The aferlife in your world....

[Deadguy]

When I started working on my Shattered World setting I really had only a couple of ideas to guide me:

1. There are no Gods in this setting (I was sick of divinely-inspired railroaded plots!)
2. Where standard D&D had Planes, I had Planets instead, orbiting the Shattered World. There were 4 elemental Planets and 2 Energy Poles (the Sun and Darkheart).

But I had worked on a Vampire game set in Old Babylon, so I had some ideas of the afterlife that these early civilised people thought up. And it's not pleasant: a grey waste of ashes where the dead simply endure - all of them, from peasant to king, pious to idolater. I guess it focussed attention on life!

So I got to work. I imagined two great Rivers flowing through the Shattered World, one stream meandering from the Sun and eventually winding its way to Darkheart. And another, equally winding, from Darkheart to the Sun. These Rivers existed anyway, as they were the basis for my Cleric-analogues, the Theurges. When a sentient dies, its Soul is released into the Positive Stream, coming from the Sun. Unless it's unlucky or very motivated, and swims into a stagnant pool, hanging around as a Ghost. Anyway, a normal Soul passes along until it reaches Darkheart, and arrives in the Realms of the Dead.

The Realms are a bleak place, as the Sumerians and Babylonians envisaged, a place of cold ashes. The place is made worse because long long ago a few souls managed to leverage themselves into positions of power over their fellow dead, becoming the first Lords of Undeath. Since souls are a source of power to these beings, they want nothing so much as to cause death and mayhem, and to send Undead back into the Shattered World.

Pretty bleak? I know that one player when confronted by this cosmology said 'Why does anyone bother? It's all pointless in the end!' However, unbeknownst to most, there is a hope of sorts. A Soul that doesn't bargain with the Lords of Undeath may wait many long years in the Realms of the Dead. But eventually they are caught by the other River, the Negative one which flows to the Sun. Carried by this River they are carried at long last into the cleansing Light of the Sun. There, their past and their suffering is washed away, and eventually a cleansed and innocent soul passes out by the Positive River, to return again to the Shatterd World. Settling into a newborn, life begins again.

I am quite tempted, because of this cosmology, to introduce the idea proposed by Monte Cook, of Talent Feats, representing inborn ability. Except that these won't be abilities developed in the PCs early years, but flashes back to an earlier life that wasn't entirely cleansed away in the Sun!

Modesty forbids me tooting my own trumpet, but I do think this is a pretty neat cosmology!

 

[Blue Sky]

IMC, no one really knows where the souls after death, and each group has their own ideas. I come up with a few ideas, but for the most part, if a player asks what happens after death, I let them decide. I'm a firm believer in allowing my players to shape the campaign, so they often come up with beliefs they want to follow on their own.

Elves (and half-elves) don't die, they return to Avalon, the elven homeland in the dreamworld. It's possible to reach Avalon through other means, but it's a dangerous place, where the will of the elves becomes reality.

Dwarves place their dead in caskets of various metals (steel for a noted warrior, admantite for an elder, etc) that are articulated suits forged to look like the dead. These are then placed in pools of lava, where it is said they wait to serve the clan again. An unburied dwarf will rise as undead, filled with hate for the clan he once served.

Orcs believe that when they die a good death in battle, they are given the chance to move on to the next tribe, and hopefully prove their worth again to the Dark Masters. Cowards, or those who die in other ways, return at the bottom of the food chain (goblins) and must work their way up. Some believe that once they work their way through all 13 tribes, they will be freed from the Pact, and be able to rejoin the spirits in what the humans call the dream world.

Humans beliefs vary wildly, from joining the dead in glorious battle (Vahalla), to waiting in the dream world untill they are called (born) again, to being judged by the Angelic Host in a great trial of fire and brimstone.