Question: The Underworld is generally agreed to be an unpleasant place to be (at best) and downright lethal to visit (at worst). What do you feel is a good way to represent this, mechanically-speaking?
TerriblyUncreative with the hard questions!
The Underworld is, indeed, a hard place to visit, and we agree that there should be something more going on than just the usual rolls to figure out where you're going and the usual fights with cranky beasties that don't appreciate your invasion of their living (heh) space. The Underworld represents the end of all hope - it's the end of the line, and a place that is not designed for the comfort or even the survival of the living. Monsters are all very well, but you get those everywhere - what to do to really make your PCs have to feel the struggle of journeying beyond death?
In this case, we actually love what the book does (or at least suggests and sometimes outlines in Demigod), which is not something you hear us say much: we love to use Virtues to represent what a miserable ordeal Underworld spelunking is. You can see this a lot in the writeups on the Underworlds in the pantheons on our Downloads page - we love to force PCs in Underworlds to roll their Virtues in an attempt to keep themselves moving. Whether it's needing the Conviction and Piety to be accepted through the many gates of Duat, the Courage and Endurance to struggle through the hostile reaches of Helheim or the Expression and Valor needed to keep one's humanity in gloomy Hades, Scions typically have to roll their Virtues to surmount obstacles or overcome environmental hardships in the Underworlds. We usually favor having them roll an appropriate combination of Virtue + Ability depending on which Underworld they're in and what they're doing, and set the difficulty low (in the 5-10 range) so that those who are stalwart in their Virtues have a good chance of succeeding. Visitors to an Underworld who don't have the appropriate Virtues have a considerably harder time - but then, that's to be expected, as each culture has a different idea of what qualities are most essential to a heroic journey and those expectations in turn shape their cosmologies. Scions who succeed in these rolls are able to soldier on in the face of all the horrors the Underworld might present, while those who fail may find themselves paralyzed by fear, lost in the endless wastes, distracted by temptations or afflicted by diseases or unsoakable environmental damage.
It's a lot of fun to look at how those Virtues are expressed in myth, too - where would Orpheus have been in Hades without his Expression, or Hermod without his Courage? It's a great place for the core personality tendencies of a PC to shine through and help them in a tight spot, and an excellent additional reason for players to care about Virtues as something other than extra dice they sometimes roll when they want to make sure they succeed at bashing something's head in (or, in many of our games, as those horrible things that sometimes make someone go batshit and waste any bandmates that don't get away in time).
The Underworld's a terrible place, no matter what culture you hail from. Go in prepared to let your PCs' strength of spirit shine through to save them from it.
It's also a time that it is very important and useful to have a Psychopomp with Spirit Lamp.
ReplyDeleteTruth.
Deleteend of all hope? that's a bit of a Christian outlook not to mention something out of the divine comedy. People feared death, but underworlds didn't start becoming negative (i.e. Hell) until the advent of Christianity. Hades is a bleak place for those who didn't excel, but for those that did they have the elysian fields and the ancient greeks believed that people who died were actually reincarnated unless condemed to tartarus (the true Greek version of hell). Helheim was the Norse prison for oathbreakers and those who didn't die in combat, but the others are neither paradise or punishment as you noted about Irkallu. In fact Guinee, the Loa underworld is a place of peace where the slaves could rest after a lifetime of torment and servitude, and certainly more of a paradise than most other under worlds. Many of the ancients believed that there was a better world for those who followed the pantheons virtues to the best of there abilities but the Christians synced any underworld with hell so well that it is hard to remember that.
ReplyDeleteNot at all - Christianity has nothing to do with it. The Underworlds usually aren't places of punishment (barring Tartarus, of course), but they're almost always the end of all hope and places of the sort of final, unavoidable end. There are definitely nice ones - Mag Mell, Valhalla, the Elysian Fields - but places like Irkallu and Hel are just as dreadful as they seem, no torture or Christian overtones necessary. Being consigned forever to the darkness, away from all the life, joys and people you ever knew, is not a torture, but it's also not a cause for celebration or neutrality. It's something to be dreaded and feared, because that's what humanity has always done - we're afraid of death, because after it we know we're going to lose everything we had in life. Some cultures deal with it by trying to set up a new life after death (like the Pesedjet); others simply acknowledge that they're doomed to the endless night once they die and even stress in their writings on the subject that no one, no matter what they do in life, can ever avoid it (like the Anunna). Some (like the Aesir) take the middle road and hope that their deeds in life and death can make the difference between going somewhere joyous and exciting and ending up in Helheim, which is sort of the definition of the end of all hope. What do you have left to hope for when you're a dead person locked forever in a grey, lightless, joyless place?
DeleteThere are definitely pleasant Underworlds, or at least Underworlds with pleasant parts, but those are just as challenging for visiting Scions; for example, Vivian almost couldn't get out of Guinee when she first visited as a Demigod, as she didn't have the force of will to tear herself away from the merrymaking and go back to her life. I'm not trying to say that Underworlds always have to be the worst thing that ever happened to you (though a lot of them probably will be, especially if you aren't native to that Pantheon), but that they require a special fortitude of spirit to come out from again, which we find is best expressed in Virtues.
Also, Gehenna existed long before christianity. So at least the jews had it first.
DeleteAnd Gehenna, which is just the Greek term for the Valley of Hinnom, was actually associated with underworld nastiness by the Jews because it was the site of sacrifices by Moloch-worshipers. So then we're all the way back to them fire-lovin' Canaanite gods.
Deletei agree with your views on Irkallu, and Hel, but with Irkallu your memories are stripped as well so you're nothing but a wondering shell of spirit. In that sense you're right, and It probably represents the sumerian peoples fear that death will leave nothing left of them but a memory carried by the living, but most other cultures had the belief that they could escape that kind of loss of self by excelling (hence the elisian fields and vallhalah). I guess to the ancients dying and having everything about you dissolve away (even your spirit) was frightful enough. However, I don't agree that every culture fears death as much as you say. The Hindus and Budhhists at least don't seem to fear death and the underoworld that much, at least not if they feel they have lived as proper a life as possible so they don't have to spend a prison term in one of the hells before moving on to reincarnation.
ReplyDeleteAh, but the whole point for Hindu and Buddhist Underworlds is that people are trying to avoid them. You're spending your whole life trying to be good enough not to have to go there, because Naraka/Jigoku is not a fun place to be. You're avoiding it because it's awful and you don't want to go there - what would you call that except fear? Most cultures' beliefs that you can do things to avoid the eventual interment in the Underworld are born of that basic human fear - we don't want to end up there, so we come up with alternatives to it (i.e., if I'm good enough I'll get reincarnated again instead, or I'll ascend, or I'll go to Valhalla, or I'll become a butterfly - there are zillions of variations).
DeleteAt any rate, Scions visiting Naraka are going to have to deal with how unpleasant it is; the fact that some people hope to avoid its unpleasantness isn't going to make much difference to them, alas. Naraka actually is an Underworld that is a place of punishment (or, at least, correctional nastiness), so it's probably one of the least fun places to have to slog through as a Scion.
agreed, that is why the whole end of hope thing is a little premature. yes, people fear death because they don't know what's after it, and they don't know if there ego will survive the final night (hence the concept of Irkallu and Hades fields of asphodel), but along with that many cultures came up with the concept of places like the elisian fields and valhalla to give people hope that if they excelled at what they did (Greece) or died a warrior (Norse) they would be rewarded, and again, the Greeks believed in reincarnation and that the drink from the well of Lethe was to cleanse the soul of it's memories for it's next incarnation, and if a person lived a great life three times in a row they would get to go to the Iles of the blessed the greatest part of the elisian fields. People feared death, but except for Irkallu and it's joyless (if not tormenting) existance almost every other pantheon has a hopeful side to death. the Greeks and Egyptians had a belief in rebirth along with the Hindus and Bhuddists, and the Chines have a belief in ancestor worship alongside reincarnation. even in ancient times except for the sumerians, death was cause for fear and uncertainty, but hardly for hopelessness. In the case of the Irish and Loa death is hardly fearful, given there peaceful underworlds, but that's the other side of the coin, rolling your virtues to make sure you don't get sucked into the joy and peace and never want to leave.
DeleteMost cultures do have a hopeful side of death - but the point is that the Underworld isn't it. Valhalla's your hope in the Norse afterlife - if you're in Hel, you don't have any anymore. Hel is the end of the line. The Elysian Fields are your hope in the Greek afterlife - if you're in Hades proper, you don't have any anymore. Yomi is the same story in Japan, as is Mictlan (possibly the most devoid of hope Underworld in existence) for the Aztecs and Irkallu for the Babylonians. There are loads of alternatives to the Underworld to give people hope - but once you failed to get any of them and you're in the Underworld, you're pretty much done with hope for the future unless you're in one of the Asian reincarnation hells.
DeleteWhich doesn't mean PCs should lose hope, of course - they plan to get in there and do things and get back out! But representatively and psychologically speaking Underworlds are by definition The End, which lends them quite a bit of weight.
You raise an interesting point, though: should there be different rules for dealing with horrible miserable underworlds like Mictlan and Hel, and for dealing with paradisaical ones like Valhalla and Daitih? Do you think they should have totally different systems when it comes to PCs traveling through them?
Yeah. Im just getting that you dont know what the phrase end of all hope means. Or perhaps what hope means?
Deleteend of all hope to me means eternal damnation and torment out of the divine comedy, not a boring underworld like Mictlan and Irkallu. It is you who keep giving mixed signals. Are Hades proper, Irkallu, and Mictlan hells of despair or just dark boring places like your dentist waiting room? Irkallu isn't good, but it isn't bad either, and mictlan doesn't sound like a half bad place to spend eternity from what the demigod books says. Hopeless means no end to suffering, but many underworlds aren't about suffering, just darkness and boredom and actually and end to suffering in unless you end up and Hel or Tartarus, and I hold that in real world myths Helheim is closer to the dank boring fields of asphodel than any kind of torment (nifelheim is supposed to be for that). You are the ones who keep equating the realative peace and quite of most underworlds (along with the ensuing boredom) with abondone hope all ye who enter here. I would think that that only equates to Tartarus, or even the pit in the last Buddist hell that you get thrown into and never come out again. Yes there is no hope that you will ever live again in the boring underworld, but there is also no suffering anymore. No joy, but no more suffering either and I still hold that the oldest accounts of Hades has reincarnation in it, so there is hope there. If there is suffering then it would have to be classified as a hell.
DeleteYou just proved my point. Your using hope as some meaning it does not have. No one is saying that hope is happiness. Hopelessness is also not suffering.
DeleteHope: Hope is the emotional state which promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life.
Hope: It is the "feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best" or the act of "look[ing] forward to with desire and reasonable confidence" or "feel[ing] that something desired may happen".
The only hope in an underworld is that you would eventually leave and get to go back to life, or to one of the underworlds of constant joy, or another life. Underworlds, for the most part are a place of permanence, and so without hope. Because hope is an emotional state about change.
And hades reincarnation? We have no evidence of that. And lots of evidence to the opposite.
Isn't Reincarnation explicitly stated in the Aeneid or am I misremembering?
DeletePossibly? My aeneid knowledge is low. But thatd be a late roman addition if anything.
DeleteChecked some of my sources again and it seems there was a wide spread view of Reincarnation at least in the philosophical world, especially after Alexander Opened up the Greeks to Buddhists(And conversely the Greeks may be the reason Statues of Buddha exist in the traditional fashion).
DeleteHowever, ultimately it seems that Reincarnation was not a part of the intial beliefs of the Greeks so it was a later addition, just one that was active during antquity.
That could be an interesting plot seed, I mean do have a whole other thread about the Hindu gods bossing other pantheons around trying to get them to push for the proper Reincarnation mechanic in "Lesser" Pantheons would work.
I think it could be a good story seed. Just did more researching on it. I think its an interesting grey area. It seems the reincarnate stuff didnt come back to greece proper, but there was definitely some blending of thought in asia minor and india. However its hard to tell if those people were still even holding onto their greek beliefs at that point. Or if they were actually converts.
Deleteis there at least peace in that hopelessness somewhere? Also, I read about how sacrotes, plato and other ancient thinkers were part of the Elusian mysteries and believed that people did journey to Hades and were reincarnated with the point of the mysteries to break the cycle of rebirth and acheive unity with the divine (i.e. apotheosis).
ReplyDeleteTheres probably peace for many of the souls yeah.
ReplyDeleteElusian mysteries are mysteries. Hard to know what they actually thought or taught though. Ive been on a forever search for books on mysteries though.
try the Jesus mysteries. It gives good insight into the mysteries of many countries. So peace and hope are two different things and you can have peace and hopelessness. Glad we can clear that up. After all death should at least be an end to suffering no matter how dreary it can be. So do you think that the Helheim believed in by the real Norse is a place of punishment, or more like the fields of Asphodel? The sagas mention that Helheim is like that, a place where the average (I.E. straw dead) reside in drearyness without suffering while liars and oath breakers are consgined to Neiflheim the realm of punishment. I think Scion mashed the two together. After all Baldur resided in Hel's hall, and it didn't mention him being tortured.
DeleteRead the Jesus mysteries in college. They give overviews each mystery cult, and the info I can get from prayers and songs, but not first/second hand info I'd like. Its difficult because it was mostly kept secret and not written down.
DeleteJesus mysteries is also fairly looked down upon by most scholars. My favorite quote about it being "this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese"
"Most Scholars" are raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition that doesn't debate the fact that Jesus ever existed and are reluctant to except any view to the contrary. Also Remember that "most scholars" looked down on Galileo as well in his day. Today's crank theory's have a habit of being proven tomorrow, and many thinkers (no matter how badly there looked down on today) tend to be vindicated with enough time. I believe in the basic theory of the Jesus Mysteries, and I believe that "most scholars" will eventually embrace it given enough time.
DeleteBut you could use that argument for literally any theory you ever came up with. The vindicated thinker is the true rarity.
DeleteTo name a few other crank theories: Global warming is a liberal conspiracy to destroy America. World is only 6000 years old. Vacinations cause Autism. Every mythological story happened but it was Aliens who did it not Gods. Birds didn't evolve from Dinosaurs. Casey's Atlantis. The Illuminati runs the world. Jesus was real, had kids and his bloodline was the "Holy Grail". Templars made it to America and hid the Holy Grail there before columbus came. I expect you hold all of these to inevitably be proven right.
DeleteGalileo and Darwin are the exceptions, most people who come up with a crank theory, do just that. Orgone wasn't real, Phrenology wasn't real. The whole concept of the "burning times" seems to have been wholely made up by a French author who wrote up the concept for a historical fiction.
The thing to remember about any of the Underworlds: as unpleasant as they may be for the people who are *supposed* to be there, they are going to be even worse for PCs who aren't supposed to be there.
ReplyDeleteyes!
DeleteVerrrry interesting - so, essentially, safely navigating and surviving an Underworld is more a question of your moral fiber than anything else? If preparing for a band's trip to an Underworld, I should flip through their published descriptions (and/or other research) and find spots where it would be appropriate/inconvenient/dangerous to roll Virtue + Ability to get past obstacles.
ReplyDeleteBack when, I had a band of heroes that was taking a tour of the Underworlds - they had stuff to do in Hades, Helheim, and Guinee, but since they had a Scion of Mictlantecuhtli in the group, they thought they should stop by Mictlan first so she could visit Dad and see if there was anything that he could do to hook them up for their upcoming journey (he did: he loaned them a boat that would let them travel directly from the entrance of one Underworld to the entrance of another by following what may or may not have been the River Styx through the Abyss. The boat was eaten by Nidhoggr when they left it at Yggdrasil's roots so they could journey into Helheim; sadly the game ended before I could explore Mictlantecuhtli's possible resulting ire).
At any rate: I was running things basically using Demigod as my frame of reference, so they had to pass a series of Virtue tests to get into Mictlan at all, which took them days to accomplish (apart from Isabel, there were two Greeks, a Norse, a Loa, a Kami, and a Deva - the Deva didn't do so hot getting anywhere). After bitching and moaning about how much the Aztec Underworld sucked, they were pleased to "only" have to give Charon a couple pennies and "only" fight frost Jotun for nine days. I thought, at that point, that something was amiss and that I needed to re-think my approach to the Underworld...
I mean, you shouldn't ignore the normal rolls, either - you probably need Wits to find your way around, Stamina to avoid boiling or freezing to death, Dexterity to navigate treacherous terrain, and so on and so forth. But we really like the idea that the Underworlds represent a culture's fears and beliefs about the afterlife, so the qualities they view as most essential to being a strong person - i.e., their Virtues - are what help them handle that fear and unknown power.
DeleteHeh, well, different Underworlds are going to be easier or harder for different people. I've always thought it ought to be easier for a Greek Scion to go to Hades than to go to Mictlan - I mean, Hades is scary and all, but Mictlan is a crazy foreign kind of crazy with rules that don't make sense to foreigners, so of course that's going to be more difficult to manage. It sounds like you ran it about the way we would have (and alas, what could have been with Mictlantecuhtli's lost boat!).