Just gotta have Faith!

But then a lesson from Sunday school many years ago and a book you read in your college comparative religions course come to your rescue... ~This isn't a divine oubliette, it's the first layer of Hell, the plane of jars! The punishment for those that deny God's divinity! And the way out is...~ You think, then. "Oh mighty Atarah, I am heartily sorry for not obeying your commandment: I believe in you, you are my chosen goddess!" And the jar's lid shatters. You climb out, and behold the nine layers of hell spread out around and below you, almost just as Dante described them, save that Dis looks more like Detroit during Devil's Night and less like a medieval fortification.

Then the scene of fire and brimstone vanishes and you are back in your body in the throne room.

Now, Once Again, Recite! Atarah comands, and this time you do, though it is agony to speak and your voice is little more than a horse whisper you get all the way through your new religion's version of Genesis One before she says Stop! and starts quizzing you on specific passages, proverbs and maxims which lasts 15 minutes.

Satisfied she calls for eight hand maidens, who undress you, anoint you with salves and touch your skin gently, and you feel all the bruises vanish and yourself be made whole, save, a gaping wound in your mind, and spirit and you call up your sheet...

/===========================================================================================\
Name: Richard Tamarack
Race: Human
Hero Class: Jedi
HP: 50/50
MP: 20/20
XP: -2400!!!
\===========================================================================================/

"My lady, what has happened?" you ask agog at the immense gulf of XP you have suddenly LOST.

Be not afeared, It is within my remit to assign special quests, IF you make it back to your body on time tonight, without me having to expend my divine power to send you there, your debt from the training you just received will be erased. Atarah explains.

"What else then do you require of me lady? And what steps must I take to complete this vital quest? For, so I have been told by your 'First Martyr' whom I now bear within my spirit even an XP debt of 100 points is crippling." You query and declare.

Only for an infant, who cannot readily fight or complete quests, for an adult who has already gained their base stats and skills far less so. There is but little that remains to do, some matters of prophesy, and- Atarah pauses mid sentence here, and you see an angel hovering by what for her humanoid forms is her ear, He didn't!? And the Ferry Captain DID? And she WENT, even restrained? She has HOW MUCH?!? She says, either forgetting to exclude you from her side of the conversation or link you in to what the angel is saying, though you get the jist of it, seems the captain's prediction is coming true already.

You then feel a blast of XP slam into your debt and wipe out a sizable chunk of it, then another, and another, and another, getting steadily smaller each time. When this peal of XP gain is done you look at your sheet again only to see:

XP: -1852!!!

Ah, I see you have gained the XP from the outstanding special quests to help bring Ma'i across the river and through the process of judgement, but I am afraid you may have made both of us an unimaginably powerful enemy thereby. Atarah states, before elaborating further. Ma'i has apparently been serving as a sort of banker for those with extra coins and such and no one to give them too, she takes two of the coins, which since she has not crossed counts for the donation for the person giving them, then scrambles up and down the edge of the river till she finds a cove with people waiting to cross for lack of fee, and passes them on, counting AS a donation from her, and earning extra merit because she is 'sacrificing' her chance to cross for the sake of another. Never mind that she didn't EVER want to cross the river, nor come before judgement and have all her sins exposed for judge and jury to experience, she has been doing this for AEONS, longer than the universe which holds the world of your previous life has existed, and thus has a number of Karma Points banked from it that even the Gods such as myself can only DREAM of. There is no other way she COULD reincarnate than as a God or Goddess, the most frighteningly powerful Goddess the omniverse has ever known. Even if she were to select every single possible upgrade for one of our kind at maximum power she would, to use your world's terminology, 'barely scratch the surface' of her totals, and that my young Prophet means that if she remains vindictive and bitter, both our lives are effectively forfeit, probably repeatedly, for we Gods always remember ALL our previous lives: though yours would end far sooner than mine.