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So I'm playing a hugely religious character, and the other day I had a question that I felt was a big deal for my approach to RP but nobody seemed entirely sure about.

So here it is: Does Davism believe in a hell?

My two cents is that yes, they absolutely should, though it doesn't at all have to be like the Christian Hell (fiery, an actual location, etc). The idea that uncleansed mages/heretics or other individuals with sufficient unconfessed sins suffer for eternity is, to me, the best way by far to handle it. Why?

Because knowing that someone will suffer for eternity makes it 'okay' to torture them or burn them. What's a few days of pain compared to misery for literally forever? This provides a way that even the most 'good' PCs can adhere wholeheartedly to Davite dogma.

If uncleansed mages simply go to oblivion instead of the Lord, the argument of 'oblivion isn't all that bad' is quite persuasive - limbo would be alright, I guess, but I feel like the more horrifying the supposed fate of uncleansed mages is, the better Davism looks and the easier it is to understand how good people break knees with sledgehammers and burn people at the stake. (The real Inquisition, after all, did indeed believe in an eternity of torment!)

Davites believe in an extra-planar space called the 'abyss'. Its linkages to our version of hell are next to non-existent, however. The only one I can think of is that demons, which patently do exist, and come from this other place. The abyss may be a negative terminology for the astral plane, and we know souls do travel there - at least the souls of witches do, and though only witches know what they see when there. Is this where human spirits end up? I'm sure there's theories saying yes, others saying no, and first hand accounts are something your character may want to look into ICly - though it's a slippery road to ask a mage about the truth of the universe... *grin*

What there certainly is not, however, is a Satan figure who rules over the abyss (for a lot of reasons, I'd like to avoid that). In fact, the astral plane/abyss are seen as realm of the Lord of the Springs, but perhaps magic tainted it, causing all sorts of misfortune? (Just one set of histories I've written in the past suggests this, but they're hardly scientific or the sole evidence Davism would rely on - any player is welcome to write their version of texts to be treated as canon or heretical as they please).

Anyway, this is the view I've held in crafting this portion of the theme. It does not need to be absolutely right. The truth of the matter is that what isn't known should be up to interpretation by the players, which is why we haven't gotten very detailed in the past and why I've tried to keep my answers as brief as possible. When it comes to these things, the theme says the answers are lost or only conjecture. Observation of the symptoms and tangibles alone can be used to draw conclusions, which means that no one's conclusions are better than anyone else's.

Oh, one thing that may be helpful that I think IS in a helpfile somewhere is that a mage's soul cannot return to the Lord of the Springs if tainted, which fire purifies. I'm not sure if heading for the abyss is as bad a punishment of not being able to go home to the Lord, but... yeah, I've seen that one played out.

Dice,

"Modern" hell is only so many hundreds of years old, what with the fire and brimstone. Hell originates from various interpretations of underworlds like Hades, Sheol and the domain of Ereshkigal. These were more waiting places for the dead than domains of punishment. Later veins of thought turned toward the elemental, punishing hells like the place of fire in Milton's Paradise Lost or the varied domains in Dante's Inferno.

A good reference for what a medieval thought on hell would be might be seen in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet stops himself from killing his uncle/step-father while he is praying because the repentant soul goes to Heaven. Hamlet's biological father, however, is murdered before he has a chance to pray or confess, causing him to descend into Purgatory/Hell where sins are burned away until purity is re-attained. This is murder most foul, as the murderers gave the man no chance and condemned him.

For a Davite, there is really no such thing as Hell in terms of sin to my knowledge. Just as there is no singular anthropomorphic personification of evil (Satan, Ahriman, etc.), there is no fiery pit where sinners go for all eternity. Instead, it can be seen that the corrupt life is itself punishment. Being outside of the grace of supreme goodness is death of the soul. And for that, there is no saving grace. Oblivion is non-existence. The closest thing we have to Hell is the Abyss, which is the extraplanar origin of demonkind, and some say even magic.

The reason that torture is okay is that there is a massive division between the flesh and the spirit in the medieval thought. Philosophers, for a time, debated that the workings of the mind were purely in the domain of the spirit and could not at all be accounted for with physik or the more developed sciences. The brain was just mush. One may sway the other, but the Spirit, being a gift from (and in some stories a piece of) the Lord is the foundation of purity and can only be truly and absolutely corrupted through an act of will.
By knowingly and willingly departing from the light of the Lord, by the adoption of heretical thought or the acceptance of darkness, one departs from the realm of the living (the realm of goodness, civil behavior, divine order of the world).

To torture the body is to harm that which ultimately separates us from divinity. If you follow the philosophy of St. Remiel, man is born of crude matter and the breath of creation:

The Lord clenched upon Himself to yield to the budding creation and the new Urth,
Burgeoning with new forms and music, shook with the effort and suffering of His Will.
His infinite being, as it pressed inward, yielded shards and sparks of the Divine.
The Lord of the Springs and Father of All, witnessed as these sparks entangled in Matter.
From this selfless act, Life was born out of both triumph and sorrow, glory and pain.

This is not canon for Davite belief, but it has been accepted as an early interpretation of Pre-Burning Order dogma into something Dav would have approved. St. Remiel was tasked with taking the oral tradition and putting it to paper. Dav held a close leash on this, so one can assume there were many changes. Early Davism was exceptionally mystical as it was an oral tradition, and it was only until Dav provided a figurehead and direction for the passive rellgion that it became more symbolic and driven by the Laws.

The birth of the mundane world was a painful experience for the Lord and tangible matter will always be seen as a lesser substance. It is primitive and fragile, leading toward corruption of the divine spark that it carries if its desires are left unchecked.

But I'm getting distracted here. To answer your question more precisely, the oblivion that uncleansed mages experience is an eternal damnation. To be cast out of the proper mode of existence creates demons. The Light of the Lord (as Dante would agree) is the only thing that gives men grace and beauty. To be far from it is to be ugly and corrupt. In terms of divine law, corporeal death is a lesser evil than spiritual death. Social and spiritual rank moot a large portion of violence in this philosophy. Holy wars are just wars on flesh. Torture is just war on flesh. Running over a peasant with a horse is just exercising the divine will imparted to greater men. The ends, to save souls, justify any and all means.

If I had been less long winded, I might have beaten Kinky to the punch. Oh well.

Thanks for the quick replies!

What it comes down for to me is that I want to have a good reason to believe that it's okay to burn people at the stake - and that requires a sufficiently awful fate to save them from.

If it's normal to believe they go to a cold dark miserable Abyss (no Satan figure necessary) and wander lost for eternity in sadness and pain, that is totally good enough as reasons go.

So, yay!