Death and the Afterlife¶
"Death is when the spirit meets the soul. Anything short of this is still life." — the Core Principles of Moros
Death on Terrun is a journey, and it can fail. A soul does not live in the body; it lives on the Ethereal Plane, the Sea of Souls, and reaches the body through a spirit. When the body dies, the spirit must find its way back to the soul, form an astral projection, and cross the Astral Sea to the shard of the god who holds dominion over it. A faithful soul with a living god arrives in that god's heaven. A soul whose god is dead, whose dominion is in doubt, or whose body was destroyed the wrong way may never arrive, and the Fifth Age is crowded with the dead who did not.
The transition¶
Every living thing has a soul, "even if they are tiny and contain almost no intelligence or power", and the soul is "entirely confined to the Ethereal Plane". What walks about on the Material is a spirit, "an ethereal manifestation/interface of the soul on any plane other than the Ethereal", wearing a form. Mortal forms are temporary constructs; the next form a soul takes "may be totally different to its current form".
When a mortal form is destroyed, "the spirit breaks itself away from the inanimate form and eventually manifests in the Astral Sea as an Astral Projection". Most of the dead person's ethereal threads, the connections to places, memories and other souls, are severed, "though some of the strongest may remain with them in their astral form and the very strongest may even remain after reincarnation". If the soul is bound to a god, the projection forms "just outside the place of its binding" and makes its way to that god's shard. If it is unbound, "it will form in a random place in the astral sea and may roam for an extended period of time before making its way to an astral shard". The 2026 revision calls the general plane where the dead materialise the Netherworld or Sea of Souls, and the subplanes aligned with Astral Shards "the 'heaven' of various theologies"; "unaligned beings wander the Netherworld and are often pulled into one of the subplanes by collectors".1
Binding comes most often through worship, and in some faiths through a formal rite of anointment or baptism. The binding is a gift to the god as well as the worshipper: "When a being's form is destroyed, the bound's astral projection travels to their god's shard as part of their afterlife." It can also be forced. "Many evil deities achieve this through some form of sacrificial ritual, which forces the unwilling soul to become a prisoner in their shard, bolstering its power."
A spirit may be captured while it has no form, "preventing it from forming an Astral Projection (often referred to as a captured soul)". Demons feed on exactly this. A demon's mortiquery is "a collection of spirits which the demon uses to siphon ethereal energy from"; when a spirit's energy is exhausted "the soul itself is destroyed", and even a freed spirit must regenerate on the Ethereal before it can manifest again (see Demons). A soul can also simply die. "A soul can die if its spirit(s) have not been able to connect with a body for too long. At this point, the soul begins to atrophy and its energies are absorbed into the Ethereal Plane." The process "takes many centuries", and dead souls "float across the Spirit World as dark clouds with no energy and dark thread connections". Souls are never truly lost to the world: new souls are forged from such excess ethereal energy, though "only a few of the Einar are known to possess the knowledge and abilities to forge souls" (see Souls and Spirits).
Dominion and the Restless Dead¶
The 2019 Doctrines of Death explain why the dead of the Sancturi Age so often fail the crossing. "With the death of Kalar and his most direct heir, Anariel; the spirits of the dead are in a state of unrest. Many of the dead do not end up transitioning successfully to the afterlife." The vast majority of the races remain under the dominion of Kalar or of another now-defunct member of the Kalari, and the faithful of the Rakkarim "are tied through hierarchical dominion to Kalar, and so they suffer the same issues". Those under the dominion of the Dark Gods, by contrast, "are transitioning normally".
A person who dies "with questionable dominion ... is very likely to end up as one of the Restless Dead". Theologians agree on the broad pattern of which form they take (the creatures themselves are described under Undead):
| Form | When it rises |
|---|---|
| Lesser ghouls | the most common; some months after death, "assuming their corpse is still in decent condition and the nature of their death was not overly traumatic and they were not tremendously evil in life" |
| Ghouls and wights | the corpse intact but the subject evil or the death traumatic; "only the most evil and most wrongful deaths become wights", and these rise faster |
| Ghosts | "the most common form when the corpse was destroyed by either fire or animals" |
| Spectres and wraiths | like wights, the evil and the wronged; they too rise faster, "as their spirits are more restless" |
Some theologians add Abyssal ghouls, wights, spectres and wraiths, "created when the dead have been tainted by the hollowing".
The Keeper of the Dead reads the same unrest as an insult. The third of Moros's principles holds that "Unjust, traumatic, frivolous and wasteful deaths are an insult to Moros. These deaths often cause a recoil effect that leaves the spirit stuck in the mortal realm as ghosts, spectres or spirits." Moros sometimes grants such spirits undeath "to help them receive closure so that they can return to him", as mummies, wraiths and revenants.
Burial, pyres and consecrated ground¶
The Kalari and Rakkarim priesthoods answer the problem of dominion with ground and symbols. "Priests consecrate burial grounds/tombs and it is critical that the faithful dead be buried there in order to ensure their transition to heaven." The doctrine distinguishes the pure from the sinful: "the pure of heart do not need consecrated ground, they will transition fine on their own. It is only sinful souls which require guidance to heaven in the afterlife." For warriors and nomads who will die far from a consecrated ground, priests sell consecrated symbols "which serve as a replacement for consecrated ground, so long as they are buried with it". A Kalari rite of peaceful repose releases a soul from its corpse "allowing it to transition more quickly to the afterlife and preventing the soul from being consumed by demons or used to animate the dead"; on an evil or troubled soul the rite can evoke the haunting spirit, which is destroyed so the soul may pass.
Funeral pyres "have gone out of fashion in Kalari lands, and are considered very dangerous and the practice of heathens. The problem is one of dominion." A body destroyed by fire sends a soul of questionable dominion faster into a haunting; for a soul of strong dominion "this is not a big issue and may result in a slightly faster transition to the afterlife (it is believed)". The second principle of Moros goes further: "The remains of the dead are sacred and belong to Moros and the deceased's descendants. Only Moros and his followers have the authority to use them for holy purpose."
Moros's followers are organised into four cooperative orders, the Sacred Veil that keeps burial places and consecrates the dead, the Wandering Spirits who seek out stranded spirits, the Argent Skull that hunts "necromancers, death mages, demons and any others that defile the dead and seek to disrupt transition", and the Black Candle, "considered a little 'darker'" for its communion with the dead; they are Factions pages, Orders of Moros. Moros's colours are black, white and silver; his sigils skulls, bones and the candle.
The Sancturi doctrine¶
The Sancturi of the Fifth Age read the same facts the other way. "The Sancturi preach that the Kalari and Rakkarim are powerless, impotent gods. The faithful of the Kalari/Rakkarim don't have anywhere to go after death and therefore remain behind to terrorize the living. This makes their worshippers dangerous, mis-informed fanatics in both life and death. It also reinforces why forced conversion is necessary." The Riven priests return the compliment: "The priests of the Kalari and Rakkar will tell you that the Sancturi heathens are transitioning just fine … directly to Hell."
The seventh guiding principle of the Sancturi holy text, Elysium's Gate, is Glory: "Elysium's reward and greater honors await those who die in service to the Sancturi." Executions are performed under the supervision of the Sancturi clergy, who "are careful to mark heathens so that they will transition instead of turn". Witches are burned at the stake, but under the supervision of Namakan Runecasters "which entrap their souls to ensure that they are never reincarnated"; those souls are added to the Vigils, the five-sided obelisks of fused Mithis that stand in every Sancturi settlement, where commoners "make their own blood sacrifices to empower the Vigil" (see Namaka and Vigils). Praestus, the powder the Sancturi burn to find the taint, is drawn "from the bone of soul-bearing individuals", with living sacrifices when bone runs short. Imprisonment as a sentence barely exists in the Imperium; "monetary reparations, slavery and death are the most common sentences".
Moros's principles¶
Moros, Keeper of the Dead, is the one god whose theology of death survives whole; the god himself is Moros. His followers hold six core principles: that death "is a natural and transcendent event" and every mortal "has a right to die at the appropriate time and a swift transition to the afterlife"; that remains are sacred; that death should have meaning; that death is the meeting of spirit and soul, so that undeath by negative energy and life by positive energy are equally life, "only death is relevant"; that "Your soul is intertwined with those of your ancestors. Hold those that came before you (your ancestors) in reverence, they have granted you power, and continue to grant it, even in death"; and that any purpose given to the dead "must respect the being's purpose in life. To give contrary purpose is a grievous insult and sin."
Earlier accounts¶
The 2022 Cosmology describes the crossing in more ceremony: the spirit travels to the soul, "where once united they travel to the center of the spirit world where an astral projection forms at the gateway between the Ethereal and Astral Plane (at a place connecting the Astral Shards relating to Death)"; only then do soul and spirit split again, the spirit going on with the projection to the Astral Sea. The 2026 revision drops the gateway and the Death-shards and has the dead materialise in the Netherworld directly. The 2014 version of the same document calls the Astral Plane the Spirit World and treats soul and spirit as strictly singular; the 2022 Souls document allows a soul many spirits.
The 2015 Compendium names the outer planes only in outline: "The Abyss (Seven Tiers)" and "Heaven (Five Tiers)", without describing either.
Gap
No source describes what a soul experiences inside a god's shard, whether reincarnation is common or rare, or how long the crossing takes. The funeral customs of any people other than the Kalari and the Sancturi are not recorded. The "collectors" who pull unaligned souls into subplanes are named once and never described.
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The Ethereal, Astral and Netherworld planes and their relation to one another are Cosmology's: see Netherworld and Astral Plane. ↩