Implied Setting Element Death

Voadam · Aug 27, 2003

Under the core rules you can die and be brought back. Your soul can even choose whether or not to accept coming back.

Do you remember anything of what happens when you are dead? How much consciousness does the soul have?

In many myths this is detailed out, in Norse myths, heroes are brought to Valhalla by Valkyries, in Egyptian Anubis takes you to have your heart weighed on a scale of Maat. In FR you go to your patron or to Kelemvor. In Ghostwalk and that FFE setting something different happens

What happens in the default greyhawk setting?

If you are brought back do you remember any of it?

In the game I currently play in, my character was brought back and I treated it just as if he had been unconscious or in a coma, no afterlife memories and he was even suspicious when the clerics told him they had raised him and he owed them.

WayneLigon · Aug 27, 2003

Voadam said:
Under the core rules you can die and be brought back. Your soul can even choose whether or not to accept coming back.

Do you remember anything of what happens when you are dead? How much consciousness does the soul have?
...

If you are brought back do you remember any of it?

I've seen a number of things.

1. The fighter in the group had had a terrible tragedy in his personal life before he became an adventurer. He was the defender of his small mountain village, but was taken unawares by orcs and crucified, forced to watch as the orcs killed and/or ate his family, his friends, everyone he'd ever known. An elven raiding party that had been tracking the orcs killed them all before they could fill the warrior, and he became a wanderer. Eventually he joined with the adventuring group.

He died in an encounter, and the decision was made to attempt to bring him back. He came back and lay on the altar screaming and crying because though he'd chosen to come back so he could continue to aid his new 'family', he'd also briefly been reunited with his wife, his kids, his parents, all his old friends, etc.

His wife told him to go back and protect the others, since they would face a great trial soon.

2. In 2E, we had a similar incident. We needed to ressurect a person long read so he could tell us how to destroy a particular item. He sat up, and immediately tried his level best to kill the priest and all of us. Seems someone didn't appreciate being jerked out of Paradise to a frail, old body again. We had to swear to kill him again

3. And we saw the other side of the coin once. We ressurected this really evil wizard because someone in the party needed him to translate.. something. It was a long time ago. But he blinks, takes a breath of air, and becomes our completly devoted friend, turns over a new leaf, becomes this freakin' champion of Good... seems someone didn't like being slow-roasted with basil and lemon-butter in the Abyss.

4. In 3E, we've had a couple people look at their background again, look at the DM, shake their head and say 'no way in hell I'm going back there'.

WayneLigon · Aug 27, 2003

WayneLigon · Aug 27, 2003

Psion · Aug 27, 2003

Well, it's like sleeping IMC; sometimes you remember your dreams, sometimes you don't. But even if you do, the memories are often vague and fuzzy.

WayneLigon · Aug 27, 2003

Quad post. Can't see anything through the slowness, and then nothing refreshes so it lokos like nothing changed.

Agback · Aug 28, 2003

G'day

I can't speak for Greyhawk, but I had a rather amusing set-up in my 'Great Vale' campaign. In the afterlife the souls of the dead joined a great queue that advanced slowly across a limitless grey plain under a leaden sky. It was impossible to see to the head of the queue, and not quite clear whether the queue was advancing to any definite goal, or was just following some unknown leader on indefinite wanderings. New people kept appearing at the back of the queue at the rate of about one per ten seconds. (A distressing proportion of them were infants.) Souls shuffled forward at a rate of about one place per ten seconds.

Now, the PCs in that campaign ended up buying life insurance from an NPC who owned a mitre of True Resurrection, which was apparently not an unique item. And one player (a mathematician) was moved to wonder whether perhaps one 'Raise Dead', 'Resurrection', 'Reincarnation', or 'True Resurrection' might be being cast, somewhere in the world, about every ten seconds. In which case all the progress of the queue could be attributed to returns from the dead.

This was in fact not quite the case. The fact, never revealed, was that souls did not come before God for judgement until they were beyond the reach of any means of returning from the dead, ie. until they somehow died of age or 200 years had passed since their deaths.

Regards,

Agback

WayneLigon · Aug 28, 2003

One thing we did was this: reincarnation is also a fact, and occurs normally as well as through the spell. What happens when someone stumbles on your remains and casts Ressurection when you've already reincarnated through natural processes?

That's where Spontaneous Human Combustion comes from....