Valleywood's Afterlives

Written by Qui-Ball

Valeria's Reality:

Valleywood is a small village in the corner of the world of Valeria.
In reality, Valeria is one world in one universe among many parallel universes.
When a mortal dies, their soul does not descend to hell nor does it ascend to heaven.
Instead, death is the transportation of one's soul from one universe into another.
And so, the great pool of souls within any universe is infinite as it continuously feeds each other.
Hell does not exist after death, but instead is a reality within Valeria under the worlds crust...where real daemons reside. The daemons themselves have souls, which also traverses between the parallel universes as they are destroyed, continuing to wreak havoc in those worlds.
The gods are mighty, and the parallel universes is their playground.

Heaven is simply a dream...a hope...that does not exist.

Villagers of Valleywood's beliefs:

The villagers of Valleywood are superstitious and believe in many myths and legends. They believe every mortal has a soul.

• Upon death, the soul wants to leave the body, but can only do so after the body has been destroyed. Hence, the villagers perform ceremonies to help do so. See the funeral section below.
• Depending on their deeds during life, their soul is either trapped in the different layers of hell as punishment for their foul crimes during life, or ascended to the peaceful heavens above.
• They are not aware that hell is simply below them.
• They are oblivious to the existence of parallel universes.

Funerals:

The villagers of Valleywood hold a ceremony for every villager who passes away and burns their dead as a way to free the soul from the body. They believe the soul is not able to leave until this ceremony has been performed. As their population is only 2000 or so and never grows nor shrinks, everyone knows each other, and hence this village-wide ceremony takes place and the village mourns together.

The forgotten:

Every villager has only one name. There's no middle or last name. This makes it hard to reference those who died long ago, as those same names are given to the next generation, somewhat fostering a way to forget the dead...
The village elders supports this and promotes that culture.

Embrace the present, prepare for the future, and forget the past.

In rare occassions, if a villager performed a great deed that deserved remembrance, they may be given a title in addition to their name. For example: Edgard the Brave, as opposed to every other Edgard who's died previously.

Higher beings:

The villagers believes in gods and daemons as higher beings than mortals, which do not have souls but are simply powerful entities who plays with the souls of mortals. If these higher beings were to ever perish, their essense is extinguished forever, or so the legends go...

Upcoming novel:

In my first novel that I'm writing for Valeria, the first time that necromancy is practiced occurs...where the souls of the dead is brought back! The souls which has transported to other universes are pulled back to this universe and attached to their dead corpse...unexplained miscarriages, child deaths, comas, etc...will have occurred in those parallel universes as the souls are no longer occupying the bodies. The unsuspecting villagers of Valleywood, a village where everyone has a secret, are thrown into a struggle for their very survival! Can they overcome the first zombie pandemic of Valeria, or will every last secret die with them?

Necromacy is not to be trifled with...and the gods are not happy.