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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 3192533" data-attributes="member: 40522">I generally try to steer players away from discussing the metaphysics of souls in D&D. For one thing, it's kinda cheeseball to me to lay out the grand mysteries of the universe on a platter. Characters (in the context of the game) debate about the soul and many other issues. If they really want to know about souls, it should involve pilgrimages, consulting saints and religious sages, contact other plane spells and the like. All the things that make a good adventure.I also want to leave myself a little "wiggle room" in case I want to expand later. I generally don't set concrete details about anything- geography, history, social organization or metaphysics- until it's revelant to the adventure. It's ultimately a game, and I haven't seen the game suffer yet because I didn't plot out the metaphysics carefully.I do have some behind-the-curtains ideas about how things work, however. These things have shown up in my adventures from time to time.My ancient-world setting has a distinct Underworld. Many people (sentients with an Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma score of 3 or higher) show up in the Underworld when they die. Others don't show up in the Underworld at all, it's hypothesized that these souls pass immediately onto their final reward. The Underworld is a dreary, grim place similar to Hades in the core cosmology. It's not inherently evil, but as a nexus between the worlds of the living and the dead, it tends to attract alot of evil critters that want to prey on the souls there. The Underworld has distinct regions and kingdoms, where people of different alignments tend to congregate. Sepluchural rivers (the Styx, the Acheron, the Lethe, et cetera) generally set the borders between regions and serve as the main method of travel.Most people that 'wake up' in the Underworld do it around Mount Erebus. Mount Erebus is swarmed with night hags, ferrymen (a new outsider of my own design), and other critters that hunt souls. Some people are captured and sold into bondage, usually in the form of larva. Others manage to escape into Mount Erebus' caverns, where they might wander 'up' back into the ethereal plane- becoming ghosts.There is some thought that a soul can't pass through the Underworld until the body is given a proper burial or is utterly destroyed. Different religions vary on their opinions of this. Generally, people with Knowledge (the planes) or Knowledge (religion) know that the Underworld is an icky place ruled by entire kingdoms of ghosts.Nonsentient critters (those without Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma scores, or those with scores of 3 or less in any one of these abilities) are considered to have 'anima' instead of souls. Animas don't retain their identities after death and usually rejoin some universal consciousness.</blockquote>

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