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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Byrons_Ghost" data-source="post: 948923" data-attributes="member: 7396">MetaphysicsIn general, it could be said that the races of Arcanis believe in reincarnation. The key exceptions are the dwarves, who are cursed to be barred from the afterlife. Dwarven souls are said to be stored in gems in temples, giving rise to a type of ancestor worship.The elorii are technically immortal- but almost all eventually succumb to diease, accident, or violence. There are elorii who are millennia old, but they seem to accept the fact that they will eventually die. When this occurs, the spirit travels to the Soulspring, where it awaits the birth of a new elven child. It is interesting to note that an elf's bloodline is determined by the spirit entering it, not the bloodlines of the parents. So elorii essentially have two families- their biological family, and their bloodline. Elorii whose bloodlines differ from their parents' are mentored out to a family member or friend of the appropriate bloodline, this person assuming a sort of godparent role.Humans- and by extent Val and dark kin- believe in a form of reincarnation tied to Neroth and Beltine, the god of death and the goddess of the afterlife. The Church teaches that there are three aspects to life- the body, intellect, and spirit. When the body dies it is buried or burnt, and is no more. The intellect (which includes memory and learning) also begins to fade, but this takes longer. If a body is not buried properly, the intellect may stay on in this world, giving rise to incorporeal undead. Likewise, many high-ranking priests of Neroth are turned into undead, for they believe that their personalities and memories are lost in reincarnation, and consider this the same as death.As for the spirit, the morning rays of Illir (the sun) transfer the spirit of the deceased to the underworld. There it is judged by the Valinor, the celestial servants of the Pantheon. If the soul has been a faithful servant, it is transferred to Paradise to be with the gods forever. Otherwise (and more commonly) it is cast into the Cauldron of Beltine, where it's sins weigh it down to the bottom. As Beltine stirs the cauldron, souls are reborn into new bodies- but the more sinful the soul, the longer this takes.The end result of all this is that raise and resurrect spells do not work as well on Arcanis as they do in other settings. The deceased has only until the next dawn to be raised- otherwise, the soul has gone to be judged. Bringing it back then requires the intervention of both priests of Neroth and Beltine, and neither is overly inclined to do so. There are tales of bodies being interred or otherwise hidden from the rays of Illir, but the tales often mention that the darkness eventually commits the body as one of the undead of Neroth, or an even worse fate.</blockquote>

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