3/6/2024 0 Comments Realm of forgotten soulsThere, psychopomps and emissaries from the various planes ensure that the newly arrived dead make their way toward the courts of the goddess. In most cases, the unfettered soul departs the body, proceeding upon the legs of its journey along the River of Souls most discussed by scholars and theologians.Įventually this progression reaches the Purgatory, the plane of absolute neutrality. The body becomes inert material, while the soul manifests nearby upon the Ethereal Plane, either invisibly or as just one more indistinct form in that ghostly realm. Metaphysically, though, what happens upon a mortal’s death is not so vague.ĭeath severs the connection between a mortal’s body and soul. The bodiless state following death proves difficult for most mortals to comprehend, much less accurately report on. But even those returned to life after centuries have little sense of what they were doing or how they occupied themselves during that time. Some remember glimpses of unfamiliar faces and bits of conversations with strangers, accompanied by a sense of timelessness. Mortals who have experienced death often describe the experience as a feeling of floating or lifting, being drawn toward a misty ribbon of light, or being swept along in an indistinct crowd. Souls retain the personality and memories of a mortal life for a period, though these fade over time and through transitions into other states. Over the course of a mortal’s life, sentience, experience, and outside influences might realign a soul’s innate neutrality toward extremes of law, chaos, good, or evil. SoulĪn invisible metaphysical energy that provides motivating force to mortal beings. When merged with a soul, quintessence takes on the alignment of that soul and becomes an outsider, its shape typically following specific planar templates. It can recreate any material known to the Material Plane, and can react and change as though alive, though it has no innate intelligence. It has infinite potential for shape and state and is reactive to prevailing beliefs. QuintessenceĪ philosophically aligned material that makes up the Outer Planes. When a petitioner dies in this way, its body decays away, its energy recycled back into the quintessence of the plane. The process of becoming a petitioner wipes away personality and memory from the soul, and in time a petitioner could ascend to a higher form of outsider life gradually merge with the structure of the plane or be destroyed by peril, misadventure, or predators. Once a mortal soul has been judged and sent on to its final reward, it may become an outsider known as a petitioner. Not being mortal does not necessarily make one immortal. MortalĪny being that hasn’t yet been judged since receiving a soul. The point at which a mortal’s soul vacates its body and joins the River of Souls. These terms are used in impossibly broad contexts and are fraught with exceptions, but the following philosophical definitions apply to the vast majority of circumstances and do not change or undermine existing rules. Terminologyįor the purposes of this discussion, certain terms take on specific meanings, sometimes uncharacteristic to their wider use. Among the planes it is called the River of Souls, and all who live will someday journey upon its endless course. All are destined to travel this mysterious route at the end and the beginning of their existence. It is nothing less than the pulse of the living multiverse, the answer to the questions that haunt both the living and the dead. It is a cycle as old as existence, responsible for the stability of the planes themselves. Beyond the guesswork of evangelists there sprawls a vast and vital truth, a cycle of creation and dissolution responsible not only for every life, but also every death, and the endless transitions between the two. These mysteries of existence are at once the best- and worst-kept secrets in the entire multiverse. Yet no sooner does a soul pass the border between life and death and glimpse the answer than the mystery reveals itself to be a part of a far vaster enigma.įor to the dead, the greatest riddle of existence is life. No greater question vexes the living than the mystery of death.
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