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Groundhog Day Afterlife

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annebeeche watching down on us from by the long tidal river Since: Nov, 2010
watching down on us
#1: Mar 28th 2011 at 10:12:56 PM

For those unfamiliar with Valhǫllr, it's that place you go to if you die in battle. It's the super-über-giant-mega-hall of Odin (so big that there's another hall belonging to Thor inside the hall), located in Asgarð. The people who go to Valhǫllr are called Einherjar.

I decided, hey, let's make the place a miserable Crapsack World.

Henceforth, here's what happens to every Einherja:

  1. You die in battle.
  2. Valkyrja brings you to Valhǫllr.
  3. You all party like it's 599, then you go to sleep.
  4. When you wake up, it's on the morn of your death. You relive said death and return to Valhalla.
    • Note that no matter how you attempt to avoid it, that spearhead will always come in contact with your central nervous system, or however else you died, because the person that's simulating this reality for you is making sure it happens.
  5. You party again, then go back to sleep.
  6. You wake up and it's the morn of your death again. You relive your death again...
  7. Wash, rinse, repeat until Ragnarök.

The point is to either drive you to insanity or make you want to drive your wits out with alcohol and ergot so that you make a good redshirt no matter who or what you are.


The issue I'm having is the same as I have with just about any other eternal torture: what if it just gets mundane instead of actually driving you nuts or making you want intensely to escape?

"Oh joy, it's my death again. Yay. Can we hurry up and get this over with?"

What are the risks of this getting mundane and how can I avoid them?

edited 28th Mar '11 10:13:23 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.
petcarcharodon Since: Sep, 2010
#2: Mar 28th 2011 at 11:05:25 PM

You could erase their memory so it always seems like it's the first time they die.

annebeeche watching down on us from by the long tidal river Since: Nov, 2010
watching down on us
#3: Mar 29th 2011 at 5:47:06 AM

The point is to drive them insane by compounding experiencing their death over and over. If your memory is wiped each time you're only experiencing your death for the first time (in your perspective), so there's no additional impact from experiencing your death over and over.

The typical thought on the morn of the second death is, "What? What happened to Valh(o,)llr? Was it all just a dream? So I haven't actually died yet? Oh well..." And as it happens over and over, you figure out what's going on.

edited 29th Mar '11 5:47:22 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#4: Mar 29th 2011 at 7:53:10 AM

Maybe you don't keep the actual memories, but you still keep the emotional damage? So after you died, you would wake up freaking out over the fact that you'd died... but you wouldn't remember that you'd died, only that you were freaking out over... something. Then you'd die, and you'd freak out over that fact, which just gets added to the freaking-out of the original death, so now you're freaking out twice as much. Then you wake up, freaking out, but without knowing why...

It's still possible that someone would, over a long period of time of this, get used to it and accept a sort of zen "whatever happens, happens" outlook. But there's no reason why you couldn't just say that no one ever manages it.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
petcarcharodon Since: Sep, 2010
#5: Mar 29th 2011 at 1:59:20 PM

Really you can say about any afterlife that you'll 'get used to it'.

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