it opens up possibilities of an interesting system.

I will continue to think on this myself while I'm at work. The relationship between Heaven, Hell, the living, and the gods worshiped.

Personaly I use thr rule of what you believe becomes true. In the Discworld Death only collects you. He doesn't tell you where to go but advises your beliefs determine the destination. I think it's the same in Felarya just by the fact it's implied there's as many hells and heavens as belief systems in Felarya, yes? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere and approving of it happily.

These are all good points, but its merely still discussing why you go to heaven or hell. I'm guessing Heaven would have thousands of sub-realms each for heavens of a god or goddess.

I think Nyaha is actually hitting closest to what I'm thinking about.

Nyaha wrote:

Personally, I never thought it mattered what you did in life. Whoever found your soul first, angels or demons, and guided it back to their own realm got you for eternity. Sure, it may not seem fair for the mortals, but at the same time, it debases the importance of moral guidelines a little bit, since nobody can really say, "if you do this, you will go to hell".

That could make sense. When it comes to gathering souls, Hell might not play fair, but we dont know what rules they have - since we have no idea about what the conditions are for the Tenebris War outcome. To combat Demons the Angels might look for souls to escort back, but wouldn't it be a little screwed up if conversely Angels sometimes escorted criminals back to heaven, just because Demons or Angels might not be able to tell just by looking at them if they are a good soul or a bad one?

Worshipping a deity who belongs to a good or bad alignment is also another good idea as well. There is no such thing as a heaven for people who like watching falling objects (Religion of Klonk http://www.felarya.com/wiki/index.php?title=Religions#Cult_of_Klonk ), however, klonk is a good deity, since he encourages dropping things on the heads of evildoers. So believing in Klonk could help an angel find you faster than a demon.

So it goes like this:
You worship Klonk, your soul is set slowly toward a good alignment. When you die, your soul produces a very particular positive energy, which the Demons could be very bad at detecting, and Angles are far better at detecting it, conversely - so an Angel is far more likely to find you. It could be similarly said for bad souls outputting bad energies to attract Succubi.

Ghosts could just be neutral souls I guess. *shrug*

I like this method the best so far. So you could still have people in hell who didn't deserve to be there.

Though it would be infinitely cruel to deserve to go to heaven and digest in the belly of a succubus. I don't like that. There needs to be a way for someone who deserves to go to heaven, to be able to do so.

Archmage Talbeln Veridimus wrote a piece on the workings of the afterlife.  Based on that, I've got a few ideas which are similar to some already stated.  As far as morality affecting afterlife, there's some mix of moral relativism and moral objectivism that results in mortal actions (and maybe thoughts?) releasing positive and/or negative energy.  Some of that energy is absorbed into the soul of the person, tainting their soul.  Upon death (or any other separation of the soul from the material plane), the soul then starts drifting in the inter-dimensional space along the positive/negative axis towards the direction that better matches the soul's accumulated positive/negative energy; the greater the difference, the faster the soul goes.  Of course, angels and demons are always keen to collect souls and speed them on their way.  The question then is what actions are positive, and what are negative.  I would suspect that, as far as predators and prey goes, purposefully antagonizing, torturing, or playing with prey would likely be negative, as well as purposefully and knowingly seeking out intelligent, sapient prey for the purpose of enjoying their distress instead of using a known, and perfectly viable, alternative source of nutrition.  I will admit, I may be over-applying modern morality (specifically, humane killing of livestock and the concept of giving more rights to more intelligent mammals) here, but we'd need Karbo if we wanted to start figuring out exactly which actions on the borderline are positive or negative.

I touched on what actions would produce which energies in my post, too, actually, with the idea of a karmic measurement of your impact on the lives of other people. In essence, rather than have what sort of energy, positive or negative, builds up inside a person being determined by how well they follow our own moral ideals, or even those of their in-universe culture, it would be based on what people whi have interacted with that person in his or her lifetime think of them. Basically, if you treat other people well, and more people like you than dislike you, your soul is tainted with positive emergy, and negative energy if you're a jerk and people generally hate you. I think this would be a lot fairer than having it determined by moral ideals in the already moral grey area that is Felarya.

Nyaha wrote:

In essence, rather than have what sort of energy, positive or negative, builds up inside a person being determined by how well they follow our own moral ideals, or even those of their in-universe culture, it would be based on what people whi have interacted with that person in his or her lifetime think of them.

Well we'd also have to include gods somewhere, in how people get to the afterlife, thats why I recapped and mixed your initial comment up Nyaha, because I believe its the best scenario so far - but that's just my thought.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

So it goes like this:
You worship Klonk, your soul is set slowly toward a good alignment. When you die, your soul produces a very particular positive energy, which the Demons could be very bad at detecting, and Angles are far better at detecting it, conversely - so an Angel is far more likely to find you. It could be similarly said for bad souls outputting bad energies to attract Succubi.

Actually I think Karbo explained with with Check Mate. That evil Warrior Queen was delicious to Chaylass because she was a evil soul. So we could posit that succubus don't like your taste the more positive of an aura you accumulate. I mean some good souls may go to hell using that method but not allot cause most succubus really just want souls soaked in evil energy. However if I remember right there are angels who purify souls they digest if I remember right? So one could posit demons who do the same. Though I feel I should point out I don't believe there should be ONE method for getting to either after life but just some well known ones and numerous others. That way nobody can write/RP the wrong way for their characters to get into the afterlife, right?

Nyaha wrote:

Personally, I never thought it mattered what you did in life. Whoever found your soul first, angels or demons, and guided it back to their own realm got you for eternity. Sure, it may not seem fair for the mortals, but at the same time, it debases the importance of moral guidelines a little bit, since nobody can really say, "if you do this, you will go to hell".

Then again, if the mortals don't know that the system works this way, then there's really nothing stopping them from engaging in 'religious' arguments, but that's up to interpretation right now. From my perspective, it seems like heaven and hell would be pretty common knowledge in Felarya, given how directly their denizens seem to act within Felarya. I suppose this is yet another thing we need more information on in the wiki: sure, WE have articles detailing heaven and hell, but do people inside Felarya?

Another point: even if the system really is based on who finds your soul first, surely there are methods mortals can use to influence which side can more easily locate your soul after you die. Any of the above could still apply to a degree, from worshipping certain deities, using either positive or negative energies, or a sort of karmic measurement on the overall effect your existence has had on the people around you.

Nyaha, that is wonderful. ʕ•͡ω•ʔ

What if you don't want to go to Felarya's heaven, seeing as how angels here are depicted as nothing but reverse succubea and end up eating you.

Scryangi wrote:

Nyaha, that is wonderful. ʕ•͡ω•ʔ

What if you don't want to go to Felarya's heaven, seeing as how angels here are depicted as nothing but reverse succubea and end up eating you.

First, thank you. Second, someone mentioned the idea of neutral souls who become ghosts in Felarya. If you don't want to go to either heaven or hell, this seems like the way to go. I think this method would also explain why so many children seem to end up simply being ghosts: their souls didn't have enough time to be properly saturated with either kind of energy. I'd also go as far as to suggest that neutral souls also have a chance of becoming the bases around which elementals form, since we know that elementals are souls who become magically bound to a specific element from their page in the wiki. These said, there should still be a chance that an angel or demon could find your soul before it develops into semi-corporeal form.

Also yes, Bael, I agree with the idea that worship should also play a part in saturating one's soul with positive or negative energy. This gives characters a form of direct control over their afterlife, which I'm a fan of. Going by Scryangi's question, I think it wouldn't be too farfetched to say that there are also processes mortals could use to cleanse their souls of all accumulated energies, forcing their souls to become neutral again. Think of priests who perfom rites for people on their deathbeds. It'd be kind of interesting if they performed these rites thinking it would only cleanse the soul of negative energy, without realizing it also cleanses out the positive energy, too. XD

Alright, let me recap. To the tune of Vangelis' Heaven and Hell.

On the road to hell and heaven:

Spoiler:

On preds and other disagreeable people:

Spoiler:

On belief and gods:

Spoiler:

Belief and gods intertwining with the road to hell and heaven:

Spoiler:

Side issues:

Spoiler:

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Seems we're all mostly in agreement here on some level. The only part I don't like is Nyaha's final suggestion, that you can pick your karma through mystical means, instead of through your actions. That just seems even more unfair than a succubus snacking on good souls: we can just send you to hell anyway by taking out the light from your heart before we make you curse at an old lady cutting you off in traffic, and since it's so evil of us, we'll just remove the dark from our own, donate exactly one penny to charity before we die, and smugly go to heaven, where we'll watch you burn and get eaten.

I'd just like to suggest, as an alternative to gods getting you in heaven, that worship doesn't actually give you a particular kind of energy. It just gives you some keys and tips for what happens right after you croak. So to go to Heaven through faith, you need to remember its teachings. Adds a control component, but not exactly a straightforward one.

Yeah that's a good point. You dont want to have someone believe in some righteous god, and then steal and kill, because it doesn't matter, you're going to heaven anyway!

So then, how would gods and goddesses help? Insights and clues doesn't seem enough. What if someone creates their own religion?

I know how this can be solved!

DarkOne wrote:

I know how this can be solved!

I don't know what that was, But it makes since! And is pretty funny to boot! And...does seem logical for judgement...