> You can go to the Underworld and meet your own people and other people as well. The idea that the dead go to the Judge of the Dead is shared by many Gloranthan cultures, whether that judge is called Daka Fal, Darhudan, or whoever (Greg confirmed while writing the Underworld quest in the Sartar Book that the Dara Happans have their own equivalent). Those dead souls you meet on the Path of Silence belong to EVERY Gloranthan culture - Orlanthi, Praxians, Lunars, Malkioni, and the like.
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> Or along the same - who is the Ash King that the (Orlanthi) heroes encounter ruling over the Plateau of Suffering?
I'm not at all suggesting that there are no commonalities, and my own suggestions that the paths to the afterlife go through the Hero Planes as a manifestation of the Gods War and the Compromise certainly means that shared experiences are bound to occur. Death itself, in particular.
This doesn't mean that the Orlanthi and Dara Happan afterlives are directly relevant to Praxian religious beliefs. Both the Orlanthi and the DH believe that Heaven is above (either in the Sky or the Air), and Hell below. But Praxians organise their cosmos horizontally, don't they ? Inside/Outside, Home/Foreign, Tribe/Enemy, etc rather than Above/Below.
Common experiences are only made meaningful against a background of divergent ones, and vice-versa.
Something that the God Learners *forgot*.
Julian Lord
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