The before and after
Planes
Before
The before is the place where all souls are born. In the before, various transcendental spirits guide the formation of new souls. They possess great creativity and power, but lack wisdom. If such a spirit enters the physical, it would rejuvenate, and quite possibly alter, various souls or spirits in the local area before disintegrating. Spirits from the before rely on the continuous process of chaotic creation, and as such do not live for very long.After
The after is the place where all souls ultimately end up. The after is home to all manner of after-spirits, as well as reapers. Reapers seek to collect misplaced souls and redirect them to their proper place, willingly or not. They possess great wisdom, and can even foretell when and where oblivion will strike. In the after, some deceased souls wish to return to life, and so will take every opportunity to escape. Reapers will occasionally escape in a similar fashion for the purpose of collecting these escaped souls. So far nobody has determined exactly how they return to the after or how they send souls there, however it has been accepted as common truth that they may simply kick the souls down the slide, as it were, since souls typically pass on independently.Magic
Birth magic
Birth users are capable of opening a window to the before. Many of them face disorders of the soul, after opening a window to the before and taking on additional underdeveloped souls.Knowledge
Before-spirits possess great creativity and power. They may grant insight, new ideas, or buffs.Passage & restoration
Birth users may enable before-spirits to pass into the physical, as well as the free passage of unborn souls into corrupted life. There are no guarantees that any of this is particularly beneficial. If this is used to heal a reaver, memories would mostly remain, however everything else about a person will be completely new. Corrupted life, when restored this way, may calm down and weaken, but often the best course of action is then to kill anything that was restored. Some wounds cannot be healed.Undeath magic
Undeath users are capable of opening a window to the after. These users are particularly targeted for rapid and deliberate exorcism after death, as a wandering undeath soul may open a window to the beyond, and allow more souls to return.Knowledge
After-spirits, most commonly reapers, possess a great accumulated wisdom. Souls, especially of people, retain much of their wisdom from life, but memories grow less and less definite over time. If you wish to learn from the dead, it is best to ask swiftly, before these memories fall away.Passage
Undeath users are trained to work with extreme care, as not to allow anything to pass back into the physical. When souls pass back into the physical, they will latch on to just about anything, and haunt the physical world. Reapers will sometimes also pass through, in order to hunt down misplaced souls. They will not only reclaim souls who have passed back into the physical, but also souls which should have died but did not, as with anyone who has had a near-death experience. Especially aggressive reapers may attempt to remove unnatural souls, but as this is not their basic responsibility, such actions are exceptionally rare.Restoration
Undeath users may find themselves useful in a particularly haunted area. Simply opening a window to the beyond is enough for lost souls to meander back home, as well as to summon reapers whose purpose it is to reclaim any escaped or restless souls.Life magic
Life users are capable of siphoning spirit energy from the before to the physical. The most masterful of them may provide certain buffs or aid to others, however to do so is quite dangerous, and is more likely to destroy or overpopulate.Knowledge
Life users have very little knowledge to gain besides typical work experience.Passage & restoration
When spirit energy is siphoned from the before to the physical, one of a few things can happen.- Corrupted life rapidly reacclimates, becoming unnatural life.
- Unnatural or natural life becomes overgrowth
- Inorganic material may reform into a golem
Corruption magic
Corruption users are capable of siphoning spirit energy from the physical to the after. Some die at an early age after siphoning away their own soul, resulting in a depressed reaver. Depressed reavers are unique among reavers for their tendency to meander and look on, as if in envy, at others. They never attack or consume living creatures. Usually they are put to rest at a special funeral.Knowledge
Lesson learned: quit magicPassage & restoration
Corruption users are capable of forcibly removing almost any kind of spirit or soul from almost any kind of life. When siphoning spirit energy away from something, one of five things will occur:- Humans become reavers, aggressively seeking out the souls that were stolen from them.
- Animals and lesser life, including plants, become corrupted life.
- Unnatural life dies, including golems.
- Unbound souls and reapers pass into the beyond.
- Spirits weaken, up to and including disassembly.
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These are some really great set up of the planes! Very different concepts and they are great! I really like your system here and how it flows into magics. The Before and After concept construct really fit some stuff I had been pondering - Time guardians and things that maintain a certain structure and will not let characters mess with it ( the Time Wraiths of the Flash series) or the time antibodies in one of the newer series of Doctor Who. Stephen King's Langolears.