The Soul and the Afterlife

Every sentient being on Aetheus has a soul, from the smallest insect to the largest tree. It forms the building blocks and life force of all creation, and the cycle of life itself.
If a mortal dies on the Material Plane, their soul is guided to one of the Outer Planes. The mortal's actions in life determine which Outer Plane they go to. From which their soul passes on into the afterlife, the soul travels into the Ethereal Plane, a boundary plane that keeps the Material Plane & Inner Planes separate from the Astral Sea, and the Outer Planes, the location of the divine realms.

WHAT IS A SOUL?

A soul, in its rawest form, is a collection of a person's memories, experiences, thoughts and self (all the joys and pains, lessons and wisdom, connections with the living and even the dead) - it was the life force of a mortal, the part that gave essence and separate existence to a creature. With each moment the soul is alive, it absorbs the experiences & knowledge of its life, it grows in power through the essence of life in the living world. As the soul grows, it burns through the body, changing it and evolving over time. Depending on what experiences it faces, the damage or growth can be minimal or lethal.
Sometimes, this life force was variably termed a 'spirit', and the two terms were synonymous. Dragon's called their life force an anima.
When a mortal died, its soul, mind and body were separated, and the soul automatically began a journey to the afterlife. The physical body is left to the Material Plane, as it is only the vessel for the soul to experience the life of the living world, that is returned to nature to be reformed and consumed by the natural world. The death of the mortal takes away the breath that animates the body and is thus inanimate. The mind of the mortal ceases to be, with no memories or experiences to continue to exist, no longer perceiving the natural world. Nor was a soul innately immortal, only that of deities, reincarnated beings or divine beings can be truly immortal.
In contrast, the case was different for some other kinds of creatures that did not have such a dual nature. For example, some creatures, usually from other planes of existence and sometimes referred to as Outsiders, did not have a dual nature. An outsider's soul and body formed a single spiritual existence, tied fundamentally to the essence of its plane. If an outsider died, no soul left the body. Instead, its essence is merged with the plane. Moreover, when such an entity travelled to another plane, it remained anchored to its original plane with a mystical silver cord. If the visitor to another plane was killed on that other plane, the silver cord would pull the essence of the creature back, where it would reform into the creature it once was given enough time.
Most plants, slimes, and vermin were not sufficiently sentient enough and thus did not have souls. Undead and constructs did not usually have souls either, though the creatures from which they were constructed from, might have.

DO BEASTS HAVE SOULS?

Animals, beasts or unintelligent creatures do have souls - but they do not operate in the same way as a sentient mortal being does. When the soul of a mortal animal or creature dies, they pass on into the afterlife - but not one of the sixteen Outer Planes. They pass through the Border Ethereal and travel into the Fugue Plane, but because they have no true sentience or no need to seek redemption, they do not need to be judged. Rather, they are weighed for the life force in which they have accumulated and consumed during their lifetime, anything from the flesh, bone, plants, soil, minerals, ore, water or otherwise. The Primordial Green, the judges of the dead beasts and creatures, weigh their souls and redistribute the energies that they have consumed back into the living world - returning to the Circle of Life (the natural circular cycle of birth, life and death) through the Essence of Life (the collective total and recycling life-force of the world and universe). However, the reincarnation of the soul of a beast has no given shape, rather it reformed back into the forms of that which it has consumed from the entire collection of animals, plants and creatures of the world, and is allotted a new form in a waiting list based upon creatures yet to give birth or plants to bloom in the natural world - the species of beasts or plants that become extinct are broken down into raw life-force and returned back into the living world. The species of beasts or plants that are still living have performed their purpose by surviving, learning and adapting to their environment, ensuring that life always finds a way to live, changing alongside the changing world.
Some souls of creatures, plants or beasts are known to become lost spirits within the Ethereal Plane if they are faced with particularly violent or grief-ridden deaths, and can exist as ghosts or spiritual phantoms. There are beasts and plants who also form bonds with sentient souls of mortals, and become tied with them, and have been able to pass on into the afterlife of the Outer Planes to join them - from the heavens of Mount Celestia or to the Nine Hells of Baator, they pass on. Those who forget them from the mortal world slowly fizzle out of existence.

THE CYCLE OF LIFE AND DEATH

Every soul is born from the essence of others. Whether it takes two parents, a single wizard or even a collective sacrifice. From there, it inhabits its body and lives its life.
The soul keeps growing as one ages, gathering new knowledge from the life it experienced. Some might live a long life of many moments, others are cut short. Eventually, the soul will outgrow the body, and let it cease to live - dying a natural death.
After dying, the soul moves into the Ethereal Plane, invisibly spectating from the invisible dimension as it breaks down over time, unless it eventually passes on into the Fugue Plane. Once its memory fades from the world of the living, it ceases to be. From then onwards, it is all but fuel to all other souls, memories of its former life floating around the Ethereal Plane that become one with the mist of the dimension.

THE JOURNEY FROM LIFE TO DEATH

When en-souled mortals on the Material Plane died under normal circumstances, their souls departed their bodies. They were then pulled to the Fugue Plane (a neutral plane within the Astral Sea where the souls of mortals were drawn when they died). The journey was not instantaneous, although it would seem that way to the soul itself. Some argued that the journey could take as long as three days to even a month of time on the Prime.
In the teachings of some draconic religions, the dragon soul, the anima did not immediately depart for the afterlife; instead, it was bound to the corpse of the dragon until the mortal body of that dragon had completely decayed, freeing the anima for its journey. (In such holy myths, the anima could continue to observe the mortal world but could not interact with it in any other way). Due to the Dragons being inexorably tied to the energy of the Elemental Chaos, passing from the Ethereal Plane upon death and their life force pulled into the Fugue Plane - however, the anima transferred the life force back into the Dragon Nebulae to become one with the many asterisms (groups of stars) of the night sky.
In some cosmologies, departed souls had to first progress through the Astral Plane. In other cosmologies, the souls were believed to first pass through the Shadowfell on the way to the Fugue Plane.

LOST SOULS

Some souls, for a variety of reasons, never made it to the Fugue Plane. Some became trapped in the Ethereal Plane or the Shadowfell as ghosts or other incorporeal dead.
A number of other extreme factors could also prevent a soul from travelling safely to the Fugue Plane, resulting in other forms of undead. For example, a very small example of individuals suffering an exceptionally violent murder might result in the creation of a Revenant. A revenant's soul was unable to reach the Fugue Plane until it had obtained revenge for its death or until a certain time limit had passed.
It was also possible to trap a soul in various magical items. For example, a ghost lantern utilized an entrapped spirit to generate light and grant the bearer a limited number of supernatural powers. A magical greatsword entrapped the soul of its wielder - if the wielder was a noble paladin who died while bearing the weapon - and freed the previous soul trapped in the blade. The new soul acted as a guide to the next paladin who bore the greatsword in the quest to find the legendary city of ***.

THE FUGUE PLANE

Once arriving on the Fugue Plane, a soul resided in waiting, wandering around aimlessly, unaware that it had even died, until retrieved by a representative of one of the powers. When - after a time that on Aetheus would usually correspond to between a day and over a ten-day, as agreed under the Para Mortuis (prepare the dead) between the gods of death - such a representative arrived, the soul would always recognize this outsider and would accompany the being to its final plane of existence to live out the rest of eternity. It was impossible to trick or convince a soul into following a divine messenger to the wrong god or goddess' realm. However, sometimes, if a soul had not been very faithful, it might take centuries for the representative to come. Some souls were said to fade out of existence if a representative never arrived. Others were eventually judged by the Lord of the Dead.

BARGAINS AND RAIDS

There was one exception to the rule that it was impossible to convince a soul into following the wrong divine messenger. The Baatezu (devils) had an agreement that allowed them one final chance to bargain with souls. The Baatezu were forbidden to injure or deceive the waiting souls in any way; however, they were permitted to offer them bargains to reject the patron that they worshipped in life in exchange for special benefits in the Nine Hells.
What the Baatezu really wanted was more souls with which to create Lemures, a form of devils from which more powerful kinds developed, thus building the power of their devilish armies. Most souls would refuse such an offer, of course, but if a soul had lived an evil life, sometimes the chance to avoid torment in the afterlife or to skip a step or two in the hierarchy of the Hells was appealing. Or perhaps the idea of service to the Lords of the Nine Hells seemed better than obeying one's original chosen deity. The most powerful of mortals were sometimes even offered a chance for early promotions to higher forms of Baatezu or the promise of some task or gift to be performed or given on the Material Plane in their behalf - for example, money to surviving relatives or a fiendish act of revenge on enemies.
Souls were a valuable commodity to demons as well, who used them to create the lowest form of their kind, the Manes. The Tanar'ri of the Abyss used a different method to acquire them - they stole them in periodic raids upon the Fugue Plane.

THE ROLE OF THE GODS

There have been several gods of the dead, who held sway over this primarily transitory plane.
These gods were those worshipped primarily by human followers. What of other races? Most races had their own gods or goddess of the dead, and each had a special role in guiding the souls of the dead of that race. These typically fell under the sway of the Raven Queen, Persephone & Null.

THREE KINDS OF MORTAL SOULS

PETITIONERS

The majority of souls who died from the lands of Aetheus had dedicated their lives to a particular power, their patron deity. When these souls were taken by the representative of their deity's divine realm, they were transformed into Petitioners.
What happened to a petitioner upon arriving at its final destination varied wildly by which deity that petitioner served. A good number of petitioners appeared much as they did in life, but by no means at all. Petitioners of some divine realms took on traits of that realm. For instance, Petitioners who arrived in the Demonweb Pits lived lives as slaves and appeared similar to the Drow. In a similar manner, most petitioners of Arvandor, Dwarfhome, the Golden Hills, and Green Fields appeared as elves, dwarves, gnomes or halflings, respectively, even if they were not those races in mortal life.
Those souls who ended up in the realms of one of the Gods of Fury (the Primordial Green) sometimes took on elemental forms or the forms of wild animals.
Souls arriving in the plane of Limbo were not allowed to manifest in a form but rather were absorbed into the chaos of the plane.
As mentioned earlier, souls stolen by Demons became Manes and lost all memories of their earlier lives. Manes often did not survive long, but if they manage to persist for many years, they could advance into a more powerful form of demon.
Souls who accepted a bargain with the Baatezu most often became mindless lemures in the Nine Hells, but these could be promoted into higher forms of devils. Less sufficiently evil souls were believed to be made into nupperibos (the lowest Devils spawned from the souls of the incompetent and indolent) instead.
Most former worshippers of evil gods became Soul Larva. Soul larva served as little more than a currency for the Fiendish PLanes, as they could be transformed into other lower fiends or simply consumed for power. Petitioners whose journey ended in the Blood Rift (the rift and main connection between the Nine Hells and Abyss) had the same fate.
Petitioners of Mount Celestia became Lantern Archons. Over time, they were promoted into higher forms of archons or perhaps into Aasimar.

THE FAITHLESS

The Faithless were those souls who had never chosen to follow a patron deity or never believed in the gods at all. As such, they would never have a representative sent to them. Instead, it was mandated that they should enter the City of Judgement to be judged by the god of the dead. Some believed that the judgement was the same for all Faithless; they became a part of the wall that surrounded the city. Sometimes, the souls were stolen from the wall in tanar'ri raids, but given enough time, a soul would dissolve into non-existence.

THE FALSE

The False were those who failed to serve their chosen patrons or who had betrayed their commitments to their prior faith. Such souls were also judged by the Lord of the Dead, who assigned them a task in the City of Judgement for the rest of their existence, such as guiding lost souls. The most wicked and unfaithful among the False were actively punished. The majority of the citizens of the City were in fact among the False. The evilest of souls were sometimes turned into Soul Larva and cast out.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

What a soul did after death also varied based on destination. For example, some souls might live in pure, unadulterated bliss, with all of their needs ever met. Others might suffer in anguish, slaving away in perpetual punishment for the sins of their mortal lives. Still, others might engage in epic, never-ending warfare, in a cycle of death in combat followed by rebirth the next morning.
The animae of Dragon petitioners acted as messengers and servants for the powers that they worshipped. The Petitioner souls of prominent and enigmatic dragons that have affected the course of the world are known to be emblazoned within the asterisms of the Dragon Nebulae, awaiting to become reincarnated into the Prime Material once more.

ADVANCEMENT

Petitioners were not static. In some cases, over time, they changed into new forms. On other planes, they eventually merged with their patron deity or into the essence of the plane itself.
For example, especially good and noble petitioners were sometimes transformed by the will of their deities into Agathinon, the lowest type of angel, forming new bodies for them. Other spiritual entities, such as Coatl and Kir-in, were also supposed to have started their existence as mortal souls.

REINCARNATION

Not all souls remained in the afterlife forever. Some elves believed that the servants of Arvanos guided elven souls back into the Material Plane to be reincarnated in a cycle that eventually led to perfection.
All dragons also believed in reincarnation. Their traditions of the afterlife taught that the anima of a dragon remained on the plane of its deity for a time equal to its mortal life. During that time, its memories and personality slowly faded, one day's worth of memories per day lived in the afterlife, in the opposite order in which the living dragon had gained them. When completely stripped bare of the memories of its worldly experiences, the dragon's anima was reincarnated on the mortal plane as soon as a new mortal body became available. Because the draconic population in the Realms had decreased over the millennia, however, there was a large "waiting list" of animae ready to be born. These "pure" animae resembled perfectly formed dragons of their species, except they were trapped in the current moment, unable to form new memories or recall old ones.
Devas were a type of Aasimar whose souls were also perpetually reincarnated on the mortal plane.

RESURRECTION

Ressurection was the process of using magic to recall a departed soul from the afterlife and restore it to its original body. It was easier to raise someone more recently from the dead than it was to resurrect someone long dead because in the former case, the soul might not have reached its final destination, whereas in the latter case, the soul would have to be recalled from the realm of a specific deity. For this reason, it was often risky to attempt to resurrect an individual of an opposing alignment; it might anger either the cleric's or the dead creature's deity!
Once a member of the Faithless or the False had been judged by the Lord of the Dead, it was impossible for that soul to be resurrected on the Material Plane by magical spells unless one of the other deities chose to directly intervene. Such a deity would most likely have to negotiate with the Lord of the Dead.
Not only did the petitioner's god or goddess have to approve of the return to life, so did the soul itself. A departed soul always knew the name, moral outlook, and even the chosen deity of the one attempting to call it back to the mortal realm, and the soul could simply refuse to make the journey back to the living.
That journey back from the Outer Planes to the Material Plane and the conversion from a petitioner back into a mortal being was a harsh one for a soul, and most such processes resulted in a loss of memories, skills, and abilities on the part of the one brought back.
The role of memory both before and after death was a tricky one, with conflicting views and opinions among sages. It was said that a soul that was returned to life after living part of its existence as a petitioner forgot all memories of that experience in the afterlife. Because the animae of dragons lost memories of their mortal lives in reverse order during their existence as petitioners, a resurrected dragon would always have amnesia of its mortal life, and the severity of this loss of memory was directly proportional to the time that it had been dead. In fact, not only was the mind of the dragon affected but also the physical body. If dead long enough, the resurrected dragon would only have the inherent magical powers of a younger dragon of its kind.

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THE OUTER PLANES & THEIR AFTERLIFE

There are sixteen Outer Planes, all ruled over by deities and powerful beings.

• Mount Celestia (lawful good)
• Bytopia (lawful/ neutral good)
• Elysium (neutral good)
• The Beastlands (neutral/ chaotic good)
• Arborea (chaotic good)
• Ysgard (chaotic good/ neutral)
• Limbo (chaotic neutral)
• Pandemonium (chaotic neutral/ evil)
• The Abyss (chaotic evil)
• Carceri (chaotic evil/ neutral evil)
• Hades (neutral evil)
• Gehenna (neutral evil/ lawful evil)
• Baator (lawful evil)
• Acheron (lawful evil/ neutral)
• Mechanus (lawful neutral)
• Arcadia (lawful neutral/ good)

These realms represent pure belief given form. They are all bound to the wills of the rulers, which means they can change at a moment's notice.

THE FOUR DETERMINATIONS OF A SOUL

There are means and determinable actions in which some souls are determined to where they appear into the afterlife of the Outer Planes. These are the fundamental actions that determine the factors of their moral alignment, deemed to be Truly Good, Truly Lawful, Truly Evil and Truly Chaotic.

• An act of true good is to sacrifice oneself for another, i.e. protecting a loved one, innocent or friend, regardless of danger or risk.
• An act of true law is to never compromise or break a law, a tradition, a code or a moral belief in oneself - even if that means bringing sorrow to oneself, harm, or danger. Living a life where one had always told the truth, kept their word, helping others in need, speaking out against injustice. So long as it maintains order and meaning, whether it is just or not.
• An act of true evil is the destruction of a soul.
• An act of true chaos is to be truly free, unpredictable - to destroy order and be anarchistic.

Type

Metaphysical, Supernatural