The god business – how to be a pyramid scheme landlord?
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[quote]“Do we want to be in the god business?” Darg-Krallnom asked.
“The god business?” Tom asked.
“Once you start promising people life after death, you are basically in the god business.” Phaestus said.[/quote]I’ve been assuming that gods like Tiernon are in the mana parasitism industry (sucking mana from mortal followers through priests and other representatives) for the lulz, but now I have to wonder just how much mana it takes to run an eternal afterlife for one deceased follower.
Since the number of your tenants grows logarithmically, you need to maintain some kind of a M:N ratio between live mana-producing followers, and dead mana-consuming followers.
Assuming that this is how the “soul ecology” works.
Providing reincarnation certainly seems to be a more profitable business proposition. You just pay for a return ticket.
Sending “bad” souls to the Abyss to leech off the ambient mana and send it off to run the heavenly hot tubs, might be another way to achieve parity.
Yes,
Most of these gods do the reincarnation thing. You get to spend time in “heaven” but eventually things get boring in paradise, so people should want to go back.
Only the demi-urge is really stuck on the eternal heaven concept. I personally find that hideously boring. I don’t know why anyone would want to spend the next–what? 15, 20, 30 Billion years on a cloud with a harp?
So basically most go for a vacation model, at least for the good followers who gave them lots of mana by praying and worshiping them. Think of it as perk for the ‘big donors’
Everyone else either gets fired, or sent “back to the mana fields” right away.
[quote]“So when you die? Where do you spend eternity?” Talarius asked, puzzled.[/quote]
Has Talarius been sold a bill of goods, or has he just not taken a good look at the [b][size=9]*[/size][/b] that’s included in the promise of an eternal* heaven for the faithful?I think he has a typically naive view of Tierhallon (heaven)
However, we know from elsewhere, a discussion involving Hilda, I am sure, that Tiernon’s people get to go to Tierhallon and get to rest, party, enjoy themselves as long as they want, until they get bored and ask to return.
Now, what do the teaching say? Probably a bill of goods that says “spend eternity in Tierhallon” the reality of eternity is generally not something most people, in any society are prepared to understand. That’s why some people think the earth is only 5,776 years old. The concept of a billion years, let alone 13.2 billion and possibly infinite billions going forward is simply inconceivable.
So, you go to heaven for a few thousand years, maybe you find contentment and move “on” meeting the same end as the atheists and shamans and druid followers. Or maybe you choose to take another spin at the wheel and reincarnate.
I look at reincarnation as an actor being cast in a new role in the soap opera of life.
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