> What is Praxian hell? Anyone have an idea?
Daka Fal meets the dead when they arrive in the Wide Plaines. When the dead enter the Wide Plaines, they wander until they find Daka Fal’s Fire. Some families pray to Good Sheheard to guide their dead to Daka Fal's Fire, to speed them on their way to the ancestors and protect them from getting lost. At this dead campfire in the middle of the Heavy Bone Dip, Daka Fal greets them. He leads good people to join their ancestors at the Great Herd; he puts bad people in Daka Fal’s Cave, which leads to the underworld. Spirits of darkness, enemies, outlanders, chaos, and other evil sometimes emerge from it. Praxian shamans go there to bring the Soul Winds.
> And since I've got a Jaldonite shaman as the antagonist, I wonder if the
>Jaldonite otherworld exists as its own spirit domain,
>
> or if it is just part of the landscape of the Praxian Spirit World. And of
>course, Jaldonites have their own hell.
It all depends on who you think Jaldon is. I don't think Jaldon has his own place in the Praxian spirit domain, except in the sense that the Jaldon spirit bundle has a presence in the otherworld. I would say that Jaldonite spirits are more likely than most to have been lost in the past, since so many of them died by dragon-fire. I would say that many Jaldonite spirits are attracted to, then get lost in, the Outland Passage. That is its own kind of hell, but a heroic one that might serve as a magical reserve some day, if someone can lead those spirits back to safety and usefulness.
Julian Lord says:
> The worst that can happen to your spirit, apart from being devoured by chaos
>and such, is (in my opinion) to become subservient to
> an enemy spirit of your tribe, forced forever to do its bidding as a slave.
>
> Another hell-like existence would be to spend the afterlife trapped in this
>world as a roaming or haunting spirit, howling in anguish
> from being cut off from a proper place in the spirit world.
Both fair points. Families have duties to their dead. Freeing enslaved spirits and sending lost ghosts to Daka Fal are two of them.
> Another would be to become a homeless spirit in the wastelands of the spirit
>world, unable to find the way home, or cast out and
> exiled from there by the Spirit Chief.
It is pretty rare that Daka Fal simply doesn't show up to judge you. I don't think that the Praxians really have a concept of purgatory. You wander until you reach Daka Fal's Fire, but there's no progress or point in that wandering. It's like being lost in the Wastes: a whole lot of nothing until you arrive. (Unless you've been cursed, in which case your spirit might be misled to one of the bad places.)
Now, if you knew that Daka Fal was going to put you in the cave, you might look for some creative alternatives. But only PC's would be that crazy.
Jeff Richard says:
> There are places in the otherworld that Praxian shamans fear - places where the
>oozing, pustulent Chaos
> that destroyed Genert's Garden still rules. This is the worst hell.
>
> But there are other hells as well. Places where unfriendly magical beings rule
>and who scoff at Daka Fal's
> traditions. There are endless labyrinths of form without substance that follow
>alien logic. There are the places
> of the angry dead and the eaters in the Darkness. These are all hells.
These are very bad places in the spirit world, but not quite the sense of hell that I think Mike was asking about, though I could be wrong. There are ways from Eiritha's Bounty in the Praxian afterlife to other places. Here are the ones I know about. The Outland Passage goes towards the Great Mountain; you can go to the Greener from the Great Herd, but you're not likely to come back, even if you pass the Challenger Folk who guard it; the Fireground is a way up to the sky, but I think its name tells you how problematic it is (it's where Oakfed lives, or at least where he manifests to Praxians, since he's really not just a Praxian spirit). Daka Fal's Cave is one such passageway and it goes to an undifferentiated underworld. That's why I think it's an analog to hell, in the punitive sense.
Chris Lemens
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