The souls of infants

Assuming you've been initiated into a religion (such as baptism done by your parents), your soul goes to where-ever your religion says it goes.

To take a real world example - Christianity - newborns and unborns previously went to limbo (that's Christian limbo, not the D&D one!) although the Pope recently decreed that they now go straight to Heaven.
I'd assume that a similar arrangement occurs in many D&D religions.

I've been thinking of an aventure hook on this subject, so I'll keep an eye on this thread too....

It really depends on who you ask. A Calvanist might say that children who are among the "elect" go straight to Heaven, while everyone else goes to Hell, for instance. The whole "original sin" (and predestination in general) debate is actually one of the main reasons Christianity has so many sects, because no one seems to be able to agree on it.

I'd say a large number of dead children wind up in the soul veins on Hades, after all, that's what the soul veins are for. One thing begs the question though, extremely young infants really don't qualify as sentient, so does that mean that a month old baby who died would go to the beastlands?

Although Augustine originally wrote about the automatic exclusion of unborn souls from Heaven (and straight to Hell!) for original sin, later theologens disputed and overturned this (in fact, the Pope recently abolished the Limbo of Children, saying that they will now go straight to Heaven).

(not really wanting to get into a theology debate, I bring this up only as an example of how complicated the matter priobably is in D&D too...)

Of course, Duckluck's right to say it depends A LOT on the individual faith involved. Likely every religion (or at least pantheon) out there will have a procedure for such things.

They go to the planes of their alignment. Chaotic good faithless go to Arborea, the Beastlands, or Ysgard depending on their bent. Lawful neutral faithless go to Mechanus, Acheron, or Arcadia. Neutral faithless go to the Outlands. And so on.

It's assumed that Toril has its own rules, though, enforced by its overpower, Ao and delegated to the discretion of the god of the dead. The Faithless in Toril go to the wall of the damned in the City of Suffering, and this is an exception to the more general rule, found everywhere else in the multiverse, that they go to the outer plane that most closely matches their individual beliefs.

Another interpretation, one that I find more convincing, would be that "faithless" people only go to Kelemvor's realm if they believe they will. So they aren't really faithless - they've bought into the general cultural belief in Faerun that this is what happens to those who lack the patronage of the gods. If they were truly faithless, and believed in nothing, this wouldn't happen. It wouldn't happen to the people of Maztica, Zakhara, Kara-Tur, or other parts of the world where Kelemvor isn't known, and it wouldn't happen to worshipers of the elven, halfling, dwarven, gnomish, orcish, Mulhorandi, and other pantheons that have their own gods of the dead.

I think most animals, insects included, should proabably wind up on the Outlands. The upper planes should be relegated to animals with a certain "nobility" about them. In D&D, characters are presumably born neutral and eventually gain an alignment, and it's the same with animals in that they are all True Neutral barring special circumstances. Therefore, why should neutral animals go to a plane of good? The only reason I can think of is the same reason Neutral babies would go to Hades, because the plane wants them. This, of course, begs the question as to whether the Beastlands is a heaven for animals at all, or simply a heaven for people who like animals.

That would be the "logical" way to go about it, but I'd rather see the Upper Planes as the homes of great and powerful archetypes that go beyond alignment. Something in an Upper Plane isn't necessarily "noble" or good - it may be there simply because the symbolism on which the plane is based makes it appropriate for it to be there. For that reason, the Upper Planes may contain ferocious monsters (like the Beasts of Legend), neutral-aligned creatures like the ethyk and wormwraith, and more. The celestials barely scratch the surface of what "their" planes really are.

And yes, that's true of the Lower Planes, too.

The Outlands are great, but they're only one plane, and it seems a bit much for it to get all nonsapient beings all to itself. That's another reason why I prefer to spread the love a little. Better to make the Upper Planes more interesting.

Note that some animal souls end up in the Inner Planes, where they become animentals. This is portrayed as something of a glitch, though.

I, for one, am for any creature with an intelligence score of 1 or less just not having a soul.

Ants alone outnumber humans something like 10,000,000 to 1. And that's actually probably a conservative estimate. Though these ratios would be preserved, let's keep in mind that the planes all ready have ecosystems in place, and this constant influx of foreign animals and insects is enough to give even the most steadfast of Nature-Gods a full-time job just trying to keep the ecosystem from collapsing underneath its own weight.

Here's a thought: When animals die, their souls, instead of being individually transmuted into animal-styled petitioners on one of the outer planes, actually becomes part of a paragon-version of that animal or insect. Dying ants may be reincarnated as totally bad-ass Acheron soldier ants (if they were sufficiently bad-ass enough in life), or merely has their 'soul-stuff' (whatever you want to call it) thrown into the mix to produce more bad-ass Acheron soldier ants. Or something like that.

I like Mak's idea about raise dead. But I think that animals should still have souls. Their souls could end up merging automatically with the plane they go to, or merging into existing individual (but impressive, archetypical) members of the existing ecosystems.

Here's an idea. On the Beastlands there is a pantheon of sorts of archetypal animal spirits, one for each species, right? They are sort of like gods. So maybe animals merge with their Animal Lord/god immediately after they enter the plane, and then those gods oversee the lives of the ordinary animals in the ecosystem.

But the eusocial insect gods in Arcadia would be divine hives/swarms with hive minds instead. Each insect soul probably couldn't become an individual worker because of the problem Great Hippo pointed out... although maybe there just really are tons more ants and bees and termites in Arcadia than in other Planes. But maybe the influx of insect souls is what allows the hive gods' queens to lay more eggs.

But also naked mole rats, and whatever other eusocial hive vertebrates you want to invent for the Prime Material Plane, would also go to Arcadia.

From the description of Watil's realm in the Maztica Campaign Setting. As paraphrased by me.

>>The Guardian of Plants dwells in the fourth layer of Elysium, Thalasia, on an island called Xilen, the Heaven of Milk Trees. The souls of those who have died in infancy dwell in Xilen, which is filled with lush plant life of all kinds, including trees whose fruits produce mother's milk.<<

I really like the imagery there and now intend to use this plane in my campaign at some point.

That is an interesting idea.

Just one nitpick: spiders, unlike ants or termites or locusts, are not social. They just hatch in large numbers.

According to the 3rd edition, all Stillborn children go to the 7th Haven of Mount Celestia. Zaphkiel the watcher is their protector.
From this I can think that young children should be considered innocent too, and thus good.

Wow, this is one old thread...

Here is my option: What hapenns to souls of dead chillderen depends belives of societies they belong. So if LG society belives they go to mount celestia 7th heaven, they will go there. If elven or CG society belive they become coure eladris, then they do.
Actualy I'm not making that one up becaouse, people belived that souls of un-baptised children turn into fey after death. (Either fay or Vampires).

So I guess that enything is possible: Chinese pantheon have goddes of mercy that tends to their needs, Japanese pantheon have some sort of purgatorio called Dry River Bed of Souls in wich souls of children are destined to gather pebels untill they have gatherd enough to enter heaven... Etc, etc... there are multiple options and more than one could be true, and that is what makes multiverse so interesting.

Here is one more idea.

Prehaps souls of infants  are automaticaly reincanated in new bodies, since their souls are brand new and hardly used there is no point sending them in their afterlife, other option is: somewhere is mentioned that all new born souls come from positive energy plane, so it is possible that infant souls return there after death.

One thing to consider is the age old question: Is good and evil innate, or is it learned? If humanoids are entirely plastic morally, then it makes sense to consider the soul neutral, or perhaps not even yet fully formed when an infant. If however morality is at least partially innate, than maybe we can ascribe an alignment to any given soul as soon as it finds a vessel. After all, if certain humanoids tend towards certain alignments, even in the abscence of their societies, it would imply that their alignment is at least to some extent innate. Plus, if all socieities of a given race tend towards one alignment, there must be a reason why groups of that race all tend towards that alignment as societies. In any case, this gives the option of giving souls a predefined alignment, and thus a predefined destination in the afterlife.

 I think this interpretation allows for some interesting possibilities. Perhaps a soul has a certain destiny, but the person is killed before their time as a child, and a group of adventurers have to find where the soul went. So they have to venture into the plane to find a hidden oracle that can show the destiny of the person in question, allowing them to locate the plane the soul is on and find a way to get it back in a proper vessel to save the day. Has some RP potential I think.