Hell's Inhabitants: Do They Deserve It?

Whatever you linked, the Wii U browser can't handle it, Dark. Anyway, There's no saying that it has to be either what you worship or what actions you commit that determines your soul's alignment. In the situation you proposed, Bael, it stands to reason that that guy's soul would be tainted with negative energy from the stealing and killing, and with slight positive energy from his 'worship'. Either worship alone is not enough to properly saturate your soul with the right energy, or the amount of energy your soul gets depends on how much faith you actually have in what deity you're worshipping. So fake 'loophole' worshipping, like what it sounds like that guy is doing, wouldn't be as effective for his soul as it would for someone else worshipping the same deity much more devoutly.

In the event that worshipping alone is not enough for anyone, no matter how faithful, then it can be said instead that these faiths give guidelines towards committing actions that will saturate your soul with positive (or negative, depending on the intent of the religion or deity) energy, and in order to get the most out of the religion after your death, you actually have to adhere to its tenets and apply them in your decisions.

In either case, I think the idea of someone creating their own religion wouldn't work, since it wouldn't have any divine or demonic support, which would otherwise be the defining factor in determining what type of energy your soul absorbs. That said, there's still the concept of your alignment being determined by people's opinions of you which could work at the same time as the religious aspect, so someone following a false religion might still get taken to heaven because the things they did for people while following it made them have a positive opinion of that person.

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

Because someone mentioned going to Hell physically, is it possible to go to Heaven physically?

Portals, dimension warps, any other ideas?

This is a good question. (Also your dark red text is a little difficult to read for me, it glares at me.)

A while ago I had an idea called the "Infinity Mountains" I think, which was a massive, beautiful mountain range that spanned through several Celestial realms. It was to be littered with shrines, statues, monasteries, angelic homes and what not (but just a little bit). It might be interesting to note that one of those shrines would contain a gate to and from the mortal realm, or maybe the shrine is in limbo, and you can get to and from limbo, but getting from there to heaven would be much more difficult.

Keep in mind this is me addressing my own idea, and its located in my "library of Ideas" thread. I might go search for it later but its still all hypothetical as I'm only trying to discuss here what is actually canon, and revolves around Hell. Heaven is another topic, I think.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

Because someone mentioned going to Hell physically, is it possible to go to Heaven physically?

Portals, dimension warps, any other ideas?

This is a good question. (Also your dark red text is a little difficult to read for me, it glares at me.)

A while ago I had an idea called the "Infinity Mountains" I think, which was a massive, beautiful mountain range that spanned through several Celestial realms. It was to be littered with shrines, statues, monasteries, angelic homes and what not (but just a little bit). It might be interesting to note that one of those shrines would contain a gate to and from the mortal realm, or maybe the shrine is in limbo, and you can get to and from limbo, but getting from there to heaven would be much more difficult.

I like the idea of a place in Felarya that can allow you to pyshically go to the spiritual realms alive but I have to ask are we opening the gates for people to physically brining souls back with them. Otherwise I can imagine it'd be a interesting place to visit and probably would have some uunique dangers compared to the rest of Felarya.

Remember the nature of the realms though. Hell would encourage it, Heaven wouldn't. For hell it'd probably help support what I like to call 'soul trafficking', but it'd be interesting accidentally winding up in hell, then dying, and your soul is transported to heaven because you were a good person HAHA.

As I see it, every actions taken by a sentient being color their soul in a certain way, which determine where their souls will naturally go after their death. But what matters the most is how the being perceive their action themselves.

Let's take Crisis for example. She ate countless humans which can obviously easily pass for evil in an human's point of view. Yet herself doesn't perceive that action as such because of a variety of reasons ( the way she was raised, her daily environment etc... ) It's just pretty normal for her. So eating more humans won't change much the "color" of her soul.
But let's imagine at some point she betrays one of her friend out of selfishness for example. THAT would heavily darken her soul. No matter how much she could lie herself to it, in the end she would know she has done something very bad and unless she would atones for it in one way or another, that would leave a bad mark on her.

Karbo wrote:

As I see it, every actions taken by a sentient being color their soul in a certain way, which determine where their souls will naturally go after their death. But what matters the most is how the being perceive their action themselves.

Let's take Crisis for example. She ate countless humans which can obviously easily pass for evil in an human's point of view. Yet herself doesn't perceive that action as such because of a variety of reasons ( the way she was raised, her daily environment etc... ) It's just pretty normal for her. So eating more humans won't change much the "color" of her soul.
But let's imagine at some point she betrays one of her friend out of selfishness for example. THAT would heavily darken her soul. No matter how much she could lie herself to it, in the end she would know she has done something very bad and unless she would atones for it in one way or another, that would leave a bad mark on her.

This pretty much sums it up. So in a sense, you are only as "good" or "evil" as you think you are. So if a human murders someone in Negav by stabbing him, his soul would be quite dark beacuse deep down, he knows that it was evil, even if he needed it for money for his family.

So then it is kinda like a Karma type system then? With dark and light colors that can improve or change over time to send the soul to heaven or hell? Interesting. That explains why there are so many fights over neutral souls. I can imagine that in daily life in Felarya, the average person would be somewhere in the gray area. because Felarya is after all, a battle for survival.

I sort of have some big issues with that. Someone who doesn't think they're evil and murders and harms people for the sake of their own believed justice is going to mean they're good and will still have their own positive "color" as you put it. I dont mean this hatefully, but that would mean Adolf Hitler would go to heaven.

Lockheed X-17 wrote:

Yeah, what he said.

But seriously, how does this concept work? Does mass murder for the glory of *insert name here* or whatever count as genocide? or would it count as a glorious act of passion?

A question here, would they still need a purgatory?

((That red color is very annoying))

Well, Crisis does it beacuse she must eat people to live. That is nessicary. She NEEDS to do that. I think that's what Karbo meant is his example.

And no, there is no Purgatory exactly. You can be Nuteral and heaven and hell will fight over your soul as to where it goes. However, hell has areas like purgatory.

I have to apologize here. The example I used was very extreme, but I meant it as a point, not as a way to accuse anybody. I feel like it seems I may have done so.

I don't think there is any chance that a genocidal maniac dictator or someone who mass murder their own kind, for whatever cause, would ever go to heaven.

Sure such individuals may sound convinced that what they do is just and good but that's because they have become masters at lying to themselves in the first place. Just like any fanatics really.
But no matter how hard and thick that self-righteous shell looks, in the end it's merely a feeble defense mechanism of the mind, created so they don't turn completely demented and haunted by the visage of their victims every hours of the day.
Come death or a near death-situation and that layer quickly peel away.

I have not experienced a near death situation myself, but I believe the few seconds before THE point where you truly believe this is it, are a moment of pure truth. Every carefully crafted lies instantly go away and you see yourself "naked" so to speak. You see what you truly are.
This is why so many people who experience these moments radically change afterwards I think.

So yes I don't think there is any danger of that.

I think the issue comes from how you worded it, Karbo. Rather than saying that her actions of eating humans won't colour her soul because she perceives it as being okay, you should describe it as...hmm...they won't colour her soul because those are the values she and the rest of her kin in the wilderness live by? That way there's not a perceivable double standard between Crisis not going to hell because she perceives her actions as good and a homocidal dictator not going to hell because he perceives his actions as good.

I'm not going to lie, but i hate this rationalization of thought of "what makes you bad." Yes we know generally, causing the death of anyone is bad. Now trying to kiddy kite Crisis for a better example would be Like trying to be a nomad out in a desert and say that raiding people to survive (which sometimes involves killing) makes me not a bad person.

Trying to perceive that means as me as the individual think that fundamentally and in the eternities. What ever god or being i beleive in. Even if it's myself think that this is casual, But then what if there's higher power then me? What if i'm not the god i assume to be to my jurisdiction? What if my truths weren't absolute truths and i was doing things wrong the whole time? Do i get a instant color of darkness or am I just at the grey area because i don't mean to war monger or bloodlust and kill people, i just understand that's life, but the moment i figure that out and that i should restrain from killing people, has the direction of where my color suddenly changed upon that revelation?

It's why i really, Really think we can't judge crisis too much. She eats people Casually and will see it as a regular thing until told my some mystic force otherwise that that's wrong, but that thing would have to have a perfect understanding of her to make that kind of decision. She is she's going through the motions or if there is some fundamental fault in her lifestyle. It's something you can't really strictly decide because that means your playing god to sorts even on a fictional character. Now i don't want to get philisophical on this because it's fiction, but I don't think crisis will be going to a hellverse anytime soon, She's not like Menyssan that goes out of her way to eat people for pure gratification (Probably why she's in the demonology category in the firstplace) She just has a very neutral pose using her agency but she mostly a good person and tries to be.

I'm not convinced that Karbo's explanation is internally consistent. Even if we ignore how deeply rooted cognitive dissonance can get, the big question is where does this "pure truth" in the moment of death come from? Is there an objective morality? Is it instinctual and dependent on the species, and to a lesser extent, the individual? What does this imply for people who are clinically insane?

I'd personally tie it more to emotions; all emotions are either negative or positive, and willful actions (exerting your will and focus, probably in a similar but much more basic way than one would use magic to exert their will on mana) can direct that energy to some extent and, more importantly, make someone's soul more open to being tainted or colored by the energy created by those actions. The benefit of this is that this would be the same holy/unholy energy energy that angels and demons are essentially made of, which is referenced decently often already (I would argue that the ability of a wrath maiden to feed on hate would be them being able to absorb negative energy from the environment around them).

Nyaha wrote:

I think the issue comes from how you worded it, Karbo. Rather than saying that her actions of eating humans won't colour her soul because she perceives it as being okay, you should describe it as...hmm...they won't colour her soul because those are the values she and the rest of her kin in the wilderness live by? That way there's not a perceivable double standard between Crisis not going to hell because she perceives her actions as good and a homocidal dictator not going to hell because he perceives his actions as good.

I would say the main difference is that the dictator doesn't perceive his action as good at all. He is merely lying and deceiving himself into believing it is. Repeating it to himself again and again until he sort of start to believe in his own lies and build a warped reality for himself to live in. A way for his mind to not turn completely insane because of his actions. But upon death, and the departure of his soul from his mortal body, all those lies are instantly swept away.

Bluehorizon wrote:

What if my truths weren't absolute truths and i was doing things wrong the whole time? Do i get a instant color of darkness or am I just at the grey area because i don't mean to war monger or bloodlust and kill people, i just understand that's life, but the moment i figure that out and that i should restrain from killing people, has the direction of where my color suddenly changed upon that revelation?

Mhh I think a big revelation ala " I was wrong the whole time" can be traumatic depending on the circumstance but the realization in itself wouldn't change the soul "color" that much. As i see it, it's mostly what would come after. For instance, will the person continue what they were doing and merely start to lie to themselves that they are right to justify their act ?  or will they attempt to change or alleviate that situation and to correct to some extent at least the wrongs they have done ?
It's something that would takes place deep into the mind so it's very hard to tell of course.

Gamma wrote:

I'm not convinced that Karbo's explanation is internally consistent.  Even if we ignore how deeply rooted cognitive dissonance can get, the big question is where does this "pure truth" in the moment of death come from?  Is there an objective morality?  Is it instinctual and dependent on the species, and to a lesser extent, the individual?  What does this imply for people who are clinically insane?.

Well this "moment of truth" is something very intangible. I have read a couple of books and heard some interviews of persons who lived through near-death experiences and explained how it profoundly changed their live afterward. how they felt this "nakedness" at the ultimate moment, looking at themselves with all those cozy and reassuring illusions we craft for ourselves gone. A bit like when a couple seconds before death, people are believed to see their life unfold before their eyes. And in some case, the person interviewed didn't like what they saw and decided to change. For example by abandoning a life they now judge too superficial and pointless and embracing on things they now find a lot more important. There is no way to tell if it's even remotely true of course, bu I feel it makes some sense.
I know I'm explaining things rather clumsily here but I'm thinking on something a bit along those lines when I talk about this "moment of truth".
For clinically insane people though, I'm not really sure how that would work ^^;

Karbo wrote:

Nyaha wrote:

I think the issue comes from how you worded it, Karbo. Rather than saying that her actions of eating humans won't colour her soul because she perceives it as being okay, you should describe it as...hmm...they won't colour her soul because those are the values she and the rest of her kin in the wilderness live by? That way there's not a perceivable double standard between Crisis not going to hell because she perceives her actions as good and a homocidal dictator not going to hell because he perceives his actions as good.

I would say the main difference is that the dictator doesn't perceive his action as good at all. He is merely lying and deceiving himself into believing it is. Repeating it to himself again and again until he sort of start to believe in his own lies and build a warped reality for himself to live in. A way for his mind to not turn completely insane because of his actions. But upon death, and the departure of his soul from his mortal body, all those lies are instantly swept away.

I dunno about this...I'm pretty sure there are quite a number of sociopaths/megalomaniacs who genuinely believe their actions are good, and for the good of the people.  Also that's part of what makes a villain so interesting, in my opinion, is how much they believe their cause is just.

I'm sure it could be debated for a long time though.

I just don't think it's right to leave it to the dying to decide on their own feelings where they should be going. I'd like to suggest instead that there is some external, not-moral-related, factor that kicks in if someone is a morally myopic mass-murdering mental manchild, or was raised specifically to fail to understand morality.

Like, for instance, Heaven might just not want them anymore, no matter how bright their soul shines, because they've got SOME standards- or better, because they might get more positive energy from publicly sending them to hell than from quietly letting them in, so everyone knows there's some justice in the world. Though that last one would make you wonder why would Hell want them, if they can make the world a little more horrible simply by letting everyone know who's chilling in heaven.

Maybe Hell could make everyone more horrible by letting them know MMMMMM's final reward, if ther heart is twisted enough to embrace these crimes with glee, will be that the darkness will empower it upon death, and a new demon shall be born to torment the world. Mwahaha.

That still leaves a little problem- it works for genocides, but it doesn't work for Crisis, unless there's a naga heaven and it's separate from prey heaven. While I don't mind if Crisis goes to hell (More vore that way, what's the harm?), some adjustments might be necessary to keep her in the nice list.

Karbo wrote:

I would say the main difference is that the dictator doesn't perceive his action as good at all. He is merely lying and deceiving himself into believing it is. Repeating it to himself again and again until he sort of start to believe in his own lies and build a warped reality for himself to live in. A way for his mind to not turn completely insane because of his actions. But upon death, and the departure of his soul from his mortal body, all those lies are instantly swept away.

I'm going to be frank with you: I think this is a really romantic and myopic view of the concept. To me, you saying that tells me that you're not that good at considering a diverse number of possible viewpoints and ideas. Like Bael said, there are some people - hell, many, even - who do bad things because they genuinely believe they are doing good. And there's varying degrees of this: there are those who would acknowledge that their actions are terrible and they will likely be sent to hell, but still believe that doing them will bring about something good - the ends justify the means - and then there are those who might believe that murder in itself is a good thing, perhaps out of reverence for the idea of causing destruction to bring about change, worship of a deity that supports murder as a tenet, or simply because, as Gamma hinted, they have a mental disorder of some sort that prevents them from understanding that what they're doing is wrong.

I think, ultimately, your view of the subject is too narrow-minded, and your explanation of how Felarya's afterlife sorting method works is based on your own beliefs, which is both unfair to the rest of us who don't share your views, and, more importantly, not adequate to explain every possible circumstance - you even stated you yourself don't know how insane people would be sorted under your proposed system.

Nyaha wrote:

I'm going to be frank with you: I think this is a really romantic and myopic view of the concept. To me, you saying that tells me that you're not that good at considering a diverse number of possible viewpoints and ideas. Like Bael said, there are some people - hell, many, even - who do bad things because they genuinely believe they are doing good. And there's varying degrees of this: there are those who would acknowledge that their actions are terrible and they will likely be sent to hell, but still believe that doing them will bring about something good - the ends justify the means - and then there are those who might believe that murder in itself is a good thing, perhaps out of reverence for the idea of causing destruction to bring about change, worship of a deity that supports murder as a tenet, or simply because, as Gamma hinted, they have a mental disorder of some sort that prevents them from understanding that what they're doing is wrong.

I think, ultimately, your view of the subject is too narrow-minded, and your explanation of how Felarya's afterlife sorting method works is based on your own beliefs, which is both unfair to the rest of us who don't share your views, and, more importantly, not adequate to explain every possible circumstance - you even stated you yourself don't know how insane people would be sorted under your proposed system.

Woah I'm not imposing anything here. I'm just sharing my view and saying how I see things.

The notion of good and evil in itself is a very tricky and complex one anyway. In the case you do bad things but you are genuinely convinced you are doing good thing then can you really be called an evil person in the first place ? Well no but also yes.
If you have been raised from your birth into becoming a mindless killing machine by a brainwashing program to perform evil deeds int the name of an evil emperor, can you be really called evil ?  Sort of but in the same time not really.
And do we have a right to judge how these souls should be treated after life ? definitely not..
The matter of good and evil in itself is a lot a question of point of view and in the end it's a business that take place very very deep inside one's soul and it's going to vary a lot from one case to another. There are no absolute rules or some sort of formulas here. It's a case by case thing based on the soul's experiences, in which environment they have grown etc.. which is why there are judges peering into your soul at the gates of both those ( fictional ) Heavens and hell.

In the case of genocidal dictators though I don't think a single one has existed who genuinely thought they were doing good, beneath the layers of self-constructed lies. Or maybe only in the case of a clinically insane one but insanity is another matter ( adding to the general complexity of the subject ).

Again just my two cents. I'm not presumptuous enough to pretend that my take on an incredibly complex subject such as good and evil is the right one if a "right " one even exist ^^

Stabs wrote:

I just don't think it's right to leave it to the dying to decide on their own feelings where they should be going.

Well what I was saying is not really that the soul decide where they should go after their death, but more that one's perception of their action is the prime factor at how this action is going to color their souls, positively or negatively and to which extent.
The matter of where the soul go after death is then decided by that color as it is naturally attracted by the place more akin to their soul's color.

Karbo wrote:

Nyaha wrote:

I'm going to be frank with you: I think this is a really romantic and myopic view of the concept. To me, you saying that tells me that you're not that good at considering a diverse number of possible viewpoints and ideas. Like Bael said, there are some people - hell, many, even - who do bad things because they genuinely believe they are doing good. And there's varying degrees of this: there are those who would acknowledge that their actions are terrible and they will likely be sent to hell, but still believe that doing them will bring about something good - the ends justify the means - and then there are those who might believe that murder in itself is a good thing, perhaps out of reverence for the idea of causing destruction to bring about change, worship of a deity that supports murder as a tenet, or simply because, as Gamma hinted, they have a mental disorder of some sort that prevents them from understanding that what they're doing is wrong.

I think, ultimately, your view of the subject is too narrow-minded, and your explanation of how Felarya's afterlife sorting method works is based on your own beliefs, which is both unfair to the rest of us who don't share your views, and, more importantly, not adequate to explain every possible circumstance - you even stated you yourself don't know how insane people would be sorted under your proposed system.

Woah I'm not imposing anything here. I'm just sharing my view and saying how I see things.

The notion of good and evil in itself is a very tricky and complex one anyway. In the case you do bad things but you are genuinely convinced you are doing good thing then can you really be called an evil person in the first place ? Well no but also yes.
If you have been raised from your birth into becoming a mindless killing machine by a brainwashing program to perform evil deeds int the name of an evil emperor, can you be really called evil ?  Sort of but in the same time not really.
And do we have a right to judge how these souls should be treated after life ? definitely not..
The matter of good and evil in itself is a lot a question of point of view and in the end it's a business that take place very very deep inside one's soul and it's going to vary a lot from one case to another. There are no absolute rules or some sort of formulas here. It's a case by case thing based on the soul's experiences, in which environment they have grown etc.. which is why there are judges peering into your soul at the gates of both those ( fictional ) Heavens and hell.

In the case of genocidal dictators though I don't think a single one has existed who genuinely thought they were doing good, beneath the layers of self-constructed lies. Or maybe only in the case of a clinically insane one but insanity is another matter ( adding to the general complexity of the subject ).

Again just my two cents. I'm not presumptuous enough to pretend that my take on an incredibly complex subject such as good and evil is the right one if a "right " one even exist ^^

Stabs wrote:

I just don't think it's right to leave it to the dying to decide on their own feelings where they should be going.

Well what I was saying is not really that the soul decide where they should go after their death, but more that one's perception of their action is the prime factor at how this action is going to color their souls, positively or negatively and to which extent.
The matter of where the soul go after death is then decided by that color as it is naturally attracted by the place more akin to their soul's color.

We may need a limbo of sorts, to develop a place all souls go no matter their affiliation with good or evil, that will somehow determine what they're really like, after all the layers are stripped away (if you know what I mean). After that they'd gravitate toward the world their soul is closer to.