What Would Happen If The D&D Dragon Deities Pantheon Were In DC Or Marvel Universe?

[Peelee]

Celestials and fiends are usually promoted from the ranks of the petitioners (though some were never mortal souls in the first place) - so a petitioner isn't automatically going to be absorbed into their deity or their plane.


And while most souls within a deity's domain will be petitioners, not all will. Deity domains don't necessarily occupy the entirety of an Outer Plane either - so, like Roy in Celestia, you could have "souls that aren't petitioners" - a Lantern Archon is a bottom-rank petitioner - but Roy is not one himself when dead, possibly because he's not strongly devoted to any particular deity or similar patron.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/di...tm#petitioners

Also of note that, while explicitly stated by the author in OotS (if we want to use that as a guide or analog) and by implication in the rest of D&D, the afterlife is not perfect and has flaws. Because if it didn't, if it promised eternal life*, then there would almsot certainly be mass suicides and death cults for the Good afterlives. Because why bother with an imperfect life when you can actively achieve an eternal perfect life just by greeting early the inexorable veil of death, which is guaranteed to come anyway?

*again i note that nobody has provided any citation of the afterlives promising eternal life, other than their desire for it to.

[Mordar]

It takes the approach of a binary - either an entity thinks consciously by habit, or it doesn't - either an entity generalises, by default, or it doesn't.

In D&D rules, all sapient beings are INT 3 minimum, all "animal intelligence" beings are INT 2 or less.

That said, even sapient beings are characterised as thinking consciously only about 10% of the time and unconsciously 90% of the time - but the conscious thought is still considered to be "by habit".

One (me) wonders if self-awareness expands. We are mostly aware of our bodies in physical space, and our persistence through time (within limits). Would a being aware of its existence/impact/influence across additional dimensions (multiverse, extratemporal, whatever...you guys probably know options better than I do) be "differently" sapient than those that are only aware of themselves in the 3 + 1 dimensions?

That's not much better given that there's no continuity between you and the outside made from he raw materials of your soul and that your soul still needs to be rendered down into raw materials first.

You are still denied the existence after death that is implicitly promised by the very existence of an afterlife.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but please defend the underlined.

Based on hamishspence's post, the soul evolves and may eventually merge with the plane (after becoming more and more attuned) or may move on to petitioning.

The existence of an afterlife doesn't guarantee an unchanged eternity. It doesn't even guarantee entry, any more than the existence of [insert favored institution of higher learning, trade academy, etc.] guarantees I can gain admittance.

- M

[Rater202]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but please defend the underlined.

We've been over this, the literal definition of the afterlife is "life/existence after death."

More broadly, speaking form the perspective of someone with degrees in history or sociology, though admittedly this is outside my range of specialization, the whole reason humans as a species came up with the concept of an afterlife is because we are distinctly aware of our own limited existence and rationalized a means by which we may exist forever.

Tell someone that there's an afterlife and that they'll go to it if they meet certain qualifications, you're implicitly promising them a chance at immortality.

Based on hamishspence's post, the soul evolves

No, it doesn't. "Evolution is change over time" Souls i an afterlife don't change, they stagnate and decay until all that's left are raw materials to be consumed or recycled. Calling it transcendence or evolution is sugarcoating the process of your cessation of existence.

[hamishspence]

That's not much better given that there's no continuity between you and the outside made from he raw materials of your soul and that your soul still needs to be rendered down into raw materials first.

You are still denied the existence after death that is implicitly promised by the very existence of an afterlife.

There's some continuity at least, for petitioners - while a petitioner is a new creature, it retains some of the memories of its old life (according to Complete Divine page 130). What it lacks are abilities and skills.

A "regular soul" like Roy will retain all their memories - at least initially. Only when the soul has become an "abstract quanta" of Good/Law etc, will they have reached the point of having nothing at all of their living memories.

[Errorname]

Humans want the fantasy of an eternal afterlife because the alternative is very scary, but that doesn’t mean you have to write the idealized fantasy for your story.

In this sort of cosmology, the soul becomes like any other part of your body. It starts to decay after you die and eventually the raw materials decompose or get scavenged.

[InvisibleBison]

Again, you're the chicken in this scenario. If you lack the capability for abstract thought, then no explaining of what abstract thought is will make sense to the chicken. If you are not a god, then no amount of explaining godly mental abilities mortals innately lack will make sense. Examples like those listed are the best you'll get.

Except that Thor does explain/demonstrate at least some of the godly abilities he has that Durkon and Minrah lack; they are "flawless memory" and "knowledge of the meaning of certain words". Neither of those are incomprehensible to ordinary humans, nor does possession of them mean that it's morally acceptable for Thor to eat Durkon. You could, I suppose, point at Thor's mention of "mortal limitations" and assume that he is referring to some other ability beyond those that he demonstrates that does elevate him as far beyond mortals as mortals are beyond chickens, but at that point you're not really using the text to support your position so much as pointing at the text while asserting your position to be true.

And also, what do you think circular reasoning is? I made a claim, someone else brought up Order of the Stick, and i pointed out "hey the OotS writer makes a shockingly similar comparison" (and, if anything, my claim is much more generous to mortals). That's not circular reasoning at all.

The circular reasoning lies in presenting a quote that could be interpreted as supporting your claim, but could also be interpreted otherwise, in support of your claim. First you assume that the quote should be interpreted as supporting your claim, at which point OOTS becomes a work that supports your claim, so obviously its' author's statements should be interpreted in support of your claim.

And to pre-empt the obvious follow-up question, the other way of interpreting the quote is to say that the Giant is not talking about the moral worth of gods vs mortals but just their relative levels of power. Note that he ends the post by saying "I don't know why everyone expects that the gods are some sort of universally benevolent and egalitarian group that treats mortals fairly and with respect at all times. Certainly not from anything I've ever written." From that, I think it's reasonable to conclude that he considers the gods treating mortals the way mortals treat bugs to be unfair and disrespectful.

[hamishspence]

"Processed" souls - even ones that have become quanta of the plane or absorbed into their deity, still exist. Destroying a soul is something fundamentally different.

A soul, in addition to the personality traits it had in life, also generates a quantity of Soul Power™. The afterlife processes that soul so that it has less personality and the power is more available to the gods/other beings who rule that plane. This is why gods want souls to go to "their" afterlife; more dead souls equals more available power. Destroying a soul simply removes that quantity of power from the multiverse (or converts it to some unusable form, if we assume that there's conservation of energy in play) in addition to eradicating what's left of the personality.

[Rater202]

At that point you're splitting hairs: The soul isn'at a sou anymore, ti's just raw material. The individual who that souls belonged to ceased to exist long before it became god-food or the material of the plane.

Bringing it back to the main topic, and to repeat myself again: The arguments being made for why the gods aren't evil for doing this would, if Bahumut said so to MArvel Thor, would get Mjolnir buried in the platinum dragon's brain.

[hamishspence]

Even if the gods don't get involved directly, the plane will do this - it's just the natural way the multiverse works.

There are a lot of different viewpoints in the world, and it would be a mistake to think that everyone would feel negatively about what I described—especially people with a trudging painful physical life and no real prospects for anything else. If you're a serf with a short brutal life, then a few centuries of fun followed by an eternal blissful serenity might sound pretty damn wonderful.

But more relevantly, this is the natural cycle of the multiverse. Yes, if you place your own personal autonomy over the natural processes of existence—if you think you are so important that your specific personality must be preserved at all costs, forever—then I suppose you would feel that you should struggle against it, but doing so would be arrogant at the least and dangerously foolhardy at worst. There is no path that will prevent you from eventually being returned to this cycle—other than achieving godhood or total oblivion, e.g. the Snarl—and most of the methods of delaying it will land you in the very worst versions when you get there.

"Eternal blissful serenity" is what an abstract quanta of Good experiences. The tradeoff is not being a unique individual any more.

[Rater202]

[QUOTE=hamishspence;25971888]Even if the gods don't get involved directly, the plane will do this - it's just the natural way the multiverse works. [quote]In at least once setting(forgotten realms, I posted previously) you don't naturally go to the panes when you die, th eGods physically bring you there.

"Eternal blissful serenity" is what an abstract quanta of Good experiences. The tradeoff is not being a unique individual any more.

No amount of eternal bliss is worth total erasure of your memory and identity.

The fate worse than death is supposed to be a reason why ti's okay to die, not the thing that happens after yo die.

[hamishspence]

In at least once setting(forgotten realms, I posted previously) you don't naturally go to the panes when you die, the Gods physically bring you there.

Even in the Realms, you naturally travel to one Outer Plane - the Fugue Plane. It's only after that, when the gods send servants to bring you to theirs.

[Mordar]

We've been over this, the literal definition of the afterlife is "life/existence after death."

More broadly, speaking form the perspective of someone with degrees in history or sociology, though admittedly this is outside my range of specialization, the whole reason humans as a species came up with the concept of an afterlife is because we are distinctly aware of our own limited existence and rationalized a means by which we may exist forever.

Tell someone that there's an afterlife and that they'll go to it if they meet certain qualifications, you're implicitly promising them a chance at immortality.

I agree with your point of genesis of afterlife. I believe that in game worlds like we are discussing, even though it is crossing into a completely different work of whole-cloth fiction, there are radical differences which would greatly influence the generation of that concept, and what individuals living in that fictional world would accept as "standard afterlife".

I am afraid of restrictions here, so I will be very handwavey about this answer. Even among pantheons and game settings there are many versions of "afterlife" that absolutely and explicitly do not promise static immortality. I would conjecture that if we had this discussion in several different languages we might have a very different default interpretation of "afterlife".

No, it doesn't. "Evolution is change over time" Souls i an afterlife don't change, they stagnate and decay until all that's left are raw materials to be consumed or recycled. Calling it transcendence or evolution is sugarcoating the process of your cessation of existence.

That doesn't at all match what was in the Complete Divine quote. They do not stagnate, they become more and more aligned to the essence of that plane. The rock-and-roll all night and party every day existence in Valhalla? That is evolution. Not of a species but of an individual. Much like we evolved from infants suckling to juveniles to adults. Adult Mordar is fundamentally different than infant Mordar. If you want to say that his dwarven soul is exactly the same from deposition into the mass of cells at whatever point that happens in make-believe Dwarf land until the reaping of that soul, I can't argue that. But I don't think you can legitimately argue the idea that the soul, much like the intellect or the body, doesn't change based on experience and environment absent prescription to a particular school of thought.

- M

[Captain Cap]

In at least once setting(forgotten realms, I posted previously) you don't naturally go to the panes when you die, th eGods physically bring you there.

Who says there would even be an afterlife without the outer planes to "catch" the souls. The alternative could easily be total annihilation (or a maddening final trip to the far realms).

No amount of eternal bliss is worth total erasure of your memory and identity.

The fate worse than death is supposed to be a reason why ti's okay to die, not the thing that happens after yo die.

Isn't death without afterlife exactly that, total erasure of memory and identity? If in a D&D afterlife it happens gradually and blissfully, I don't see how it can be any worse.

[hamishspence]

In Eberron, there's no proof that any of the worshipped gods actually exist - with spells coming from the characters' beliefs primarily - yet there's still Outer Planes very similar to those in mainstream D&D. Only one afterlife plane though - and it's basically the equivalent of Hades, the NE plane - unpleasant as heck.


"A place of hopelessness, eternal despair, and consuming apathy, Dolurrh is the realm where mortal souls go after death. It is not a reward. It is not a punishment. It just is."

[Peelee]

Except that Thor does explain/demonstrate at least some of the godly abilities he has that Durkon and Minrah lack

Sure. Just as with Speak With Animals i could explain to a chicken the same things.
QUOTE=InvisibleBison;25971869]The circular reasoning lies in presenting a quote that could be interpreted as supporting your claim, but could also be interpreted otherwise, in support of your claim. First you assume that the quote should be interpreted as supporting your claim, at which point OOTS becomes a work that supports your claim, so obviously its' author's statements should be interpreted in support of your claim.[/QUOTE]

Ok, so that's not circular reasoning. Again, what do you think circular reasoning is? Because i think (and, coincidentally, I'm right on this) circular reasoning is "A is true because of B, and B is true because of A". That's not happening here. Here, its "I posit that A is true. And, separately, this other person who has written source books and is writing a story using this also posits that A is true". Your rebuttal is that I'm wrong, and the other person doesn't necessarily think that. Even assuming you're correct, none of that is circular reasoning.

[Anymage]

Who says there would even be an afterlife without the outer planes to "catch" the souls. The alternative could easily be total annihilation (or a maddening final trip to the far realms).

At least Great Wheel/Planescape (which has become something of a default D&D cosmology, including for the stickverse), the outer planes exist independent of gods. Although that does very much feed the same question of how an afterlife absent gods is necessarily any better than one where gods exist. You'd still meld into the fabric of the plane either way.

Although I will raise the question for Rater and anybody else against gods in the stickverse and similar cosmologies. The Wall is its own thing and a whole other topic. In what other settings are dead souls noticeably worse off for the existence of gods than they'd be otherwise, where the gods are not either openly acknowledged as evil or else clearly spelled out in the books to be evil beings with good PR departments? Since I'd figure that to call an entity evil you'd have to make a good case how others are worse off as a result of your actions than they'd be otherwise.

[hamishspence]

At least Great Wheel/Planescape (which has become something of a default D&D cosmology, including for the stickverse), the outer planes exist independent of gods. Although that does very much feed the same question of how an afterlife absent gods is necessarily any worse than one where gods exist. You'd still meld into the fabric of the plane either way.

And in one 3.5 book, it's stated that one race (the abeloths) predates divinely-created life of any kind.

The gods would have mortals believe that in the beginning they created the world. That they helped shape it is not in dispute, but they were far from the first to cast their influence over the Material Plane. The aboleths lived in the primeval depths before the first deity wrought life from primal clay. The elemental races established vast multiplanar empires before the first priest offered prayers on a crude stone altar. And in the roiling deep of the Abyss, demons had already conquered entire planes before the advent of intelligent life on the Material Plane.

[InvisibleBison]

Sure. Just as with Speak With Animals i could explain to a chicken the same things.

Thor isn't using Speak With Mortals to enable himself to explain things to Durkon, though. He's just talking.

Ok, so that's not circular reasoning. Again, what do you think circular reasoning is? Because i think (and, coincidentally, I'm right on this) circular reasoning is "A is true because of B, and B is true because of A". That's not happening here. Here, its "I posit that A is true. And, separately, this other person who has written source books and is writing a story using this also posits that A is true". Your rebuttal is that I'm wrong, and the other person doesn't necessarily think that. Even assuming you're correct, none of that is circular reasoning.

You're right, you weren't engaging in circular reasoning. You were instead assuming the thing you were trying to prove.

[Peelee]

Thor isn't using Speak With Mortals to enable himself to explain things to Durkon, though. He's just talking.

And when that's relevant to anything I'm talking about it might be a good point.

You're right, you weren't engaging in circular reasoning. You were instead assuming the thing you were trying to prove.

No, i was using three pieces of evidence (the weight of the evidence we disagree on) supporting each other to demonstrate that this is also the case in OotS. Sure, you can read the Giant's comment differently as you laid out, but IMO that's a reach, and what's fair to the spider is hardly fair to the fly. Or the human to the chicken.

Also, he's vegetarian. Interesting, that, given the context of this conversation and that quote block. Under my argument, he's ethically consistent.

Anyway, this whole thing is under the premise of "and the gods promised eternal afterlife" which despite my constant requests for any source on this in D&D, still is an assertion that only exists in Rater's (and perhaps yours, i don't know if you've planted your flag on that hill, and I'm not going to blindly assume) mind.

[Razade]

The "souls merge with th eplne thing" is only one end result o the process, with another being ""the soul, once it's eroded down to just ti's alignment and a gods values, is absorbed by the god.

This is one of the forms of sustenance of the gods, in addition to worship, and absorbing someone's soul for sustenance is um... Eating their soul.

It's been discussed and cited on this very forum multiple times, I'll go digging but even the Giant has cited the idea when clarifying things that happened in-comic.

The souls worshipping gods specifically merge not with the plane, but with the god's domain, and the god's domain is part of the god's essence.

So when I said citation needed I meant like page numbers. Others have already presented counters to this. You just telling me a story and "hey, it's really real believe me" is great and all but like, a single book and page number. You're both so darn certain and Rater, you're especially going after people for not citing their sources to your satisfaction. Seems like it's only fair you bring receipts.

[Rater202]

So when I said citation needed I meant like page numbers. Others have already presented counters to this. You just telling me a story and "hey, it's really real believe me" is great and all but like, a single book and page number. You're both so darn certain and Rater, you're especially going after people for not citing their sources to your satisfaction. Seems like it's only fair you bring receipts.

So I alrady linked the Giant explaining both how it works in Oots and his explanation that it's based on D&D canon which, given he wrote books for F&D, he's a credibly authority on but if you want page numbers Hallowed Ground Pg 32 covers the "soulsmerge with their god" thing.

Now, it's all prettied up and claimed to be akin to a state of permanent symbiosis but given that typically most petitioners are explicitly wiped of all but the strongest of their memories and reshaped into their god's image first thing(cited in several books that are i turn cited in the FR wiki page for Petitioners, which I also linked) and that, petitioner or not, souls are ultimately worn down into just "faith batteries" the traits that align to the values of a god/plane with no real identity of their own, one soul identical to the last... When you've already undergone total death of personality to become a spirit whose only function is to pray to Bahumut, you're not gonna be exerting any real influence on Bahumut once he absorbs you entirely. You and all the other cookie-cutter entities that used to be discrete people but now no longer exist are just going to be reinforcing what he already was while the core consciousness of Bahumut goes on doing what he was doing.

It's a raw deal and context strongly implies that no one on the material plane knows what their ultimate fate.

[DaedalusMkV]

Thor isn't using Speak With Mortals to enable himself to explain things to Durkon, though. He's just talking.

I mean, he kind of is, though? That thing that Durkon is talking to isn't all of Thor, it's just an avatar he created in A Form Durkon Is Comfortable With to speak with him in a way that Durkon can comprehend, and it required some non-trivial magic to achieve that conversation in the first place (Durkon had to die, then be resurrected, and it only played out that way because Thor and the Northern Pantheon were willing to bend some rules to make it happen). He explicitly need to put some effort into making himself smaller and simpler to have that conversation at all - his initial attempt, which still isn't all of Thor, just gives Durkon a headache without accomplishing anything. Gods can't casually communicate with mortals - even in OOTS it typically requires either high-level magic or very rare divine intervention from the deity in question or both to take place. Like, to have a real honest-to-goodness conversation with a God in 3e D&D typically requires at minimum a Contact Other Plane or Commune spell, both of which are 5th level spells and thus only available to notably high-power characters. Commune only gets you the actual deity if the deity feels like handling it personally, otherwise it's just a minion or assorted functionary, and only offers very limited ability to communicate, so for a real conversation you need Contact Other Plane, and that requires the character to make a fairly difficult Intelligence check to not suffer serious mental trauma from opening your mind to an entity beyond your comprehension. Practically both of these are very limited - to actually have a real conversation with a deity you probably need Miracle, which only the absolutely most powerful Clerics can cast.

Barring DM fiat or the characters Plane Shifting (or killing) themselves to a deity's realm to have the conversation 'in person' (with a projected avatar like the one Thor uses to speak with Durkon), talking with a God is a difficult and harrowing ordeal which requires some serious magical mojo. None of this suggests that Gods are in any way easily comprehensible or equivalent to mortals. There's a reason they usually use Heralds and messengers and what have you that happen to be Outsiders more attuned to their nature and thus easier for them to communicate with.


Not going to touch the original topic. I'm no philosopher, I've got no answers for what is and is not moral. But I think there's some solid reasons to believe that a deity is very much not equivalent to a mortal - they are larger, and only a very smart mortal can even glimpse the full reality of a deity without risking mental trauma (minimum Int required to automatically pass the check for a minor deity is 32, deep in superhuman territory). I'd actually say the real comparison between a mortal and deity is closer to a human and an ant, or maybe a human and a dust mite, not a human and a chicken. Orders of magnitude greater and more complex.

[hamishspence]

Now, it's all prettied up and claimed to be akin to a state of permanent symbiosis but given that typically most petitioners are explicitly wiped of all but the strongest of their memories and reshaped into their god's image first thing(cited in several books that are i turn cited in the FR wiki page for Petitioners, which I also linked) and that, petitioner or not, souls are ultimately worn down into just "faith batteries" the traits that align to the values of a god/plane with no real identity of their own, one soul identical to the last... When you've already undergone total death of personality to become a spirit whose only function is to pray to Bahumut, you're not gonna be exerting any real influence on Bahumut once he absorbs you entirely. You and all the other cookie-cutter entities that used to be discrete people but now no longer exist are just going to be reinforcing what he already was while the core consciousness of Bahumut goes on doing what he was doing.

Keep in mind that Bahamut is a Dragon, not an Outsider. And given that despite his Good alignment he doesn't have the Good subtype, a lot of the whole "mortals merging into plane means mortals merging with the deity" thing may not apply to him - since he and his petitioners won't share the trait of being "partially composed of the essence of the plane" the way standard deities and their petitioners do.

Outsider Type
An outsider is at least partially composed of the essence (but not necessarily the material) of some plane other than the Material Plane. Some creatures start out as some other type and become outsiders when they attain a higher (or lower) state of spiritual existence.

Good Subtype
A subtype usually applied only to outsiders native to the good-aligned Outer Planes. Most creatures that have this subtype also have good alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype.

[Razade]

So I alrady linked the Giant explaining both how it works in Oots and his explanation that it's based on D&D canon which, given he wrote books for F&D, he's a credibly authority on but if you want page numbers Hallowed Ground Pg 32 covers the "soulsmerge with their god" thing.

I don't really care what The Giant has to say about how the gods work in his setting. Do you mean On Hallowed Ground This one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Hallowed_Ground

Now, it's all prettied up and claimed to be akin to a state of permanent symbiosis but given that typically most petitioners are explicitly wiped of all but the strongest of their memories and reshaped into their god's image first thing(cited in several books that are i turn cited in the FR wiki page for Petitioners, which I also linked) and that, petitioner or not, souls are ultimately worn down into just "faith batteries" the traits that align to the values of a god/plane with no real identity of their own, one soul identical to the last... When you've already undergone total death of personality to become a spirit whose only function is to pray to Bahumut, you're not gonna be exerting any real influence on Bahumut once he absorbs you entirely. You and all the other cookie-cutter entities that used to be discrete people but now no longer exist are just going to be reinforcing what he already was while the core consciousness of Bahumut goes on doing what he was doing.

It's a raw deal and context strongly implies that no one on the material plane knows what their ultimate fate.

Page 32 doesn't say anything about strength of pentitoner. It also says, expressly, that the will of a being isn't fully subsumed. It says outright "does not lose her identity fully". On Hallowed Ground doesn't at all discuss endless prayer to the god. It in fact even talks about people speaking with these individuals in conversation and discourse on how the entire process goes. Which would be difficult if your entire identity is subsumed. I also wouldn't trust the FR wiki as far as I could throw it.

[Eldan]

"Processed" souls - even ones that have become quanta of the plane or absorbed into their deity, still exist. Destroying a soul is something fundamentally different.

But if the soul exists unrelated to the memories and experiences of the person who has that soul, then the soul is not the person. It's just a base unit of planar power that's temporarily held inside the person.

[Razade]

But if the soul exists unrelated to the memories and experiences of the person who has that soul, then the soul is not the person. It's just a base unit of planar power that's temporarily held inside the person.

It doesn't. At least not according to any sources I can find. In fact, it's the opposite from On Hallowed Ground. The book literally says that they do not fully lose their identity. Scholars talk with them about the experience so someone is still there even as part of the God or Plane.

[Anymage]

Even assuming that souls are broken down to basic planar building blocks and the core identity of the person is stripped out, I have yet to hear anyone tell me how gods are evil and personally at fault for this if the process is a basic function of outer planes and would proceed exactly the same whether or not the gods were present.

[Razade]

Even assuming that souls are broken down to basic planar building blocks and the core identity of the person is stripped out, I have yet to hear anyone tell me how gods are evil and personally at fault for this if the process is a basic function of outer planes and would proceed exactly the same whether or not the gods were present.

I think it's just the natural aversion to ego-death. Which ya know, fair. My main issue is it's not actually taking what's presented or conflating a silly webcomic's take to be the entire scope and breadth of a long running TTRPG series and lecturing us as if we're the ones out of the loop.

[Rater202]

Even assuming that souls are broken down to basic planar building blocks and the core identity of the person is stripped out, I have yet to hear anyone tell me how gods are evil and personally at fault for this if the process is a basic function of outer planes and would proceed exactly the same whether or not the gods were present.

I covered this already.

In at least one campaign setting, souls don't naturally go to the outer planes but are physically transported there from the fugue Plane which is located in the astral plane/sea.

Souls do not become petitoners, thereby losing most of their memories and personality undergo the process of being traded down into cookie-cutter faith batteries until they leave the fugue plane.

Ergo, in the Forgotten Realms setting at least this isn't a natural process but something that the Gods are doing on purpose. Even if becoming a petitioner, undergoing ego death, and being absorbed by a god or another manifestation of the outer plane is the natural process of a non-living soul entering the outer planes, your soul isn't naturally going to become a petitioner.

Even if it's automatic... Gods create mortals as a source of souls and worship. This is the equivalent of creating sapient beings just to eat them. As I've stated before.

The Gods of good could very well have created beings that do not naturally die and subsisted entirely off of worship. They elected not to.
Compounding the issue is that, at least in 3.5... Ways to artificially extend your life either that actually work, don't require some immense degree of effort or moral compromise, and aren't trap options range from rare to non-existent which implies a degree of making sure that the cattle gt on the cart. As does the existence of the Wall of The Faithless in the Realms.

[Peelee]

The Gods of good could very well have created beings that do not naturally die

Sure, and the setting could have been named "Rater's Wish Fulfillment". Just because you have incredibly specific hangups about existence, consciousness, and dearh does not mean that every setting that has an end being means that whoever designed it is Evil.