Hell

According to traditional Uzdumalian belief, Hell is a series of six continents located on the moon. Three of these continents appear on the visible face of the satellite, and three on the invisible face. Those that are visible are distinguished by their visibility to the Great God, who moves between the moon and Uzdumalia (but only in straight lines), while those invisible from Uzdumalia are inaccessible by Him. The presence of the moon in the sky is therefore comforting, because it means that the Great God is able to observe the affairs of Uzdans as well as those in Hell, and the absence of the moon in the sky means the Great God is most likely tending to affairs in Hell or elsewhere on the planet.

When a member of the Uzdumalian faith dies, the body is disposed of according to regional custom, and the accumulated memories, or soul, are taken by the hand of the Great God. If the soul is found to contain a perfect recollection of (an unknown and highly debated number of) the Sixty-Seven Truths and does not recall committing any of the five Violations, it is given a small, wormlike, invisible body that spends eternity crawling on the body of the Great God, receiving and giving constant, ecstatic pleasure. At his whim, the Great God may assign some of these souls to the bodies of lesser gods, to and from whom these souls will give and receive pleasure, though it be somewhat less generally ecstatic. To earn the right not only to become a pleasureworm, but additionally, a pleasureworm living on the body of the Great God, is the greatest ambition of any faithful Uzdumalian.

If the soul does not contain a sufficient recollection of the Sixty-Seven Truths, or has committed one of the Violations, it is brought to hell, where the Great God molds a form of dust and inserts the soul, directing it on a long, painful, and lonesome journey to its assigned continent.

Hells Visited by the Great God

Hell of Rolling Dust

Failure to recollect (the unknown and highly debated number) of the Truths, without having committed a Sin, would result in an assignment to the Hell of Rolling Dust, a windy, but only mildly irritating hell. Not far from the spot where the Great God gathers the dust to create dustbodies, the Hell of Rolling Dust is the de facto hell for Borrits, children who die before proper instruction, and residents of the Frontier Towns, where corrupted texts of the Sixty-Seven Truths were often sold. Since the Great God is able to sense the presence of the Truths anywhere in the recesses of the soul's memory, even those who could not recite them are still likely to have heard and remembered them.

Since the dustbodies have no eyes, the souls in the Hell of Rolling Dust suffer mostly from cold and collision with other bodies, resulting in deep, throbbing pain. Over time, most of the souls here learn to remain still so as to avoid as many dreadful collisions as possible, huddling carefully together against the cold winds.

Hell of Crushing Sand

A soul who has committed the first Violation, against one's position in the social hierarchy, is directed to a hell of shifting, sucking quicksand. As the dustbody is painfully drawn under, deeper and deeper, it begins to be crushed into particulate matter. The soul then rises up through the sand, gathering bits that stick to it, making a new body out of the dismantled bodies of others, before it is drawn down again.

Hell of Constant Productivity

The second Violation, against one's proper work, results in the assignation of the soul to the Hell of Constant Productivity, where dustbodies find themselves rolling around in circles, toward the bottom of a funnel-shaped crater. At the bottom of the crater, the dustbodies begin to crush each other horribly unless they attempt to pile up in lines along the outside rim of the crater. Near the lip, however, the weight of the acculumated bodies and the instability of the structure result in the topmost twenty or so rolling back down to the bottom.

Hells Inaccesible to the Great God

Hell of Electric Fire

Those who commit the third Violation, against one's relationship to the natural world, were committed to the Hell of Electric Fire, where the dustbodies would be repeatedly struck by electric lightning from a cloud that supposedly clung closely to this continent of the moon. As the electricity passed into the dustbody and repeatedly burned it, it also gave the dustbody a charge that could only be released by colliding with another, causing terrible pain to both, but transferring the continually burning energy from one to the other.

Hell of Burnt Splinters

The fourth Violation, against the observance of holy ceremonies, directed violating souls to this hell, where the dustbody continually rolled over and aquired splinters between its particles, marking itself all over with burned ash. Because of the irritation and pain caused by these splinters, the dustbody would roll about, hoping to agitate out some of the splinters, but often picking up several others.

Hell of Violent Catastrophe

The fifth Violation was against the Great God himself. No one knows what would happen in the Hell of Violent Catastrophe, and few attempted to describe it, fearing that to do so incorrectly would provoke the Great God to send them there.

Problems with the Hells

Several heretical sects, including Targhandism, developed several critical responses to this generally accepted map of Hell. As the moon is a sphere without watery regions, how can it have continents? And as many of the tortures of hell metaphorically resemble life in Uzdumalia, what if Uzdumalia is, in fact, Hell, and the moon is the planet from which their souls were sent to be tortured? And, most importantly, if a soul does not remember having committed a Violation, how could it be judged as having done so? Could memory-erasure practices or voluntary brain damage literally save one's soul? Or would this be considered a Violation either of the third or the fifth kinds? Most Uzdumalians were not eager to discover the consequences of pursuing these lines of inquiry.

Quarrel about the Required Number of Truths

Violations

Great Uzdumalian Church of State

Frontier Towns

Borrits

Glenrid Tree Worship