The Dark Truth About Gods and Souls

2026-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

A small warning: these are a few wandering thoughts on death in the Forgotten Realms setting, and therefore my own interpretation.

If you scour the bookshelves in Baldur's Gate 3, you might stumble upon a book called On Death & Resurrection. One line particularly draws attention:

Lord Kelemvor weighing our souls against how thoroughly we have given them over to other gods, empowering them in turn. </blockquote>
Gods seem to fuel themselves with souls like a battery.
When a mortal dies, their soul goes to the Fugue Plane, Kelemvor's home plane. From there, the soul is usually picked up by the god they worshipped in life. Once a soul reaches its god’s divine realm, that soul becomes a Petitioner. The mere presence of these souls in a god's realm, combined with their ongoing belief and essence, provides the divine spark that keeps the god powerful. We can imagine most gods let souls live on in a peaceful afterlife. The soul isn't destroyed, but its energy is merged into the fabric of the god’s realm.
The gods look a bit like villains. Even the kind gods agreed to this system. And if a mortal didn't pick a god to worship, their soul was plastered into a literal wall around the City of Judgment to slowly dissolve into nothingness. The Wall is the enforcement mechanism of the system; it ensures that mortal fear of non-existence compels them to pledge their souls to a divine owner. If everyone stopped believing in a god tomorrow, that god would literally shrink, lose their immortality, and eventually become a floating corpse in the Astral Plane. This makes the gods dependent parasites on mortal existence. Or does this make gods superpredators? They seem to protect the world not necessarily out of pure love, but because the world is the farm where they grow their power. But if the gods didn't have soul-fuel to maintain their power, the infinite hordes of Demons and Devils would have won a long time ago. Using souls is also the price of keeping the universe from collapsing into primordial chaos.
In the Forgotten Realms, immortality seems an illusion. Even if you go to a good heaven, your individuality has an expiration date. When a soul reaches the realm of their god, they become a Petitioner. They look like they did in life (usually at their best), and they live in a paradise or a realm that matches their deity's nature. Over time, the soul slowly loses its memories of its mortal life. You forget your name, your family, and your favorite meal. You become a pure version of that god's alignment. Eventually, a soul reaches a point of total peace or total exhaustion. At this stage, the soul dissolves and merges into the literal fabric of the divine plane itself. If you are in the realm of the God of Nature, you might literally become a part of the wind or a tree. This is how the divine battery actually works: the god absorbs your essence to maintain their realm's existence. The soul is gone, but its energy keeps the heaven or hell standing. There are surely plenty of exceptions. Druid souls? Elven souls?
If souls dissolve, what then creates new souls? There is the Positive Energy Plane. A place of pure, blinding creation, it constantly sheds tiny fragments of pure life force. These fragments float down through the layers of the multiverse and eventually find their way to the Material Plane (the world of mortals). When a new life is conceived (whether it’s a human, an elf, or even a squirrel), one of these sparks of energy attaches to the physical body. That spark becomes a soul.
Let's play at being a great scholar and break down the journey of a soul:

Creation: Pure energy leaves the Positive Energy Plane.</li>
Incarnation: The energy becomes a soul in a mortal body.</li>
Experience: The soul grows and shapes itself through life, choices, and worship.</li>
Transition: Upon death, the soul goes to the Fugue Plane.</li>
Fueling: The soul goes to a god's realm (not always, but let's keep it simple), providing power through its essence.</li>
Dissolution: The soul finally breaks down and merges with the planes.</li>
Entropy: Part of the remaining energy eventually drifts to the Negative Energy Plane, completing the cycle.</li> </ul>
If souls lived forever and never dissolved, the planes would eventually get so crowded and powerful that they would expand and destroy the world of mortals. By making souls dissolvable, the energy is eventually dissipated. The planes stay the same size, the gods stay at a certain power level, and there is always room for new souls to be born. That might be why Jergal talks about "balance" in BG3.
There is a similarity with the lore of Pillars of Eternity, which also speaks of a cycle of souls.
In Pillars of Eternity (Eora):

The journey of souls is a process governed by machines.</li>
The gods are Artificial Intelligences (built from hundreds of thousands of sacrificed souls)</li>
When you die, your soul goes to the Adra (the green glowing pillars) to be scrubbed clean of memories and sent back down. The gods siphon off fragments of souls during the soul's transit through the Beyond. To what extent? Is it a slow-burning fire like Dark Souls?</li> </ul>
In the Forgotten Realms:

The journey of souls is a process governed by natural cosmic law. The Positive Energy Plane is an infinite energy source. The Negative Energy Plane is a bottomless pit.</li>
The gods are ancient powers.</li>
The scrubbing happens on the planes. Instead of being sent back down to a new body, you are consumed (yes, not always).</li> </ul>
Both games ask the player the same terrifying question: If you know that your soul is just fuel or recyclable material, does your life still have meaning?

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The Dark Truth About Gods and Souls