THE CAULDRON

When life is over, if they had too much debt to pay off and could not afford manumission or the operation was botched, they must serve time in the lower reaches of Heck City. Dudaael, the Cauldron. The debt can be paid by physical currency of some sort in life. Gold, property, etc.

It is a systematic torture service that is so routine the sufferers become inured to it, and by far the worst aspect is the boredom. It never stops being painful, but eventually that ceases to matter as the years stretch into centuries. The victim is confined to what looks like a simple dungeon cell, and they spend the majority of their time like the Greek Legends, being mangled and torn apart, and spending their down time being re-generated, until it all begins again the next morning. The anguish generated is proportionate to the psychic energy wrung from their souls in the physical plane, and this is collected in the vaults around the world.

The creatures that conduct this torture are a species that exist primarily within this plane. There is a question of whether or not they are figments of the imagination, or if they truly exist in some kind of physical sense, just as one might wonder the same thing about Heck City. They are called Invoquers, reflecting their former role as interrogators. They have the ability to move throughout the Cauldron, and to get out into the physical world, but only there. They cannot get up into the upper levels of Heck City. They do not sleep, and they resemble biblical demons.

In their capacity as Interrogators, they serve as lawyers. Murder investigations are simple affairs, because they have the ability to ask the dead who killed them. But they also make the negotiations within the Cauldron that move the psychic energy around by adjusting torments, lessening here, increasing there. Indulgences paid are deposited by them and the soul is (supposed to be) freed, though usually this only happens in the case of the wealthy dead. For those without influence, they are merely stashed away someplace, their record erased and they stay tormented forever, and the revenue they generate is skimmed into private hands. This is all because this generates cash. Psychic energy is a resource, and thus has value, and is equal to a cash sum and can be converted as such as it is bought and sold.

Engineers must use to it make everything work, to keep the air circulating, to keep the ether out, to sustain life. Great quantities of it are wasted in wars and crusades and games. And an even greater amount is wasted doing nothing, just being stored. The appetite for it is voracious and never ending, and it leads to an increasing number of people being forced to die and serve time in the Cauldron.

What keeps people from realizing this is a rigged system is they are constantly propagandized in Heck City with panegyrics about how attainable manumission is, what a great service it is to live again and help the Damned to live. Death and serving time is not viewed as the default state, since one must incur debt to do so, and this is stigmatized. So even though nearly everyone gets into this position, it is shameful and not talked about.

Thus, the truly wealthy enjoy lives of fabulous luxury both when awake, and when asleep. They do not profane themselves by becoming animals after death. Often times they arrange to be re-incarnated actually, as a son or daughter. All of the birds of prey on the planet are the rich who fell from power. Often times a rich person who loses everything is given the option to take retirement as a bird, and its culturally reinforced that this is a graceful thing to do. They end up patching holes in the domes, maintaining them with walls of elan. Some of them can participate in battle. Occasionally they go halfway, and get bird heads and wings.

It's like a metaphor for how they're kept inside these prisons that ostensibly serve to protect them, but they can never leave anyway.