I am death, destroyer of worlds

[Crothian]

I have differnt kinds of death. There is compasionate death, vengefuldeath, a death enity that justs kills .....death has had many forms and when one dies, another takes its place. They all are basically demi god like beings for the TRue Death god, a nutral being the rules the afterlife.

 

[Testament]

For my homebrew, its a case of "Which one?"

Death has aspects, like almost everything else, and different people focus on different ones. There's three main ones though.

First, there's the Goddess of the Dead, Armisael*, usually known to her followers as The Weeping Angel. She represents the release of death, the ending of life and suffering and the transition from flesh to spirit; and is one of the most widely worshipped deities in human lands. She's usually depicted as a young dark-clad woman, pale and inhumanly beautiful, eternally crying. Needless to say, her clergy hate and despise the undead as perversions of the process. They and those who would create them are the only thing that Her clergy will raise weapons against, they're complete pacifists otherwise (as in Vow of Peace from BoED pacifism).

Second, there's Chiron, the Entity** of Death and Slaughter, representing violent and premature death. All those taken by violence fall under his purview, as do the perpetrators of such violence.

Thirdly, there's The Ending (AKA The Nameless), the little understood Entity that represents Death as a final and inevitable force. No-one's exactly sure what it is, as it's not in the habit of explaining itself, and as an Entity, its mind is completely alien to coporeal beings. On the rare occaisons that someone encounters The Ending and live, it has made no efforts to communicate, and has given only the tersest replies to inquiry.

Most Necromancers revere Magic deities or Entities, or have Fiends as patrons. Armisael hates the undead, and The Ending...who knows?

* - Yes, for the record, I drew the name from Neon Genesis: Evangelion, and I do know what it means in English (Angel of the Womb, or of Birth, depending on translation). I don't care, that Angel will ALWAYS be associated with death in my mind.

** - The Entities are beings that embody concepts in a very raw and primal way. Unlike Gods, they don't really have minds or portfolios, they embody their singular portfolio in a much rawer way, and do have alignments. They predate most Gods, and while less powerful, they do grant spells.

 

[resistor]

The most famous instance of the quote was when Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project, utterered it upon witnessing the first test of the atom bomb at Trinity Site. He, in turn, attributed it to a specific Hindu text he once read, though I'm not familiar with the title.

 

[Krieg]

The goddess of death (LN) is known as the fisherwoman, or the caster of nets.

In the end no one escapes her nets. She continously hauls in her catch & brings them in front of the judge who decides their ultimate fate...

Her priests are zealous hunters of the undead as they perceive this as an attempt to cheat their mistress.

Her priests are generally feared and avoided, but everyone pays her at least nominal homage as they know she is the one who will pull them into the next life.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

In my homebrew world Sidereal (whose gods I pulled for my siblings campaign) Death is a god. He's part of a trinity of LN gods who're in charge of the whole mess, but he's the only one who's solely concerned with it. Malcheius judges souls, Hel incarcerates the ones with no place else to go (atheists and such), and Azrael (Death) does the footwork. He doesn't allow worship of himself, and has the power to act in the world physically to stop it. However, there is a race of sort-of undead creatures who venerate him with his permission.

 

[Ibram]

There are two main aspects of death IMC, each god is known by many names and has followers in ever culture.

One is known by the name Thanatos in the lands where my campaigns usualy take place. Thanatos is also known as the "Guardian of the Way" and the "Keeper of the Barrier". It is his job to maintain the barrier between the land of the dead and the land of the living, and to guide souls to their rightful place in the afterlife. Allignment wise I'd have to say that hes LN-TN, his only concern being that fate follows its course. His priests are greatly feared and respected, as it is said that those who offend Thanaots (through Necromancy, or by not allowing the dead to be burried) are cast into the Nether Realm, where the ancient gods lie in wait. It is through his priests that burrial rights are performed. His followers are fanatical hunters of the undead, seeing them as a violation of their gods sacred duity.

The other is... less well known... called the "Eater of Worlds" or "He who Knaws on the Roots of the World" this second "god" is the embodiment of the Entropic principal. Sentient in a way that trancends the thoughts of mortals and god alike It is the ultimate, the omega, the "Ender of Days". The only ones who would ever worship such an entity are deranged madmen who long for nothingness.

 

[Galethorn]

(Note: my campaign is a low-magic setting that I run with Grim Tales, so I dropped a lot of the D&D assumptions)

In my homebrew, death isn't an entity. In fact, the gods aren't even "real" in the usual D&D sense. Various religions may look at it differently, but at the same level of truth as the one at which wizards do use magic to make things explode, and dragons breath fire, there are no* physical manifestations of gods--nor one for death--with adgendas, who communicate with followers.

So, religion is based on faith, not gaining the ability to cast spells. To be fair, there is a certain level of supernatural stuff going on involving the gods (mostly with fate/luck), but nobody gets spells. On the same vein, there is a certain luck/karma/fate/destiny sort of thing going on with death, in that there's a bit more poetic justice than on modern-day earth, but there isn't any sort of sentience behind it.

Now, at the same 'level of truth' I mentioned earlier, the afterlife is fairly simple. When people die, their spirit leaves their body, and lingers for a while, depending on how/why they died. Sometimes, through extraordinary means (very rare magic/rituals, or extreme willpower, or a reason to continue living), someone can return to their body, so long as they weren't dead (or mostly dead, depending on how they come back) for too long. If the spirit feels ready, it rejoins Yril (the life/nature goddess).

Undead come in two varieties; lingering spirits and animated corpses. The lingering spirits, obviously, are the sentient undead, who tend to be lingering on their own accord, for whatever reason. The animated corpses come to be in a much more evil way. You see, the latent 'spirit energy' that exists in the world can be manipulated with magic, and can be forced into the bodies of the dead. This spirit energy effects the corpses in a much more raw, powerful way than the natual spirits did in life, so skeletons can move on their own accord, but they're inherently violent and unthinking. The process works best around recent death (since the spirit energy is 'closer'), so necromancers do some pretty...bad things to make sure that they can get the best/most minions possible.

So...undead make the more ardent worshippers of Yril very angry, and they go out of their way to destroy them and their creators. This happened a lot more in 'ancient times' however, due to the near mutual destruction of both groups in more recent times. A sort of druid-necromancer war, if you will.

Well, that's all I have to say about [Death] tonight...I may think of more in the mean time.
* The 'earth goddes' is the planet (known as Yril), so she does physically exist--and she has an agenda: the cycle of life.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I had a ranger NPC, can't recall the name at the moment, who the PCs met on an adventure in Carceri. He was tracking down a druid who had destroyed his home. The PCs met up with him and adventured with him a while. He was a very dark fellow, with bad health (5 Con), and had been living a very hard life, but he could track anything across anywhere. Eventually he left after avenging himself and searching for a new path that led him away from the PCs.

Years later, he showed up again, mysterously. A prophesy had been discovered about one of the PCs that he would enter the gates of Valhala led by Death soon before the coming of Ragnarok. The PC wasn't too thrilled about this, but accepted it (worshipper of Thor). They then slowly came to realize that the ranger was Death, and had the duty to perform one service for the Powers, to bring the PC across the bridge separating the mortal realm from Valhala.

Thus Death was a ranger with 5 Con.

 

[Ace]

My game world uses reincarnation after a year and a day as an absolute fact known to everyone --

The plane you reincarnate too depends on alignment -- Good folks are reborn to the heavenly realms or Midrea if they choose to return -- Evil ones The Hells or Midrea depending on circunstances. Neutral Folk return directly to Midrea --

This continues until enlightenment is achived and the sould rejoins the one force --

While there isn't a Grim Reaper per say but there are a few Underworld dieties that function as Pyscopomps and sorters of souls

Few people are really afraid of death in the setting -- some cultures embrace it -- needless to say Midrea is very violent

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Death is Life in my campaign.

Lusreid of the Beginning and the End is the god of Life and Death. He is the never-ending cycle of the Soul. True Neutral, as some others have mentioned their death gods are, and also the essence of Nature.

He is worshipped by midwives bringing new babies into the world, as well as assassins who wallow in killing.

Edit to add: He has been known to manifest, with a form fitting to his purpose for manifesting. i.e. if he appears as the Lifebringer he may appear as a treant or a midwife. If he is manifesting as the End of Everything, he might manifest as a skeletal figure, or merely an...absence. A nilihity.