Limbo

Lore & Background

The Limbo of the Fathers is the temporary state of Old Testament patriarchs and other friends of God who died before Jesus Christ. They could not enter heaven until Christ's death, when he descended into hell and freed them—an event known as the Harrowing of Hell. The Limbo of the Infants is a hypothetical permanent status for unbaptized infants who die too young to have committed actual sins but are not freed from original sin. Catholic doctrine neither affirms nor denies this state. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not use the word Limbo.

In Their Own Story

You step through the gate and the colour drains out of the world like blood from a wound. The sky is the same grey as the ground, the same grey as the fog that curls at your ankles and refuses to part. Somewhere ahead — or behind, or all around, because direction is a suggestion here — a figure stands in the middle of a street that has no buildings, no doors, no windows. They are mid-gesture, a hand raised as if to wave goodbye to someone who is no longer there. They have been waving for a thousand years. They will be waving for a thousand more. You walk past them. They do not see you. They never see anyone. The fog swallows the sound of your footsteps before they leave your boots, and you are alone in the grey, and the grey is patient, and the grey does not care.

Reader's Guide

The source article provides no guide or game-related information. It describes Limbo solely as a theological concept, not a location in any game or fictional setting.

Did You Know?

• The term Limbo comes from the Latin word for 'edge' or 'hem,' referring to the outermost part of Hell.
• The Limbo of the Fathers is also called the 'Limbo of the Patriarchs' and is seen as a temporary state, not eternal punishment.
• Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that souls in the Limbo of the Fathers experienced no penalty of sense (fire) but only the penalty of harm (privation of the beatific vision).
• The Limbo of Infants is not mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and its existence is left to theological speculation.