What happens after death in your setting?
>INB4 no afterlife
The god of the dead weighs your heart. If it's a heavy heart it will get eaten by demons, if it's light you can go to your ancestors or reside near your favorite god.
>>46999193
No afterlife.
No afterlife, the corpse breaks down and the particles that constituted it will go on their merry way. Exactly what will happen with all of us.
>>46999193
It really depends on what kind of deity you workshipped, as you will get in their domain if you kept up their "standards".
Before that, Death itself will have a talk with you. He's in charge to send you in the right direction. He's actually a pleasant person for being Death: if you failed to be up your deity's standards, but you fit perfectly in another deity standard, he'll send you in that way.
If you try to run away from Death during this meeting, you'll return on earth as a ghost.
Furthermore, if you failed to follow any deity, and/or you never wanted to do anything to do with any deity, or you were faithless, without being actually evil, Death will propose you to join him. Either as assistant, or in his personal Limbo (it's a very peaceful calm place, eternally bathed in the twilight.)
After you reach your afterlife, you have 3 options.
1- enjoy (or don't, if you're in hell) the afterlife as you want.
2- Make career and become an angel/demon
3- Reincarnate
This overall sums it up the whole thing.
There are a few specific situations regarding to what specie the dead person is. For example, feys never truly die. They just reincarnate in other fey shapes eventually, as their spirit drifts in the fey realm until then.
Soul returns to primordial chaos/logrus and dissolves. Perhaps becoming a new soul later on. Sometimes soul doesn't quite make it back and ends up hanging around in material world / Sheol.
Although some deities might take the souls of their most devoted followers - mind, really devoted. Most of gods find life unseemly, if not utterly repulsive.
>>46999193
Your Soul goes to the Gods, your mind goes to the afterlife.
Unless of course you're a Warlock. In which case both are devoured by your Patron.
>>46999193
It depends on what you believed in life, but the gods do have objective judgement of whether or not you deserve it and for how long. Muslims slap up with Allah unless they were mass murderers. The Greeks chilled down in Hades. Athiests go nowhere.
Going to hell is a variable thing among all beliefs, but the underlying theme is one of brutal, harsh lessons that you neglected to learn in life. If you were mentally ill and not in control of your faculties, the punishment would be less severe for you than a scumbag drug dealer rapist who had every chance to not but did anyways because it was easy and he liked it.
Your Soul is devoured by Ymgorith the Gibberer.
Once character has experienced this so far.
His player was rightfully disturbed.
He has the whole "ascend towards the light" moment, before a demented screaming started, and he was dragged back into the chaotic blackness and his existence ended in fear and panic.
>>46999482
Isn't liking to do evil things a mental illness?
Depending on if you're a Hero, Villain, or mook, it's different. Heroes go to the Throne of Heroes and are enshrined as patrons of the forces of light, while Villains are sealed within a huge concrete wall spanning the length and width of Hell called the Wall of Sin, forever watching, never able to leave. Mooks get the Prinny treatment.
Of course, it later turns out that the Mooks have the best deal, as being enshrined in the Throne of Heroes plants a subliminal mind-kill command into the spirits of Heroes slaving them to the whim of the god of Light, who has deranged himself into a fascist analogue of SMT's YHWH, and the Villains, well, they're forever stuck in Hell's equivalent of the Source Wall. At least Mooks get to come back to life after some time.
>Fantasy
The Soul, with the life force of the person killed, stays with the body, even if there is no signs of life. The soul and life-force both gradually become weaker and weaker. Depending on the person and their willpower, this may take up to a month, but your average person will lose their life force in about 48 hours. In this time, their soul CAN (if they are willing) be transfered to a soul-less body or a machine, however this process is painful and can result in unforseen consequences.
>Cyberpunk
10 levels of death. (11 if you count the time of death but they wont get revived that quickly so why bother) ranging from DEAD 1 to DEAD 10. Every 3 minutes (OOC time in-session co-ordinates with IC time when out of combat, so I time it) the DEAD level increases by 1, and the DC to resuscitate increases by 4, until at DEAD 10 they are permanently dead.
>>46999193
The earth-mother recycles your soul into a new one.
>>46999511
Oomp, edgy
>>46999427
I really like that. May use in my new 5e game.
>>46999193
A lot of different things can happen, various gods offer afterlives, but if you don't worship them you likely reincarnate. Unless you don't and your spirit sticks around in which case you can end up a ghost, a nature spirit, or a demon, or possibly forcibly manifest a physical body and effectively come back to life. If you don't worship one of the gods that offers an afterlife and you die in a fae domain you likely end up with your soul being twisted into a new fae. There are also various creatures that can eat souls, many of which target the already dead, though none of those actually completely destroy the soul, and depending on which eats the soul something different will happen to the left overs of it. Some consume the soul adding it into themselves, others just drain the energy of the soul and let it continue on as it would have otherwise, while a few others keep the soul inside themselves as souls continuously produce energy that the creature then strips away.
It varies from culture to culture, and considering most of their cosmologies are true, there is a good chance it's all correct.
For my own character's culture, and half the party at that, on death the part of the Soul that was the Body, where you experienced and felt, returns to nature.
Sea burials are common and their body will return to the sea. Their conciousness will join the innumerable in their choir of life.
This is the same with land burials, they will become apart of the world. Bodies that are cremated join the air whilst their ashes are tilled into the farmland.
In time, a voice may wish to once again walk apart of the rest and return into a body where it is born once again.
The exception to this those that are cast into the very lifeblood of the land, the magma that flows deep below.
Those that are cast into the volcanoes that dot the landscape are gathered by The Great Lady of Fire, to remain with her.
Only those who served her priesthood or those that she had personally touched are allowed this privilege but she will not discriminate against those that cheat this system. It's purely a mortal misconception that has never been addressed.
Meanwhile the part of the Body that was the Soul, the place where you knew and learned, is gathered by wisp-like fae to the great lagoon at the centre of it all where it may finally live like the body it once was held prisoner within.
Under the sky and above the waves, watched over by the goddesses and gods that came before, most will just swim endlessly or sleep forever.
Those that bore evil within them from the world of mortals are seen to by The Maiden's Voice of Compassion. She talks to them and will decide if they pass on or not.
Often she will have the part of the Body that is the Soul follow The Master of the Many Teeth where he'll head out past the surf, deep into the ocean.
Once there, he'll reshape their form and they are reborn as the many predators of the water.
>>46999193
It's not consistent among species. Humanoids and wild animals can end up in any number of afterlives OR reincarnate, Fey return to the essence of Faerie to be reborn, Angels just /don't/, Demons only do so on their own terms, Elementals are confirmed to be soulless despite their intelligence so they dissipate, and Dragons?
Not even the Dragons know what happens to Dragons when they die.
Scholars have tried to determine just WHY the rules work differently for all these different kinds of beings. So far, no luck.
>>46999439
>le dibs bedora xDDDD
>>46999193
You go to the realm of your god, if you don't believe in a diety, don't have enough faith, or just die in the wrong place you become a spirit until you get banished by a motley crew of adventurers
>>46999193
It's up to you, really. No that's wrong, it really isn't. All creatures have souls, every single one. How connected the body and the soul is is what determines sentience. Humans and certain other creatures, magically speaking, all but don't have souls. Animals, spirits of nature that don't have bodies at all, and certain other creatures are pretty much between 90-100% soul. Animals, in general, are far more powerful than humans magically. The issue is that they aren't sentient, which prevents them from using magic. Mice, one of the most powerfully charged species, could live eternally if they had the faintest idea how to use their natural potential. In any case there are beings, many, that collect souls and sometimes eat them. Other ones reform bodies for the wandering souls in a process called 'reincarnation,' others yet just collect souls to trade, to eat, for any reason. It really depends on who you speak to when you're alive.
If you are more than 95% evil you go to hell
If you are less than 50% evil you go to heaven
If you are in the middle term you reincarnate.
On the rapture, people go to the place they should go based on the previous rule.
The exception are the guys in the middle between 95% and 50%, the universe we live in will restart and after this happen, those guys will reincarnate.
When the universe restart the guys on hell or heaven will merge themselfs with reality
>>46999193
Pic relatedhttp://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/41901253/
>>46999193
SJW alert
go back to tumblr
>imb pol
1) There are no female angels
2) Angels are not black/brown/diversity coloured
>>46999193
“When I die, I shall go before the gates of Gormontontr. There, Crone the gatekeeper will cry: “Mortal, tell your tale! Prove your worth!” I shall have one chance, and one chance only, to lay my every victory, and every failure, before his perch. If I speak truly and justly, I shall be admitted to the tontr, to take my place among the worthy dead."
>>47000151
>female angels
Male ones are confirmed?
>Angels are not black/brown/diversity coloured
You're right. They're tiger headed and shaped like wheels, also able to shapeshift into any other form they like.
>>46999193
The soul goes to the soul plane, where there's nothing but other souls. Souls can communicate with each other and share experiences, but they don't remember anything about their past live(s) at arrival. They progressively remember everything, starting with the most recent events. So the main entertainment of souls is to share with other souls what they remembered "today". When the soul remembers literally everything about all his past lives, it's sent back to the mortal world where it loses all his memories and starts a new life.
New souls are created sometimes, but the normal is reincarnation. There's no nirvana or anything similar.
There's other "afterlifes" since divinities and other powerful entities like demons can stop or slow down the reincarnation cicle if they want a soul for themselves. And of course there's not a single religion in the mortal world that knows how afterlife actually works so, in those cults, afterlife can vary a lot.
>>46999193
That depends. If you die before your time is up, you get the oh so lovely reward of being funneled into what can best be described as a cosmic basin of all the souls to ever exist. It's not exactly pleasant: imagine feeling your very being, constantly squished amongst the essence of countless billions of others like some existential sardine can. If someone could access this basin though, they could pluck whatever souls they pleased out of it.
Comparatively, if you die of running out of soul, not just old age, but of a literal, metaphysical ticking clock striking 0, you are permanently gone. There is nothing left of you to preserve. Which may or may not be kinder than an eternity with all of your closest friends you never knew existed.
In the later stages of the world, when technology was far advanced, people that were about 100-110 would just keel over of apparent totally synchronized body failure. Every ailment someone of their age would normally suffer from cured, they'd die without the slightest hint of warning. This was the only time at which it was truly common to actually run out of soul. Science, of course, moved to rectify this problem, which created option three purely on accident: having your soul absorbed by power hungry necromancers or their creations, and used by them to soar to greater heights. And so the great necromantic apocalypse came about.
>>47000151
1) They can change their shape.
2) See 1.
And wouldn't angels be tan to brown anyway, you know, coming from a Middle Eastern religion and all.
>>46999193
>inb4 no afterlife
But anon, I last ran Delta Green and there was no god.At least, not one that would accept himans.
>>47000211
>Male ones are confirmed?
Bible specifically mentions they kept sleeping with women.
Genesis 6:2InB4 bible studies anon has a different interpretation
>>46999193
Used to be, everyone got judged by the God of Death to see if you were serving your god's will and doing good. If you were, you'd go to that god's version of heaven; if you were, their hell. For example, the God of Combat's good worshippers would get the position most suited to them in his celestial army, while the others would be forced to be noncombatants. With some of them, it might be hard to tell - the God of Brutality and Slaughter turns all his worshippers into front-line blood-hungry berserkers, and those who fall are forced to the front lines where they're more likely to fall again - but as a general rule the good are served by the evil. Also, if they committed great wrongs against a particular god (poisoning an honorable army for Combat, or burning down a massive forest for Nature), they can claim you as one of their penitents.
Then the God of Fire made his coup. Now, Death is gone, and his court is a farce - those who go against him are thrown to the other gods to do with as they will with the strong suggestion that they be punished, and all others are set to worship him forever (so what he did to Death won't come back and bite him in the ass, also for his vanity). Holding the Guiding Lantern infused with the Eternal Flames makes him nearly invincible even to divine magic, so the other gods are practically forced to put up with it.
>>47000151
>angels can't be whatever they want
I don't think you understand the meaning of FEAR NOT, mortal.
>>46999193
There are actually multiple stages of existence, and it makes more sense to consider them all intermingled than as afterlives of one another.
The Mortal Plane is the one everyone's familiar with, where people are born, live, and die. This process is irrefutable, and any attempts to achieve immortality fail because every person's soul has a set Mortality limit. To extrapolate, even in the event of the death of a person's flesh, their soul will remain on the Mortal Plane, and can be interacted with fairly simply. Resurrection is fairly cheap and common, because it's a simple task to draw in someone's soul and bind it to their old body (presumably after repairing whatever killed them, otherwise they'll just die again) or make a new body and bind their soul to it. The catch is that once a soul's mortality limit is reached, it ascends for good, and nothing can change that.
The step above the Mortal Plane is the Spiritual Plane, where your soul goes after it's time on the Mortal Plane is up. Here the various deities have established their own domains, and it's in these domains that most souls reside. Life here is actually pretty similar to life in the Mortal Plane, with the exception that you have no more physical needs and you're now immortal in the most literal sense of the word, so people can indulge themselves more freely. It should be noted that the domains of the deities aren't actually particularly segregated: traveling from one deity's domain to another is as simple as walking down a road for a few thousand miles to get to the next one.
>>47000151
1) Angels don't have a gender; male pronouns were classically used in most languages in reference to things lacking gender, or of ambiguous gender.
2) The angels depicted in the image are literally black and white, not the pale salmonish-pink tint of Europeans or the varying shades of brown for Africans and Middle Easterners. You don't really have any pretext to deploy the SJW bogeyman. I don't know why you would even give a shit if they were actually depicted with a variety of human skin tones, considering humanoid angels (if they were real) would reflect all of the races of humanity created by God.
>>47000536
(Cont.)
The last is the Celestial Realm, where souls can choose to ascend to after having spent enough time in the Spiritual Plane. The big caveat to entry to the Celestial Realm is that you have to leave behind your identity, shedding whatever attachments you had to both your Mortal and Spiritual lives. No one knows what the Celestial Realm is like, though it is known that souls will occasionally drift down from the Celestial Realm to the Mortal Realm for reincarnation. These souls remember nothing of their past lives, so what exactly goes on in the Celestial Realm is up for debate. It's thought that it's the domain of The Supreme Being, an entity of unimaginable power who created the world and the deities who rule over it, who in turn created the mortal races. The only beings who remember The Supreme Being are the deities, who only remember it insofar as it gave them life and placed them in charge of the world; otherwise it's completely mysterious.
>>46999193
The brain is harvested and reinstalled into the machine processors.
The rest of the body is recycled into nutrients for the other organics.
A juvenile organic from the nursery is installed in the deceased organic's pod.
>in my setting
The mortal soul is not entirely seperate from the body, it's closer to a continuum between the two. When a mortal dies, the incorporeal soul drops down into Underworld. It's not so bad, but if you're there because you simply died you're definitely one of the smaller fish in the pond.
The end of the soul closer to the body stays with the corpse and, if unpreserved, dissapates back into the biosphere along with the rest of the remains. If it still resembles what the mortal was in life, some of the soul still remains.
This forms the basis for the Necromantic arts, where a mage can channel a perverted life magic into the remains using the soul as a vessel and reanimate the corpse. Ambient necromantic energy produced my magical flora and fauna can also raise the dead in this fashion.
A mortal in life may also make a pact with a cosmic deity for their soul. Most of these beings only have power over mortals if the mortals consent to it, making eldritch bargains the most common form of interaction between these deities and the material plane.
Many mortals have bequeathed their souls to one Loureus, who in exchange gave them hardier forms to survive the post-apocalyptic Earth. When they die, their bodies crumble to dust as their soul is full in absorbed into Loureus and used to reconstruct its grievously injured body.
>>46999193
No afterlife.
The soul is merged with the divine consciousness, disappearing until the next cycle.
Except when you're a fookin' elf. Then your soul is sucked into reincarnation machine, and some time later you're born again, gradually restoring knowledge and memories of previous lives as you grow older.
>>46999397
Germans dude. At least they got us to space
When someone dies in my setting the soul leaves the body and seek out a new one.
The soul itself has no capability to remember (same with rational thought(only the body does)) some deeply ingrained habits might remain.
>>47000541
>male pronouns were classically used in most languages
Most languages actually have gender neutral terms.
Also man was gender neutral at first, wer- prefix designated male, but this was phased out by the 13th century, possibly due to Norman influence, ala France, where there is no such thing as a gender neutral word.
>>46999346
Gee, real fucking original kiddo
>>46999375
>>46999397
No imaginations
Depends on the black phoenix mood, or his 33 assistants.
Their job is carrying the soul to the soulthrone and let it sort it out (reincarnate, ressucitate or be sent to the goddesses realm) but they can either let the soul roam as a potential undead or insert it forcefully into a pregnant female to make a soul hybrid born.
When you die, you go to the underworld. It doesn't matter if you're good or bad, the god of death welcomes all.
Some mortals are branded by the gods during their lifetime. When they die, the god of death hands their souls over to the god that had a claim on their souls. He does not judge their souls, but he acts as an arbiter when there's conflicting claims on a soul (for example a righteous god has a grudge on a person who killed one of their priests and wants to punish them, while an evil god is impressed by their evil acts and wants to reward them).
What happens to your soul after it is handed to a higher god depends on the god and the nature of their claim. Some reward their faithful with a place in their realm. Some damn those that have wronged them into their own version of Hell. Some reincarnate their greatest servants to serve as their chosen one in the next life.
If no god has a claim on you, you're stuck in the underworld.
The underworld is, naturally, a depressing and gloomy place. This isn't necessarily how the god of death would like it, but the higher gods make him keep it that way so that their own realms serve as better rewards for their faithful, or harsher punishments for their disdained. If the underworld was a fun place, why would anyone feel the need to serve a god?
The god of death is considered the lowest of the gods by the other gods, but perhaps the closest to mortals. The gods rarely die, so they see him as beneath them, but every mortal will eventually meet him.
This actually makes the god of death one of the most sympathetic gods to mortals. He's highly benevolent. Even seeing all the things they have done in their lives, both the absolute good, and horribly wretched, he welcomes all with open arms without judging. If he could, he'd keep all the souls for himself and make his realm a pleasant place for them, but unfortunately, it's not in his power. He harbors a sort of grudge against the higher gods for this reason.
>>47001990
nice i will steal this
>>47002047
Feel free too of course. I'd be glad to have someone else use something I thought up.
>>46999613
No, that's being a monster.
Mental illness would be someone unaware of their actions, like an insanity plea but less shit because Gods.
>>46999193
It depends on the god your pray to and the bloodline you're a part of.
For my current character, if you've led a virtuous life and you die with your head attached to your body, your essence ascends to your ancestral homeplane, full of all those of your religion who have ever died, awaiting the call from your god to engage in war with other gods or summoning by your descendants to fight as spirit warrior. You spend eternity in an infinite world of magic, with a strange sense of time, waiting your call.
If you die by decapitation, then your spirit is trapped in the head until the skull is destroyed. The head holds the power of your spirit, allowing dark magicians to harness it for vile spells.
>>46999777
more or less this, though only the realm natives and their religions acknowledge this. mixed with a healthy dose of soul essence being the source of magic so it's used judiciously.
the foreigners don't realize that their souls are being hijacked when they die
>>46999397
Ah, yes, as it says in the bible. I've read it too.
But then, at the rapture, God will return and recreate the faithful in a new, pure, holy body, with which to build the kingdom of heaven! Oh, I do love a happy ending.
If you are a follower of the glorious sun god then your soul goes to THE GLORIOUS SOLAR ZIGGURAT.
That lifetime spent laboring in service to God, building monuments, perfecting your craft, pursuing good labors, sweating and bleeding in the fields beneath the beating sun.
I hope it was good practice, because now you get to spend ETERNITY doing the same thing, expanding the GLORIOUS SOLAR ZIGGURAT to make room for other good sun-worshippers!
GET BACK TO WORK
>>46999193
get in the bag
>>46999193
The soul is made up of roughly three parts - the energy to live, the identity, and the memory. Most of the time, the memory and identity are split off from the life energy to continue on as spirits in the afterlife, while the life energy is recycled in the creation of a new form that will develop the rest of the soul as part of creation and living.
However, sometimes the identity and memory do not move on properly. Sometimes the identity continues on as shades and spirits who haunt the world but don't remember the reason for their anger or sense of sadness. Sometimes identity an memory carries on partially in the creation of a new being along with life energy, so that the new being 'remembers' being someone else and believes their true life and identity is false.
Necromancy is not as frowned upon, since it's usually just taking life energy and putting it back in a dead body, not tampering with the identity or memory that makes up a true soul.
>>47002808
OUR GOD IS A GOOD GOD
PRAISE THE SUN
When you die, your body returns to the earth, but your soul is sent to the gods. Each god is not so much a single entity, but rather a collection of pieces of souls that represent their aspect. For example, if you were an angry fucker, all of your soul that is filled with anger will be sent to the God of Hate. However, if you did a couple of good, virtuous things, but just enough to fill your pinky toe with virtue, that toe will be sent to the God of Virtue. It then becomes like a single speck of red playdough in a big thing of yellow playdough.
Now, what this means for the players is 1) Reviving the dead is an absolute pain in the ass, because you either have to convince a single god to give up a small piece of themselves to do it (unlike most Cleric spells, which is just a show of power) which brings back only one small aspect of them, and leaves them with only a partial soul. OR you piss off numerous gods by taking pieces from all of them to rebuild a single soul.
On the plus side, the dead can petition the god they inhabit to intervene in times of dire need. It's a very, very low chance, but it can happen.
>>46999193
Your soul re-materialises at the Soul Exchange in the setting's single great city. Here, you can cash in your life insurance and be bound into a pre-prepared clone of your body, or, if you had no insurance, you can sign a contract of lifelong servitude in exchange for a mass-produced slightly misshapen body known as a homunculus. These homunculi form the basis of the economy, in a manner similar to slaves in the classical world, and have the unfortunate effect of squeezing the working poor and dividing society quite starkly along class lines. In theory a homunculus can save up money to buy insurance for his NEXT life, but in practise they are given little free time in which to pursue a trade and the tedium of thier lives leads most to waste what little cash they have on drink, drugs and gambling (not hookers because homonculi lack sex organs and sex characteristics, being produced via alchemical processes rather than being grown by biomancers from living cells like a proper clone)
Not all people choose to rebody themselves, tho, and there are probably ten ghosts wandering around for every flesh and blood person. Ghostly existence is pretty miserable if you don't know any magic that can interact with the physical world, or that you can use to manifest yourself so you can speak to the living. Eventually, most ghosts give in to the need to /feel/ things again and make their way to the Exchange to sign a contract with a necromancer.
Not mine, but my DM had one God in charge of the afterlife. The God of sin. All of the other gods don't care about the dead, they are masters of the living. Now, the God of sin was an extremely harsh God. If you die with any sin, even just lying to your mother when you are 2 years old, you go to hell. However, there are 2 ways to get rid of your sins. Be absolved by a priest, or flaggelation. Also, when a priest absolves you, that sin becomes his. Obviously no one likes this deal, so there are only about 5 sin priests in the world. My character was one of them. After every dungeon, I would make a huge fuss about absolving people of their sins, and everyone thought of me as that guy because I was acting extremely overzealous. They also thought I was a masochist because after everyone else was asleep, I would wander away from camp and summon an angel to flaggelate me and absolve me of sin. Only sin priests knew of the true nature of the afterlife, everyone else was just told that they would go to their gods domain after death.
Which setting?
In my space-fantasy, you wouldn't experience an afterlife. The magical energy that makes up your soul just goes back into the unverse for further use in whatever.
In my urban fantasy setting there's essentially a bureaucratic heaven, so someone tallies up all the good things you've done and weighs them against the bad. You get sent to purgatory for however long you were committing bad deeds, usually defined as something that will knowingly harm somebody else, and then you just experience bliss for eternity. If you were below a certain threshold of bad, you get tormented for however long your life was, and then your soul gets reincarnated as something.
>>46999193
your body needs to be burnt to ashes, so your soul can enter the Ashen Lands and become one with humanity's Eternal Soul in a state of unending, blissful numbness. fail to cremate a dead person, and their body may rise again as a revenant or a wendigo, mad creatures feasting on human flesh. even if they do not become undead, their soul will remain trapped inside their flesh and in a constant state of pain. every citizen of Ven Val knows this.there's no actual, proven afterlife though.
>>46999193
>What people believe
Depends on the religion, 1) they are reincarnated into a paradise free of suffering
2) depends on their strength of will, most simply pass into a realm of the dead where their ego disintegrates, others may persist consciously as individuals who drift between dreams and reality
3) their consciousness merges into a gestalt godhead and sustains reality
>What really happens
Most people get reincarnated as monsters, some are reincarnated as people, and the rare few go and join the One True Goddess, Noire, as citizens in Lastation
>>46999193
If you are killed or your body fails of old age, future, you go to the plane most associated with your soul's temperament automatically- your soul is attracted to it by nature, and will acquire a physical form upon entering that plane, if they need one. This is why there's the impression that elementals can't really be resurrected. Unless they have changed their psyche since their last death, they will spawn anew where they originated from with a new body and memories immediately. Resurrection fails because the target isn't actually dead.
The reason souls have an 'attunment' is because they're designed to give sapience to esoteric forms, like towers of water, not just ones that can support humanoid brains. Originally, people were supposed to be able to change their body shape at will, and losing all of your memories and intelligence simply because you wanted to shift into a tiger for a few minutes to catch a bird or some shit would have been obnoxious.
Planes one can visit upon bodily death include but are not limited to:
>Four Elemental Planes
>Positive Energy Plane
>Negative Energy Plane
>The Celebration
Basically the 'hookers and blow' plane, this plane appeals to the senses and is ruled over by the goddess of dance and passion.
>The Arena
Doubling as one of the three Hells (Hell of Fire), there is no mercy on this plane. Fighting happens all of the time, and whoever can get to the master of the plane (who resisdes in a fuckhuge tower guarded by very powerful monsters) may or may not be granted a wish. Generally, a wish asking to leave is considered cowardly and would get you punted out of the tower by the ruler to the sound of uproarious (and mocking) laughter.
Despite being an absolute wasteland, some people who were considered heroes in life can find themselves here, outfitted with the finest gear and given free reign to slog away at the universe's biggest assholew guilt-free.
>>46999193
Soul is sent to the netherworld where its memories are washed away and it passes the gate of rebirth to reincarnate.
What you get reborn as depends on your karmic luck.
Those who did evil spend their next few hunderds of lives as animals and maggots while those who commited good become powerfull or lucky individuals.
>>47003399
>The Grace
Material Plane Plus, hosted by the part of the pantheon that was formerly mortal.
Anything that can be found on the Material Plane can be found here, and you can either live out an idyllic existence farming/smithing/whatever or going adventuring with free respawn. Harassing other residents will result in consequences, and most people who come here wouldn't do it anyways, so it rarely happens.
>The Vast
An eternally-large field of sand- people can walk for miles without being tired or just lie there, contemplating the world. Philosophizing is encouraged- everyone gets a impossibly-sized book and a pen that never runs out of ink. Projections of people from the past containing their true opinion on things, the knowledge of any age pressed in front of you, this is basically the plane for considering the nature of the universe.
>The Maelstrom
Another of the Hells (Hell of Psyche), this is a realm of madness and psychic torture, when it's not just just vast wastes of nothing. things not capable of existing in any other plane go here, and residents may experience from time to time foresight of the future that may or may not be real.
There's a lot more, but I'm not bothering to write it here.
Then there's always true death for people who don't want to re-enter the cycle. Upon entry, you experience a lifetime on every other plane, and are asked if you're sure by Death at the end of each. If you say no, you go to the plane that made you stop as if you had normally died.
>>46999193
There wasn't supposed to be an afterlife, but then some dickass god killed death, became a god of death, and bargained with the other gods for the rights to devour the souls of the faithless in exchange for giving the gods their own afterlives.
Now the primal force of Death is back and wants to blow up the heavens and hells, so they can go to their proper place in the soul crucible.
>>46999397
How are your particles gonna go on their merry way if they just reappear at the last bonfire you rested at?
>>46999193
The AI gods in the sky collect your soul and put you in a matrix-style digital world. They make no judgement on your acts in life, they just collect your essence for it's residual magical power.
The simulated afterlife though, is many magnitudes grander than the "real" world, as it contains the soul of every champion of civilization that has ever lived. And there are many. Once you arrive inside, depending on where you land, your acts will be judged by mortals in one form or another. Then, you will be rewarded or punished as they see fit.
Some jurisdictions are harsher than others, but for the most part, rewards and punishments are almost never eternal, and most of the time they are fairly brief. Less than 100 years in most cases.
>>46999193
If you died well valkyrja come to take you to Valhalla or Muspelhiem, of not well sucks to be you better luck next character. Also da hell is wrong with that picture, why are archangels Seco d to last? That makes no sense.
Long story short your experience of the afterlife is a gestalt dream of the native culture's beliefs about the afterlife and spirituality in general. With enough change in the culture, the spirit world will change to match; with enough change in the spirit world, the beliefs, thoughts and actions of the people will change to match. It's a vicious cycle of the material world warping the spiritual world, which warps the material world in turn.
In other words, it depends on where you are in the world. If you die in your homeland (or otherwise visit the spirit world there), it will be culturally familiar to you, even if you have personal beliefs that differ from the majority. If you visit the spirit world of a foreign land, your spiritual influence will not be enough to overcome their combined dream and you will be in an unfamiliar, foreign spirit world.
If a foreign realm's population was suddenly replaced with half of your own people, the spirit world would be a turbulent amalgamation of two warring cultures slowly congealing into one. If the process of cultural change took place more gradually, the original spirit world would begin to exhibit increasingly foreign traits. Regardless, over time the people in the real world will come to reflect this new emergent culture
>>46999193
I find it's best in settings if people aren't 100% sure of what happens after death. Some religions say some things, and some say others. There are a number of arcane theories, but nothing conclusive enough to be sure. Resurrection magic is rare, and those who are brought back either have no memories of their time dead, or strange dreamlike memories that fade quickly and do not corroborate with the memories of others.
The two halves of the soul split, allowing the mind to leave the body. Then, assuming the mind has gone to some afterlife, the soul's two halves some together again and merge into a single soul, whose purpose is to anchor the mind to the afterlife. As for where the mind itself goes... well, that depends. Nobody can seem to agree, and there may be no right answer.
As a side note, liches actually exploit this by trapping their soul halves in a special prism which allows them to merge it in life rather than in the afterlife. This removes their body from the normal cycle of growth and degradation which the soul's two halves normally regulate as well.
>>47000272
>>47000151
You're retarded. The hebrew word that was translated was gender neutral.
If you've completed a pilgrimage and bound your soul to a gods, you will enter their dream upon death.
Some poorer and distant folk will collect parts of their dead family members over time and save up their cash to one day send someone on a pilgrimage and post humorously bind the dead with a god. They hope to bring the souls of their ancestors into an afterlife.
Spoiler: it doesn't work.
>>46999193
In my game, you are sent to the afterlife, where you must voyage to the god of death. Then, in order to convince him to restore you, you must fight one of his seven champions:
Bloody Mary: The tank of the group. Heavy spiked armor all over, and a nasty mace.
Abner: A big, hairy monster that is like 40% mouth attacks with ferocious biting and ripping.
Osiris: Has two energy reserves: your sins and your virtues, which he uses to fuel his attacks.
Persephone: Ghost queen,l commands powerful magic attacks. A bit of a glass cannon.
The Sandman: Uses magic sand to repeatedly make you fall asleep. Not much damage, but annoying.
Azazel: Your classic demon dude. Attacks with fiery sword and dark magic.
and finally,
Larry: A skeleton that hates you. Entire battle is basically him kicking you in the dick while swearing profusely.
Once you beat one of them, you get sent back to before you died, good as new. If you die in the afterlife, you just restart your voyage through it.
Upon dying, you are reincarnated as another member of your race. Not species, race. This happens without the input of any gods. There is a short waiting period, so it is possible to bring back the recently dead. However, this method involves someone else dying. The magic system involved is a bit complicated and I won't go into it.
However, if your whole race is dead, you become a ghost. Ghosts can only affect sentient beings. The ghosts of the Silver Nation dwarves wail piteously in their charred fortresses, unable to drive out the unthinking dragons that walk their shining halls.
>>47005756
>races are hard coded into nature
/pol/ pls
Either it goes into Limbo, or the realm of a power that lays claim to their soul. Some also remain in the Astral Realm.
>>47002817
This.
>>47005884
DUDE THIS IS WHAT LARRY FROM MY PREVIOUS POST IS BASED OFF OF
Nobody knows what happens after you die because it's not something the fucking player characters are going to be able to experience or run through, so what's literally the point of having a "le so originull xDDD" afterlife if not to flaunt how le originull you are?
Various cultures claim various things. Nobody knows for sure. The gods aren't telling the truth. That's that.
>>46999193
Everyone goes to not! hell then heaven if they aren't shitlords, those who did very little evil are shown the cruelties they inflicted, assuming showing them the error will give them enough grief if they're that goody goody
Everyone else is punished on the god of deaths judgement, people in hell don't know how long.they'll be there, so they don't know if they'll be there forever or if the cleansing is a short trip to heaven
>>47005982
Because it adds flavor to the setting and sometimes you can have an adventure based around going through the afterlife and grabbing a soul or something?
>>47006136
How boring and unenaging must the setting's material world be if that's the case?
>>47006160
g8 b8 18-yr-old m8!
>>47005884
>Yeah that's but can real cool you get in and all the fucking bag now?
>>47006136
It's time to play something other than D&D, Anon.
>>46999193
They go to one of a dozen hells. Not that it's a bad thing, they just measure the weight of your sins based on what hell you go to.
The first three are rather pleasant. Either living out your greatest fantasies over and over, or living a simple (after)life of peace. Further down is an eternity of blackness or boredom where you are isolated by yourself in a vast world with no other life. Further down are the punishment kinds of hells where souls are tormented.
>The catch is the process of living in the afterlife, regardless of which hell the soul is sent to, slowly strips that soul of memories and personality, until all that is left is the essence which goes back to the mortal realm to be reborn.
>Memories stripped are kept as stories that gods use to pass their infinite time experiencing themselves. Because the every changing world of mortals fascinates them.
>>47006194
>he knows that my setting is literally a copy-paste of my favorite videogame and i have to do cuhrazy originull afterlife adventures to keep people interested
>ha, what an 18 year old
>>47005982
I mean my PCs are starting out the game bargaining with the goddess of the underworld after they've died, so it would be somewhat relevant.
>>47006350
Literally why? What kind of underworld deity would feasibly let anyone that isn't a servant, a god or a demigod leave under any circumstance?
>>47006249
Wouldn't torture drain the souls of all memories and essences after a single year?
>>47005772
Four races of four species (humans, elves, dwarves, goblins) showed up suddenly 500 years ago. They were in cities/tree cities/fortresses/dark fortresses that were already built. Nobody remembers what happened before then, not even the gods. Seers can't see before that point. The calendar is based off that point. It's called the Dawn of Memory.
As for races being hard-coded, they can mix. Most Satin Nation humans have Searing Nation blood and worship some of their gods.
Can you come up with a better reason why the only ghosts are found in the dead dwarven nations? Something special about dwarves?
>>47006449
The lower you go, the more time slows down. What passes as a year in the mortal world can stretch for decades in the lowest level
>>46999193
You end up inside a dirty garage in a suburb outside Pittsburgh.
Setting 1:
You go into the vast empty space in the sky where all the souls go, consequently get invigorated by spooky outside energies, might gain an envy of the living, might go into the moon to haunt it as it passes through the empty space in the sky or fall back to the planet surface in a bolt of lightning as an undead.
Setting 2:
Either get snatched by your god to live with them (good end), reincarnate (neutral end) or get sucked into the reverse-gnostic stagnant chaos of the outside and back into mindless oblivion (bad end).
>>47006393
A underworld deity not opposed to bargaining for one.
Of course they'll eventually die again someday, but they'll be able to temporarily extend their lives in exchange for some kind of servitude.
Generic paradise/torture for eternity bit, but with a twist. Upon death a soul can voluntarily give up their chance at paradise/forgive their sins by serving the rest of eternity in the War God's armies. This War god fights an endless war against what's essentially demons of entropy that seek to consume the afterlife, the mortal world, and everything in between, and the War god and his fortress is the only thing stopping them from gaining a foothold.
It's like Valhalla only less reward and more 'serve your people'.
>>46999193
I always have trouble understanding if archangels are supposed to be on top or almost at the bottom of the angelic hierarchy. I mea, Michael & co are supposed to be big deal, aren't they?
>>47007010
Archangel I think is both an Order and title, Arch meaning over or the top. The Order of Archangels are second from bottom, but the Archangel Michael would be the Topmost Angel Michael. I assume the named Archangels are probably Seraphim or the Archangel of each Order.
>>47007010
As far as I know the archangels are actually at the top. Looking it up again on wikipedia says a lot on the subject but also that actual canon is basically non-existent on the subject.
>>47007252
I've read the Living Creature, the angels Ezekiel saw, are on top, but they were a few different types of angels. It's pretty confusing, too, since different religions seem to put different angels on top.
>>46999427
I like that angels and demons are career choice, I want to play a setting in the demon university
SQUEAK.
>>47008207
>Seriously, are you majoring in 'Mortal Studies?'No one's summoned a demon for inferal knowledge or power in centuries. You'd be better off getting an Infergineering degree, or maybe becoming a Lawyer.
>>46999470
What if your an undying light lock from 5e UA
Your body decays, becomes one with the earth, etc.
Your consciousness ceases to exist as a unique wavefront of perception and your perception of the world stops influencing reality. Where you go, nobody knows - you could then perceive existence in another reality (as the infinite possibilities include that happening), or your death could cause reality to unravel if your personality was influential enough.ive been getting too into this quantum perception/consciousness bullshit
>>46999193
From a recent campaign setting
>What the religions teach the mortals
Follow your god's will and you will be rewarded for eternity at their side in the afterlife
>What is really going on
The gods got tired of spending all their time overseeing the afterlife so they attempted to automate it. Their first few attempts resulted in catastrophic soul sickness that eradicated an entire species, which the gods later rebooted with some minor changes.(The original race was Cat people. The improved version are Humans. Only the oldest of elven historical records mentions this and no one believes them)
Finally the gods just gave up and set up a system where souls would be dumped into an infinite plane of nothing, without memories, and left to their own devices. These souls eventually went insane, warped themselves and became demons.
All demons were once mortal souls and all mortal souls will eventually become demons, all because the gods didn't want to have to work for their followers.
>>47008631
Noone got an answer for this.... I kinda like that scenario but I don't know how my character would feel about it
It's Forgotten Realms D&D, so souls go to a purgatory dead world for a bit while the paperwork goes through to have a god let them into their domain.
However, they need to get there. So immediately after death Myrkul shows up and >>47005884
>>47008770
>quantum perception/consciousness
One of the worst forms of worldbuilding cancer.
>>47008794
You mean they couldn't even come up with auto soul recycling (reincarnation)?
The Gods weren't exactly sure what to do with all the angry spirits flying around in early creation, so they just created some endless grasslands (being too busy to actually put effort into making another geographically unique world), shoved them all in there and told them to be nice to each other and avoid talking to strangers.
Once their workload lessened, they looked back and saw that the placeholder afterlife worked well enough for their purposes, moved the senile God of Creation there to give him something to do with all of the souls wandering aimlessly, and called it a day.
>>47005884
CLICKETY
CLACK
GET
IN
MY
SACK
>>46999375
inafter no afterlife
They remain in the party as ghosts, because the dormant creator-djinn-god in the center of the labyrinth-dungeon-planet attracts the remnants of his own essence back to himself.
When the party reads a scroll and portals into the world before the ghost PCs are turned to flesh again for the duration of their stay within the scroll.
The true consequences of death lie when such a ghost is mentally and metaphysically torn apart by the other older, insane ghost residents of the library labyrinth.
Freed spirits go into some sort of paradise.
The normal ones usually dissipate, as the boundless good times of the afterlife eventually fulfils all wishes their mortal mind once had.
More ambitious one eventually break out of their personal paradise seeking feelings that they no longer find there.
Most become abominations, like a gluttonous person becoming a all-eating ooze. Others are picked up by the gods to become champions under their rebirth cycle.
>>47012667
They couldn't get it to work properly without their constant supervision so they ignored it. It was one of the causes of the soul sickness.
The gods in this setting were excessively lazy and self absorbed. The players got tired of their shenanigans and changed the direction of the campaign to murdering all of them and they managed to eradicate three before any of the others got off their asses to try and do something. At least two gods switched sides halfway into the conflict because it wasn't going well for them.
It's rarely a consideration I make, since as >>47005982 the afterlife is best left somewhat mysterious to the players unless the direction of the campaign is outright set towards unraveling it's mysteries- but...
For my money I kinda like something resembling animism- wherein upon death spirits of the living inherit properties of nature or objects relevant to them. Most spirits are just sort of vacantly wandering the world- stirring and becoming more active on full moons- misty nights, and in remote places like swamps and mountains, or abandoned cities.
Spirits are difficult to communicate with because they aren't bound to a physical form- and indeed they might be in more than one place at the same time if different parts of their spirits are attached to different areas or things.
A spirit of a soldier who died in battle might have an aspect of him as a soldier lingering on the battlefield where he died- on the day he died every year- or on days that resemble the conditions of the battle. On other days his spirit meanders rather aimlessly down his favorite steam from his childhood in his home village- practically inert to any outside stimuli.
Mortals contacting the dead is a difficult and trying process which requires almost as much work as undoing a lich. Objects relevant to the spirit have to be taken to a place relevant on a date relevant and only with proper knowledge and invocations (possible also the use of drugs, meditation, or spiritual mediums) can contact be made, and then of course it's subject to the dead not quite being as coherent and knowledgeable of their status as you'd like.
The dead do however know they are dead for the most part- and unless truly enraged or seeking vengeance for an act will rarely outright seek to harm or inconvenience mortals.
If they do however- you are in for some grudge tier horrible shit if you've managed to fuck up that bad.
>>46999193
You rest in the warm embrace of the First Mother. She is the host of souls. From her springs all life, to her returns all life.
Sometimes a great hero is reincarnated (or in a few cases, re-born completely), because the First Mother thinks they are needed (or another god who does petitioned the First Mother.
Except elves. Elves are eternally cursed, and have no souls. They fade into eternal sleep.
>It's ANOTHER thread where everyone posts their shit and nobody responds
Great! What a useful, productive thread of absolutely no feedback or discussion at all!
>>46999193
>having a setting where angels are not eldritch abominations
>having a setting where they are just lame looking fucks with dumb wings
>>47012393
I guess real life is cancer too!
>>47008631
No such thing in the setting.
Warlocks are people who bargain away their souls to "dark" entities.
>>46999193
The soul is placed back into the cycle of reincarnation, placed back into the living world by the World Tree.
It's ambiguous. There are plenty of varies beliefs on what happens, but whether they are true or not is something unknown.
In my setting, the afterlife is a place of nightmares
It's a wandering wasteland where you feel pain but never truly die. Your worst fears and nightmares are present there, everyone's is. Wander far enough (literally the size of the universe or maybe larger) and you reach the end. Go past the end and you're reborn. Aside from that new souls are created all the time. No time passes in the afterlife.
The afterlife is designed to make you a better person
>if you're wondering, the afterlife typically looks like the cover art of apocalypse now. You know, the one with a red sky and black ground
>>46999670
WE ARE BUILDING A WALL AND WE'LL GET EVILDOERS TO PAY FOR IT.
