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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sejs" data-source="post: 1392628" data-attributes="member: 4910">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.</blockquote>

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