Irgendwer I do agree with you. I would like to see if you could come up with an alternative 'story' that would be more to our liking.
Thats rather easy, once you understand "roleplay" as acting as a person and not mimicking some kind of stereotype (the later sadly being, what most consider roleplay around here). As a person, you do have an agenda, needs and wishes. This goes for PC as well as NPC. Furthermore, you should understand "myth" exactly what it is: Not a literally true story, but a story based on some event, that may or not have been happened at some time (might have been pure imagination, but was taken for real anyway) and then got heavily skewed by oral tradition (there's a nice children party game about this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers).
So, lets say at some point in time, somewhere, something happened to someone. Maybe, it was even a person calling herself "Dakkru" telling Londaris something. Does that mean, that this Dakkru told him the truth? Did he understand her correctly and entirely? Did he write down the story without omitting or gloryfying parts? Appearantly not. Whatever he saw that day put a great deal of stress on his mind and impress him deeply. His text contains passages, that are up to interpretation (this threat is proof of that). He is anything but a neutral observer. He even confesses, that he lied to people before, telling them, that they only dreamed death.
Take Sharven for example. That guy is the head of the Laanx cult in Hydlaa and has a whole temple complex to maintain. Count on upkeep not being cheap. Since he does not make the impression of being inclined to actually work for it himself, he is dependant on gathering followers, who will donate money. He therefore has a stake in making people belief his stories. Do you honestly trust him (and his predecessors) to not occationally bent the truth in his favour? Here is a funny little story, about things tend to become ritual in religion:
http://digitalbristol.org/members/tyndaleb/link/dec05/cat.htmlIf a god, decides to make a personal appearance in the midst of Hydlaa, can you say with certainty, that the god really is the god s/he claims to be and not some imposter? Thumbs up for the "Pilgrim event here". The event itself was a total bore, but the idea of letting "Xiosa" appear on Xmas to make everyone jealous with gifts and then lead the greedy folks defile nature was heavenly.
So to bring it in story form: Gods are myths. Most of what we know about them, we know from people, of whom we only have their word, that they indeed spoke to the deity in question in person. All religious texts contain at least some portion, that is pure fiction (either deliberatly placed there or due to a missunderstanding). Even those parts, that are not fiction, should be taken with a grain of salt, because it may be on the gods agenda to deceive the mortals in order to reach some goal (any BF followers here? Do you trust your god? Why?).
To direct this to the Death Realm: According to the books found in the library, Londaris was there long before Dakkru chose to reveal herself. Let's say, that Dakkru in fact is a genuine immortal being and not only some kind of personalized concept. Maybe, she started out as some very powerful mage or an extraplanar being from Dimension elsewhere. After a freak accident, involving three rubber strings, a microwave oven and a broken JuJu totem, she found herself transported into a world with a Dark crystal as a sky, a citadel and portal (all of that build by the previous owner, who is currently unavailable). Being a rather intelligent person, she might have figured, that her only way to get back home would be through that crystal. Unfortunately, it's energy is depleted (well ... it's dark, isn't it?) and the only suiteable source of energy is ... well ... you guessed it: Souls. Would seem rather natural to me, that in this case, Dakkru would curse any of the little batteries, escaping her grasp and most certainly not tell anyone the real reason for wanting people to stick around. After all, the DR in its current form does not make any sense. It makes perfect sense however, if it was originally build for an entirely different purpose that got lost, when Dakkru took over and twisted things the best she could to serve her needs.
Actually ... The more I think about it, the more appealing atheism becomes. I think, I'll play a heretic from now on. Wonder, how many /report I will get from the "roleplayers".
