Purgatory

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Purgatory was part of the death mechanics of GemStone III which was modified, if not technically removed, in the transition to GemStone IV. It was introduced in the I.C.E. Age but survived until "going demonic" was removed from the game. Upon decaying or departing from death, the soul would arrive in a "room" called Purgatory, with obvious paths of light and darkness. The messaging is almost identical in terms of illustration today, except now it is represented as a purely transient process rather than a location. There were several versions of the messaging, which involved being spoken with in the same archaic language used by the deed priestess in the Wehnimer's Landing temple.

The theological concept of purgatory has never existed in any of the lore, though it was referenced indirectly in archaic contexts. It was not an aspect of the Shadow World historical setting when it was implemented in the early I.C.E. Age, so it was a purely unique part of the game that could only be interpreted from within itself. Purgatory is referenced by name in the throne room of the mid-level "Under Barrow" in The Graveyard.

Representations

Purgatory

One of the possible messages received when decaying in GemStone III, which included several common or more exotic variants. There was nothing recognizably theological about these messages, The Afterlife was depicted the same way regardless of the state or ultimate fate of the soul. Very low level characters without deeds would also be intervened upon by the Great Spirit Voln.

Slowly the world begins to dissolve into a grainy montage of color... 

[Purgatory]
You find yourself wandering amidst endless streaming light, and vast nothingness. This place feels torn between two prophecies, each vying for your loyalty.
Also in the room: All the spirits of those who could not choose.
Obvious exits: light and darkness. 

Time seems to have no meaning as you wander aimlessly amidst the uncomfortable tugging for your attention. Hopelessness washes over dreams you once held like the creeping tide of doom. 

In time the Goddess Lorminstra finds you wandering the endlessness of Purgatory and says, "For thy deed, my promise to intercede shall be fulfilled." Taking you by the hand, the Goddess leads you back to mortality... 

Suddenly you feel an intense pain scorching your very soul! The world of your past suddenly comes rushing back into your memory. You are quite bewildered by what has transpired, but alive... 

[Hall of Rebirth]
Sunlight streams through the ice, illuminating the room with clean, golden light. Faint rainbows dance on the walls, playing across the huge mural hanging on the southern wall. The air is still and cool, layered with peace and serenity. You cannot help but feel calm here, as if something loving was watching over you.
Obvious exits: out.

Modern

The following is how Purgatory is represented in GemStone IV. It no longer references the Gates of Oblivion at all, and now defaults to the "tattered soul" variant.

The world before you dissolves into a grainy montage of color... 

You find yourself wandering amidst endless streaming light and vast nothingness. This place feels torn between two powers, polar opposites vying for your loyalty. You are surrounded by the spirits of those who could not choose. The only way out seems to be through light or darkness. 

Time has no meaning as you wander aimlessly amidst the uncomfortable tugging for your attention. Hopelessness washes over dreams you once held like the creeping tide of doom. 

After what could be moments, or perhaps an eternity, the goddess Lorminstra finds you wandering in the endless space and speaks soothingly to you. She gently reassembles the pieces of your tattered soul and then, taking you by the hand, the goddess leads you back to mortality... 

[Temple, Altar]
The altar is plain, and bears only onyx bowls of smouldering incense and smoking paraffin. Draped behind it is a cloth banner, appliqued with an ancient mystical pattern. A legend is embroidered along the bottom. On the far side of the room at the end of an aisle, you see two pillars.
Obvious exits: out 

Archaeology

The mid-level of The Graveyard was originally inaccessible from the surface, making this room a dead end for those who would escape by climbing out. The tunnel that connects it to the edge of the burial mound was from someone clawing their way out, perhaps the cumulative result of many failed attempts by others. This would represent Purgatory without the possibility of a path toward the light, with the bodies being "all the spirits of those who could not choose" and the adventurer as yourself. The "unseen comings and goings" refer to the shadow assassins, which no longer exist, who were summoned from another plane. They were bringing sacrifices to symbolically sustain Bandur in the afterlife.

[Under Barrow, Cavern]
A smallish cavern domes out above you, the packed earthern walls appear part natural and part artificial.  It is dimly lit by the same fungus that infests the entire area.  But there are sights here that would be better left in total darkness, piles of bones, heaps of rotting flesh, and things less recognizable, in diverse stages of decay.  The air is full of unseen comings and goings though you feel no earthly breeze.
Obvious exits: east, up

>look bone
Your eyes wander over a gruesome assortment of bones. They range from old and crumbling fragments of limbs and skulls, human and otherwise, to others still covered with decaying flesh that twitches with an unwholesome semblance of life as they are worked over by various things of the creeping and crawling variety.

>look flesh
This corpse appears to be that of a fellow adventurer who apparently has died in some less than happy manner. The part of the face that is left is twisted in a final grimace of horror that makes you doubt your sanity at being here.

This subtly alludes to the throne room and sacrificial offering tables represented in Egyptian mortuary temples (implied by the false door in the crypt), which would also sometimes be carved or painted to depict stars on black backgrounds. Of special interest is the so-called "cannibal hymn" where the pharaoh would slaughter and consume the gods to absorb their divine power, and the idea that there were only two ways through the underworld. The tapestry corresponds to the deed ceremony room and sacrifice storeroom in the Temple of the Landing, with other parts of The Graveyard relating to other rooms. Whether it reflected anything in Claedesbrim Castle can no longer be discerned without old logs.

[Under Barrow, Throne Room]
This high chamber is a madman's travesty of a throne room in purgatory.  On a dais sits an eldritch throne inlaid with the ivory of human bones.  The walls are carved with gut-wrenching scenes of sub-human figures dancing and gibbering with hellish glee under constellations you have never seen.  Behind the throne is a tapestry whose subject turns your stomach.  You also see a rotted wooden door.
Obvious exits: north, west

>look throne
The bones that make up this grisly seat look as though they were somehow melted together.  They flow and twist like half-melted wax.  You have no idea how it was done and less wish to find out.

>look tap
The tapestry is woven with mad scenes of unspeakable cruelty and terror.  As you avert your gaze from the unutterable insanity it depicts, you notice behind it a rotted wooden door.

The cabinet in the next room can be considered a medieval wardrobe, possibly alluding to the White Witch winter of Narnia with its unfamiliar constellations. (The demonic pales, like Inferno, were starless skies.) If this was intentional the mid-level also represents the natural caverns of Underland, with the throne being the silver chair of the madman prince who transforms into a serpent at night and slaughters all. In the medieval frame these rooms are a mock castle, with a throne room, great hall, the male equivalent of a private boudoir (which was called a "solar"), and the ice house for preserving the larder. Symbolically they represent the descent from "mad bestiality" into the malice of betrayers. The stars allude to Purgatory from Dante's Divine Comedy, where they pass through the frozen pit of Hell by climbing down the back of Satan, and arrive on the other side of the world (where the sun shines again) just before dawn with unfamiliar stars in the sky. There may also be an Older One premise related to the sleeping through eons of great demons, where such beings will only awaken and reclaim the world when enough time has passed for the stars to return to their ancient alignments.

More obviously, the language is overtly influenced by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, with immediate allusions to two of his stories. The first is a tale involving an ivory throne in a wax museum with a huge madness-inducing daemon, requiring human sacrifices to wake up, an Old One who was found in a high chamber with depraved carvings in the Arctic (sleeping dead gods, as well as Void demons, thus related to the Ordainer symbolism of the Ice Shrine.) The theme is a mocking parody of life in the darkness. The banquet hall refers further to another story with an unnaturally solid ivory throne, with an emphasis on the stars and moon, and a feast where the king and his nobles transform into reptilian sub-human beasts who gibber and dance in worship of their lizard god. These resembled the bounders on the Coastal Cliffs, often used as hunting hounds by Dark Elves. The feast celebrated the shades (hence shadow assassins) who slaughtered the old population with its false gods. This story may explain why the Graveyard gate is made of bronze, beyond the more immediate point that it is the metal of Klysus. It is further based on a "Doom" theme, consistent with our form of Purgatory.

Behind The Scenes

Deeds

In the early I.C.E. Age, Purgatory was introduced into the death mechanics as a limbo between two ultimate fates, though decaying without deeds would yield the message "lost to the demonic" regardless of society affiliation. There is some indication in the very early Kelfour's Editions that originally spirit death would cause a character to go demonic regardless of deeds, making the spirit draining creatures and society powers associated with The Unlife inherently more dangerous. This is consistent with the old spell lists, which were copied from the Rolemaster spell books, stipulating that the soul must exist (in tact) to be resurrected. The loophole was messaging showing the ripped pieces being reassembled.

In the oldest form of the Eissa (Lorminstra) religion which held at the time Purgatory was implemented, the Goddess of Death would deny requests for resurrection if the fallen had died in a significant or meaningful way. Since this would make fortune hunting adventurers essentially doomed, the concept of deeds served as another loophole in the theology. It would appear that acts of sacrifice on the part of adventurers serve as a special exemption from that rule, substituting symbolically a heroic feat in fealty and homage to the goddess for the soul that was owed to her in death. It is otherwise not based on her Shadow World background, which does not have a deeds concept.

[Temple, Hall of Sacrifice]
This part of the hallway is decorated in tapestries which were hung methodically in rows.  Each of the handwoven marvels depicts various acts of self-sacrifice: a valiant warrior placing himself in front of a fallen friend, a noble-looking lady giving her cloak to an impoverished child and many other similar scenes.  You also see a marble dais.
Obvious exits: south

In this interpretation the concept of "deeds" is more literal than the notion of "doing good deeds." It would have referred instead to the medieval practice of "homage", where a kneeling ceremony was performed to a liege lord in exchange for titles and special rights of intercession. These words appear to be used in that sense in The Graveyard, which was based on a story involving fiefdoms and created at roughly the same time as Purgatory. The Graveyard insinuates the Rolemaster concept of becoming demonic in the Void, which gives its own sense to the phrase "lost to the demonic", being slightly older than the Shadow World lore regarding the Dark Gods and the Pales.

The Graveyard

The Legend of the Necropolis of Etrevion is the oldest story in the game, and its related areas are symbolically interlinked. It is impossible to fully understand it without the Shadow World source material. However, there are two additional layers of symbolism in the "grand design" of The Graveyard, which all imply the same idea of defying death in the ascension of fallen godhood. (1) The first is a strong parallel to Dante's Inferno, hence Purgatory, descending into the underworld to the frozen pit of Satan. (2) The second is the ancient Egyptian religion concerning the three levels of underworld, with the brothers representing Osiris and Set and its middle level relabeled as purgatory. The Dark Path in this context refers to the "obvious exit" of darkness in Purgatory. Without recognizing all three layers The Graveyard appears misleadingly arbitrary. It is especially difficult to notice the sun god theme without it, though this was later made explicit in a society task.

The surface of The Graveyard itself can also be thought of in terms of Purgatory. The symbolic representation is the eternal hopelessness on the other side of the Gates of Oblivion, which may be what Purgatory actually represents since it appears to be another plane of existence. Bandur Etrevion reflected this with the use of phantoms, which in the archaic lore were created through the intense suffering of hopeless imprisonment. In the other frames this is the "abandon all hope" of limbo and the blessed spirits who lived rightly ordered with Ma'at according to the Devourer of Souls. Unlike the pharaohs who descended to preserve the order of nature, the extinguishing of the sun is celebrated in chaotic images of The Unlife. This fate was recorded in a famous vision of Andraax where The Unlife appeared as slithering shadows that put out the sun, where the freezing can be considered what follows from it and the end of the stars and moon.

Shadow World

In the Shadow World setting there is nothing corresponding to limbo, nor was there any premise of hopelessness or vanishing identity in Oblivion. For the Eissa (Lorminstra) religion there is the River of Life, which is a current of essence flows between the world and the moon, which swept souls toward her Gates of Oblivion. This river is symbolically represented in both the Order of Vult (Voln) monastery and The Graveyard ending in the bog. This was not represented in the death mechanics, only the other side of the Gates of Oblivion, making its cosmology unique to GemStone III. Being "lost to the demonic" is somewhat more canonical, as the Dark Gods sent the souls of their followers to the Pales.

Interestingly, the archaic diction used by the death goddess in the purgatory messaging is also used by a statue of Orgiana (Eorgina), which threatened to steal the souls of trespassers in her temple. It is standing guard over a powerful artifact called the Helm of Kadaena. Several rooms in The Graveyard are explicitly modeled on this temple, which was ruled by the daughter of Kadaena at the same time Bandur Etrevion supposedly pledged himself to her. The symbolism of the Ice Shrine corresponds to the Black Hel theology, Ordainers, the Ninth Circle of Hell, and the pharaonic ascension into Ra (with Bandur-as-Set cast into the darkness, but ending the sun, having replaced Osiris as Lord of the Underworld.)

More subtle still is the role of Klysus (Luukos), who was simultaneously the serpent, sun, and soul devourer god. Without the Shadow World background his relationship to The Dark Path through Lorgalis is missing, as well as his role in the sun god symbolism in The Graveyard. (In the Egyptian frame it was only possible for the pharaoh to ascend to godhood by slaying the serpent god in the underworld. The "weighing of the heart" was added later under the burial mound, with the general premise inverted.) The necropolis is equally defiant of Klysus as Eissa, but it is much less obvious. Interestingly, the underworld had its own sky like Shadow Valley, which was haunted by an Ordainer-serving serpent demon.

See Also