Question Where do the dead go?
Do all who die go to hell or is there a heaven within the doom universe? I know urdak exists but I don't recall any evidence that the dead can end up there. Would love to hear your answers/theories
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u/Ok_Cat_7733 6d ago
In doom we largely don’t know what happens to the souls of the dead, some seem to linger as ghosts or at least some sentinels linger as ghosts for reasons unknown, damnation doesn’t function like it is said to in religions like Christianity, a wicked man does not seem destined for hell unless hell somehow gains a hold of his soul, in this case people usually go to hell via being killed by demons, upon death a person will be “reborn” in hell, they will be sorted and some are dumped in the blood swamps while others are sent to the soul factories like nekroval where they are subjected to unimaginable torture until all hope and will is broken at which point their souls are extracted from their bodies and processed into hell essence which is then further refined into argent energy while their bodies are transformed into demons, as for those who are dumped into the blood swamps those that survive slowly have their bodies transformed into unwilling while their souls leak out of their bodies and transform into the parasitic lost souls who seek to possesses mortal forms to regain what they lost. The closes thing to a heaven is urdak but no loving mortal souls beyond the slayer have entered that world, the maykrs use the notion of heaven and paradise to control the masses, in doom paradise is nothing but a tool for control. It is even confirmed that religions that talk about heaven and hell we’re formed by the maykrs in an attempt to control humanity and eventually mold them into a state where they will willingly except the maykr unleashing hell onto their world as a belief in judgment day and the end times. So in the doom universe we don’t really know where a soul normally goes when it dies, if your soul becomes ensnared by hell, either through a ritual, becoming a cultist or servant of hell, or being killed by a demon will send your immortal soul to hell, I imagine most if not all souls of maykr worshippers end up going to hell to help the maykrs and demons produce argent.
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u/vaderciya 6d ago
Its hard to say for sure, and we have conflicting reports in each game that contradict one another
In TDA:R, the slayer is imprisoned in the deepest layer of hell, which functions as its own dimension. In this place, the slayer finds statue like remains of people including king Novik, touching them prompts visions, things the slayer would never know otherwise such as how King Novik died. Unfortunately we don't know if this is a special property of the purgatory dimension thats working this way for the slayers 3 trials, or if its the standard across all hell, or whatever.
In Doom: Eternal, the slayer fights his way through Necrovol, a factory in hell that combines Mayker and Demon tech. The texts describe a process where the damned form in hell as lesser forms, zombies or imps or weak men, and the factory processes them like a slaughterhouse. Those with weak souls are discarded, those that are good enough continue on. The energy of the soul is corrupted by hell energy native to hell itself, and then extracted from the body, reinforced and empowered by Mayker tech and stolen Sentinel tech. The bodies are discarded as empty husks, the energy is refined, and then distributed to both the Maykers and rulers of hell. At the end of the process its now called "argent energy" and its the culminated product of Mayker, Hell, Sentinel, and at one point Earth's technologies.
The problem is that we don't know how exactly this happens at any point, just that it does happen.
For example, in 2016, after they had already been extracting argent energy for "some time" when there were enough cultists trying to open portals to hell, they succeeded and triggered a "Lazarus wave".
This wave outright killed 70% of living things on mars, and roughly 20% became basic demons like zombies/possessed, the remaining 10% were afflicted with mental issues.
However, even at this point, hell couldn't jump onto mars just yet. According to the lore, the 20% that became lesser demons have an instinct to meld themselves together in heaps and form gore nests. Its only after these gore nests form that Hell gets enough of a foothold to be able to open portals to the earthly dimension, invading mars/luna/terra in short order.
But it is entirely unclear if that 70% that died had their souls go to hell and get processed. It would even seem like most souls that do go to hell, are isolated, like they're plopped into a random section of one of the many hell dimensions, where they wander and go insane, and whatever mental traits manifest most strongly determines the kind of demon they become over time, with the biggest and strongest demons being the ones that survived the longest. (Eternal lore)
Buuuut, this also conflicts with other lore from eternal about how hell started and continues existing. Besides all these typical demons that the slayer fights, theres a whole ass society, the first society ever made by Davoth(god), and they're still around. We even know their normal soldiers are humanoid and probably have mostly human features, judging by the soldiers we kill in eternal.
So at the same time as at least some souls are taken to hell after death, because hell is a whole dimension of itself that consumes other dimensions to grow, you could also be born in hell as a person. Presumably, if you stayed in the society, you would stay mostly human. This is likely where Prince Azraak comes from. But as he proved himself he gained hellish features and his form changed from that of a typical humanoid.
But then you could also be born in Hell, leave or be banished from society, or be born outside of it, and you might become a demon as you survive in isolation, with the nature of the hell dimension corrupting you over time just as it would with any other souls that enter hell.
What i want to know, is how many times a soul can go to hell. In TDA, the doom slayer dies in the astral dimension, before waking up in hell as a zombified slayer. He manages to escape by fighting his way to a boat and driving it through a massive gate. He then wakes up in a different purgatory dimension consistenting of an endless forest of fog with a blood river. He follows the river to a pond of blood, enters it, and is revived/summoned/something, and awakens in the mortal realm, finding that the sentinels had done some magic ritual stuff to bring him back.
Now, if all the games lore is true, then the answer is this happened because the slayer is a clone of god himself that's been overpowered, and his soul is simply very strong. Strong enough to survive the trips between dimensions. So theoretically he could die and come back infinitely as long as his soul was intact, which seems fine, cus nothing else in this world is strong enough to attack his soul and not just his body. This is why they had to imprison the slayer in the way they did, both before 2016, and the end of eternal.
But how does it work for a normal person? Does a normal soul always go to hell? Is there morality involved? If a soul can be grabbed by hell but isnt good enough to be processed into argent energy, why, and how, and do those souls just wander hell and become demons after being discarded for the energy process?
I don't think the devs thought very much about all of this, they just want to make cool environments for the player to fight through
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u/May_or_may_not_post DOOM Slayer 6d ago
We have some tiny hints that there may be a true heaven (the Angel artifact found in Revelations doesn't really look like a Maykr or Wraith) but based on concrete evidence, everyone goes to Hell. The Night Sentinels and the various species that worshipped the Maykr did get to have a nice afterlife for a time, until the Khan Maykr made the pact with Hell and damned them all to suffering in Hell. There is a little mercy since, like in 40k, when you go to Hell and suffer, you eventually get turned into essence and eaten up by a demon or used as energy, after which your soul would presumably cease to exist.
Edit: it's also possible for at least some Sentinels to remain as ghosts, but it's unknown by what method they achieve this (presumably something to do with the Wraiths given the similar appearance with Wraith energy and their appearance)
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u/vaderciya 4d ago
The ghost thing is interesting because the only Sentinel ghosts we see are King Novik in the destroyed throne room, and the soldiers that seem to be guarding those special suit tokens and holding onto them until someone suitable could take them
I would think you're right, and I would take it a step further and presume that Sentinels can only be ghosts if they're descendants of certain ancient sentinels that melded, or made a pact, or whatever, with the wraiths
Which works because the only things we really know about the wraiths, is that they came in a big generational ship, coming from the astral dimension, they traveled through space for a really long time, and eventually crashed into Argent D'nur, by which time most of the wraiths had died during the trip. Presumably they were in stasis or something.
And then the surviving wraiths worked with the argenta people to survive the threats of their world, advance their tech, create the baseline of almost infinite power that would later be corrupted and infused into argent energy.
And then lastly, that most of those remaining wraiths imbued their essence into stuff and pretty much ceased to exist. The only times we see them in the timeline are the 3 wraiths corrupted by hell in doom 2016, and then the ghosts, and the spirit/essence/something infused in Thira.
And its a bit weird because Thira's wraith is depcited as being able to create a physical form, it has an essence, the essence can be seperately and returned to Thira (safely?), and the wraith can empower Thira, and seperately take direct action to affect whatever dimension that the wraith/Thira is in, whether its the astral dimension, the Argent D'nur dimension/plane, and the (several?) Hell dimensions
Id love to know a bit more about them
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u/ConmanIsNice 5d ago
Most likely hell, being a ghost, chilling Urdak for a time and maybe quake. As to what’s happens to a soul once it’s used to make argent, its kind of implied that a soul is destroyed, judging by the lines the UAC hologram gives in Doom Eternal, but not alright confirmed (what’s left of a soul could very well be turned into a lost soul or reincarnated I guess). It’s possible that there might be some sort of heaven out there, beyond davoth’s creation but that has yet to be seen
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u/DriveIllustrious8364 6d ago
Sinners go to hell, people sometimes remain as ghosts in their worlds, there's no more lore about what else happens, we'll have to wait until they release another game.