The aferlife in your world....

[Ace]

If you have a homebrew setting. What is the afterlife like in it? Is there even an afterlife? Whiel I have not made a homebrew setting, if there were to be one in mine, everyone would go to one place, I guess you could consider it a heaven of sorts. And everyone goes there, even evil people. The reason being, that when an evil person dies, when they are dieng, they feel a peace, and no longer have a desire to do evil deeds. For those who die very fast, as soon as they arrive, they have this feeling of peace.

So, what is the afterlife like in your hombrew setting?

Well IMC a person keeps reincarnating (every 366 days exactly) until they either achieve goodness or trancend the wheel of being

If they achieve goodness they they pass into the Heavens for a period of time till they are reborn or pass higher on the wheel eventually to trancend the wheel

If they are substantially evil they may pass into the hells if they feel (on a spiritual level) a need to do this.

Eventually they will be purified and reborn until the cycle is complete

This happens with all sapient races although the heaven each attends is different for each race and even to a degree each person

A ghost or a wraith or spectre is a soul trapped in an etheric shell unable to move on. Corporal undead are either inhabited (without a soul) or cohabited (with a soul) by a demon

It is possible to bring someone back from the dead

There is no level or XP cost for this normally but the spells have a fixed limit

The l5 version "Call Back" it works for 72 hours (till the soul departs the primae material plane) The reverse version "cast away" willd estroy ghosts and such if they fail a save

The level 7 version works as long as the body is intact and in decent shape. You can patch up the wounds but if the body was serverely damaged the spell will fail

The level 9 version Reserection -- works up to a year and a day or can unite a ghost/etc after any duration as long as a body (even a clone!) is provided

 

[Sejs]

In my games the Etherial Plane serves as a sort of 'spirit realm' in addition to its other normal qualities. The border etherial mirrors the area it's adjacent to with some small variation. Everything's greyish and a bit misty, colors are washed, and seeing at any great distance just doesn't happen - you get ever thickening grey mist past a certain distance. Day and night are reflected in that one period has the grey mists somewhat brighter than the other. All in all, it's sorta similar to the near umbra for those folks that're familiar with the White Wolf cosmology. Further out, the deep etherial is very akin to a fog choked sea; you can't see very far at all, and there are no features to speak of normally, as there's no prime to mirror. Demiplanes rise like islands out of the mists. Further past that and you reach the outer planes.

When a mortal dies, one of two things happen. If the moral has issues that are left unresolved, strong ties that would otherwise bind them to the lands of the living they end up hanging around in the border etherial until such time as they're ready to move on. When that happens they seak out a Ferryman - an etherial-native outsider who exists to fulfill this purpose - and make their journey to whatever final reward awaits them. Some souls that are particularly strong willed, lucky or what have you, can actually manifest on the prime material as Ghosts (ala the ghost creature). Destroying a soul is difficult to impossible: you can trap it, bind it to its former body by making undead, turn it into something else (via a poly any object cast while on the etherial plane), or eat it if you're one of the few creatures that can eat souls. Other than that, the best that can be done is to discorporate the soul for a while... after which it reforms. Barring those few rare mishaps, death isn't something that really bothers the dead - there's no more life to take. Certain extraplanar agents can go and retrieve a soul if there's warrant for it - servants of a god, powerful demons and so on. To do so however, they need to have a reason; demons don't go romping about reaving souls willy-nilly, because if they do they quickly find themselves on the bad side of the god of the dead. Such a condition never persists for long.

If a mortal dies, and has nothing that needs to be resolved they progess immediatly to Go and collect $200. Someone that dies with nothing to resolve is picked up by a Ferryman right as they make the transition to the afterlife and are whisked off to their awaiting Hereafter. Generally this is what happens to the very old or very young. The very young are innocent and too simple to have big issues that need taking care of, and for the most part the very old have had time to take care of their affairs while they were getting ready to die.

If there's a large concentration of people - a very old, big city for example, there's a good number of dead hanging around in the border etherial. Some people take a long time to resolve their dealings. Few never want to go on, being afraid of what may meet them on the other side. A soul can't be forced to move on.

Once on the other side of the deep etherial, a soul gets to basically chill out and enjoy some eternal bliss, blessed state of non-being, or whatever their ethos states they get to do if the Got Things Right while they were alive. Those that were evil, wicked, mean and nasty tend to find the places they end up arn't so nice. And while the outsider population of the upper planes get on well with those souls in their care, those in the lower planes arn't nearly so scrupulous. A soul in hell is pretty much on their own; if they can get on well, hey good for them, but they can pretty much rule out getting a helping hand just because of who and where they are.



Outsiders: mortals souls are at no point transformed into outsiders. It doesn't go soul ~> larva ~> dretch ~> imp ~> etc etc. If you were a mortal, at no point are you going to be a pit fiend, no matter how hard to try or how many boots you lick. Outsiders have their own interesting little death cycle. Kill an outsider pretty much anywhere outside of the prime material and it's destroyed. Gone. Finito. If an outsider (or elemental for that matter) is present on the prime material plane and then subsequently destroyed, its energies (body/soul... or whatever. outsiders don't have the same dualistic makeup that mortals do) disperse and eventually make their way back to that outsiders plane of origin. Once there, they reform... eventually. They don't necessarily reform as the same type of creature, however, and never as the same individual. Kill a pit fiend, and he may eventually reform as another pit fiend. Or a couple hamatula, or a bearded devil and a bunch of imps, or a big friggin horde of dretch. In any case, the creature or creatures have no recollection of their former existance - for all intents and purpopses that's a brand new critter with a clean slate.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Oh, and in my homebrew world of sorts. It is impossible to destroy a soul. No magic or Psionics or whatever can destroy a soul in any way.

 

[Crothian]

When a person dies in my homebrew the sould gets sent to Purgatory (Mongoose PDF). There the soul is guided on a journey through the 4 seasons of purgatory to come to gripes with their life and their death. For some the journey can take many many years, for others it can be a rather quick experience. After the soul travels through the four seasons they get judged by the Judge (Atlas's Sacred Ground). He then send the soul to were it is supposed to go (standard Outer Planes).

 

[shadow]

Since my homebrew uses a quasi-Judeo-Christian theology, my world has a heaven and a hell. Beyond that, not much more is thought up about it.

 

[s/LaSH]

In the world I'm working on right now (a setting for my Twilight game), a person's spirit is released upon death. What happens to it at that point?

Well, it's free to be acted upon by the forces of the Universe. Normally, it would float around and eventually reincarnate, or vanish after an unspecified period (of seconds or centuries). But it was discovered that, while the spirit was inviolable, it was also manipulable in this state - you could capture it, bind it to a construct or new lifeform, etc. So when the Ancients disassembled their solar system and built their new home, they did so in six dimensions. The 'mortal' realm is simply the middling point; at increasing intervals (10km, increasing by 10km each time) 'above' and 'below' this astronomical sphere, they built 'layers' of Heaven and Hell. These layers quickly begin to manifest supernatural qualities, and can be fractured into smaller regions congruent to parts of the mortal realm's surface. That surface is many millions of times greater than that of Earth, and factions in Heaven and Hell's many planes have individualised their many realms thanks to these fractures.

When a spirit is released, a gentle force acts upon its moral polarity. This force can be overcome with the proper preparations, and is how you get undead, self-reincarnations, and other things. Untended, the force will push the spirit up or down, and if the spirit is particularly 'charged', it may travel past several layers before lodging there and reincarnating.

Good spirits ascend up the hierarchy of planes (even from hell planes; redemption was always the intention of the Ancients). When your spirit ascends, you reincarnate in a form more glorious than that of your previous life. On the planes of Heaven, these are known as angels. Angels breed, creating whole races of angels, and when these creatures pass on, they too are judged by the universal force. Heaven planes are inimical to evil, and sustain life processes thanks to their very being.

Evil souls go down into the Hell planes, where they reincarnate as small, squirming, pathetic creatures in horrible environments. The aura of Hell planes is harmful to good creatures, perhaps in an effort to keep them from practicing charity on those who haven't been properly processed yet.

Some powerful creatures contain several spirits. This is very weird, but explains why the population of the higher (or lower) planes decreases as you continue. After death, these spirits scatter, and may or may not come back together again.

There's a flaw in the system, however. The Ancients never intended their multiverse to work without supervision for all these millions of years. Now, souls that plunged innumerable distances into the Hell planes, and subsequently picked up instincts for cooperation and restraint, have been judged 'better' and floated up from the depths, reincarnating as bigger and better creatures all the way. These creatures are still evil, but as they're less evil, they've been rewarded. These are the demons, and they're often troublesome.

For plane travel and the drive for exploration are not limited to the mortal realms. Demons and angels are quite capable of moving around, just as mortal adventurers are. (I use 'adventurer' in the historical sense, of someone who sets off on perilous journeys in hope of finding profit.) This has led to some very interesting chapters in history; the Riftsea Region (hey, I'm not gonna map out every iota of a world where one plane alone contains hundreds of millions of countries) has been wracked by two wars resulting from one demon invasion (and the second war was a reaction to an angelic invasion in territory the demons had claimed), and a mass migration caused when the first lot of demons decided they couldn't conquer the mortal world, so they invaded their demonic neighbour realm instead; refugees fled to the mortal realm, where they carved out their own little empire.

Planar explorers haven't found a limit to the ascent and descent of the planes of Heaven and Hell yet. This is in sharp contrast to the elemental realms, which (if the spiritual planes are up and down) form the points of a compass in spatial dimensions 4, 5 and 6; they are a set distance away, and there's nothing beyond them but double-infinite vacuum.



This setup allows just about any kind of afterlife, any kind of upper and lower planes, and any kind of upper or lower lifeform (I've got angels that have more in common with xenomorph queens, and demons who overthrew their wicked leaders and now wander around the world going, 'ooh, shiny' on their cellphone implants, just in the one region).

 

[Nifft]

Arron the Cyclic Animists: You are re-born in a different form. I mean, we have this spell reincarnate, isn't it obvious?

Sandy the Strict Animists: You re-join the spirit world, which animates and gives magic to our world. Perhaps your journey as a mortal will help instruct your spirit-self and make Nature stronger and more resiliant. So, it's important to be good to nature -- the tree you burn could be *you*.

Theo the Thaumaturge: Your soul remains on the ethereal plane as long as there are those who remember you. Once you are forgotten, you sink into the deep ethereal, falling towards Hades. Weak souls, easily forgotten, physically manifest as soul larvae. Strong souls manifest as fiends. So, it's important to be strong in life.

Nazreal the Necromancer: You get re-animated and serve me, unless you're smart enough to make yourself into a lich. Seriously, folks, if there was some cosmic reward, how would I be able to get so many servitors? Only bad things happen to the dead.

Claire, Cleric of Raelor (LG Sun God): Your soul, if worthy, flies up to join our Lord in eternal glorious light. Of course, if unworthy, you still join the lord in glorious light -- but it burns your impure soul for ever. Hell and heaven are the same place, it simply affects different people differently. So, be good for goodness sake!

Sophia, Cleric of Selene (LN Moon Goddess): Your soul is judged by our Lady at death. She sends you to heaven or hell, depending. Some who transcend good & evil may stay in her realm eternally, gaining knowlege and reaching "serenity", which is either better than heaven or simply a tale told by sinners to comfort themselves, depending on who you ask.

Klangor, Cleric of Cernunos (CN War God): The Horned One's axe splits your soul into its four parts: Honor, Courage, Spite and Despair. They fight amongst themselves, and the winner determines where your soul spends eternity. Very weak souls may be destroyed by the force of the blow.

Ellen, Cleric of Eilonwye (CG Music Goddess): Death makes for a few good songs, but many poor conversations. Come, let's find something more joyful to do with what time we are given.

Wonko the Alienist: When you awaken in the true reality, you may seem to "die" here. It's all an illusion, quite a convincing one if I may say so... but damn it, why do there have to be so many snakes?!?

There are other schools of thought, too, but I'm tired. I gotta collect this stuff into a document...

-- N

 

[Moe Ronalds]

In my d20 modern game: (My players get out. You'll only be ruining it for yourselves if you read this)

In the world of my d20 modern game, the moment you die you typically find yourself waking up in a hospital room wearing a long white hospital gown. You sit there for a few minutes, when a somewhat pale, bony man with large spectacles walks in wearing a long black doctor's coat. He introduces himself as Graham Ray Pierre. He typically investigates you, taking measurments, annalyzing your wounds and checking your possessions. Finally, he reaches a hand into your chest and rips out your heart. He examines it for a moment, before placing it back into your chest. He scribbles out some sort of prescription, and stuffs it into your hand. Immediately you are transported to what appears to be a secretary's desk.

The lady is a large, overworked woman with frizzy red hair wearing a green rubber dress. She puts out a cigarette, and in a grizzly voice says "Welcome to The Gratuitously Omnipotently Divine incorporation. We'll be seeing you to your accomidations shortly." After a period of wait, a figure comes out to you. It's typically a representative (either a god, angel, or other figure associated with death) of whatever religion you practice comes out and takes you to your after-life. Atheists are usually given to whatever religion most closely resembles their actions in life.

G.O.D. Inc. was founded about 1000 years ago, when all the relatively benevolent deities in the heavens thought they would be most useful as a group. Since then, they've gladly given admission to any non-evil figureheads of religions that have formed hence, though the older religions form the board of directors for the company. Most of the administrators of G.O.D. inc. rarely agree, but all arguments are quickly halted by their enigmatic and omnipotent C.E.O.

Not long after the formation of G.O.D. Inc., they've faced competition from The Diabolically Evil Mass Of Nastiness Company. However, they've never lost as many clients to them before as they have been in recent years. DEMONco is known for having a tendency towards Style over Substance, and is recently having to make cuts to keep some more outrageous promises budget-friendly (things like bumping off someone they stupidly promised to give a bootful of gold every night, etc...).

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Depends on what race the person's of.

Most people have a standard go to heaven/go to hell belief on the afterlife. After death, a member of the rather mindless group of celestials called Psychopomps comes and gets them, and escorts them across Da'ath (a planar combination of the Astral/the Ethereal/Limbo) to either heaven or hell, depending on whether they were good or evil. The souls of the agnostic or neutral are usually just abandoned in Da'ath to become prey for some predator there, or to make their own way into heaven or hell, or find their way to the Veil of Paroketh, where they can join the demigod Paroketh in his vigil against chaos. That said, the most chaotic of souls usually end up outside the Veil, in the Far Realm; they usually don't last long here.

If you're a woodwose (think a cross between the Ogier from WOT and sasquatch, a mostly druidic race that values freedom), you'll become part of the Cylenchar (The Green Man) and return to the world which gave you life. The muhalu (kinda like the vanara from OA, except that they're more gorilla than monkey), well, they don't think there IS an afterlife. You're born and you die, that's it. They have a very nihilistic, Crom-like attitude towards their god.

 

[Ackem]

I put Death back into it's place as the undiscovered country. No one knows what lies there and no one comes back to tell. Despite claims by Demons/Churches/Outsiders/Gods to the contrary.