Reply To: What do Gods get out of providing a afterlife?

I get why gods want worshipers, that’s a lot of power send there way. I get why they say that they provide the various heavens – to attract the worshipers and cement their devotion.

Why actually do it though? Why not simply discard, eat, or use the souls to power some kind of monstrous furnace to expand their power? What do they get out of it?

If you think about it, there seems to only be downsides to it. First IIRC it was implied in another thread that the souls are provided mana bodies in a vaguely similar process to demon making. While I’m sure each one is no problem for any deity worth the name, that would start to add up to a lot of power quite quick, especially for the more popular deities. Next you would have to provide living space – that means a expanding plane of existence, which I imagine isn’t cheap to maintain much less expand even by divine standards. Then you have to keep a eye on your worshipers provide them with some purpose or activity or your going to end up with a awful lot of bored immortals, if that isn’t a recipe for a knife in the back I don’t know what is. While no one being would be a problem, even a god would have to worry that one of the multitudes would somehow figure out a way to overthrow him.

With all the downsides why wouldn’t a god just say that he was going to take care of your afterlife and quietly chuck all the souls into the divine garbage disposal?

It seems they must get some advantage by keeping all them around, but what?