What is the Afterlife in your setting ?

>>51195738
Basically a Mind-archive.
Souls are recycled after death, full of energy and vigor from having lived. However minds are not, and if they don't pass into the afterlife waste away into nothingness.

So the God Enn carries each soul to the afterlife upon its death, at which point the mind shapes a part of that realm for itself dependant upon its self-image. Then Enn carries the soul off to rejoin the world-soul.

So really, the afterlife is what you make of it, deep down.
If you know you're a fucking monster and you think you deserve to be tormented until you've repented, that's what you'll get.

Essentially, minds separated from their souls are a person, stuck in time, unable to really change themselves, and contented.

The INTERESTING stuff is what happens when you divorce a mind from a soul before death.

Warlocks are either debtors, or sellouts. They bargain their soul away to a celestial power for claim either upon death, or immediately. The former merely gain a kind of power, they their minds are devoured by the god, and their souls entirely incorporated into it upon death. The second have their soul devoured immediately, replaced by a roiling ball of celestial energy.

The undead are either artificial minds without souls, who are tortured beings (zombies, skeletons). Or souls and minds attached to dead bodies (Liches and Vampires)... Esh doesn't come to collect those minds, as they've already died, so upon their final death, the soul flees its tortured existence in agony, and the mind is left to rot and die.

>>51196046
So the minds are the source of consciouness ?

there is none, other than some artificial things similar to afterlife constructed for thralls of very powerful wizards on occasion, but it's more like a sort of virtual immortality.

Souls can be made up of six parts.

The True Soul that is the source of consciouness and can be perceived but not manipulated by magic, even the one of the Gods.
This part transcends the universe after death for a destination only known by the Creator God.
Shared by all beings.

The Hylic Essence that is our vitality and the source of our istincts, needs and desires.
Shared by all beings except astral beings and Gods.
Merges with the material world after death.
Shared by all beings except astral beings and officially all Gods.

The Light that is the ability to know Good but mainly the build-up sum of everything good within a being.
Merges with Heaven or with a young child if too weak, giving them a good tendency and a higher capacity to know what is good.
Shared by all beings except animals.

The Dark that is the ability to know Evil but mainly the build-up sum of all evil within a being.
Merges with Hell or with a young child if too weak, giving them a evil tendency and a higher tendency to know what is evil.
Shared by all beings except animals.

The Astral Essence that is the vitality of the astral beings and the source of their impulses and desires, less base and animal than the ones of the physical beings.
Shared by all astral beings and anyone able to practice magic.
Merges back with the astral plane after death.

The Divine Essence that is the property of the Gods and the very culmination of their being.
Catalyzing all other parts of the soul except the True Soul, the body and also an immense source of power by itself.
Physical beings can theorically have Divine Essence but the Gods are supposed to always have prevented such beings to exist.
Merges back with the Source of Divine Essence / the Divine Fire after death.

Heaven is a Light tainted place in the astral plane while Hell is a Dark tainted place in the material world.
The perpetual attraction and repulsion between Hell, Heaven, the astral and the material world are the engine of the cosmos.

>>51197028
Memory and most of the personality come from the body, the brain for physical brains and a very deep layer of the astral body for astral beings.

>>51197148
*for physical beings.

>>51197148
Elves are the result of an experiment where a group of astral groups tried to create physical beings with astral essence instead of hylic one from human beings.
The result was very tolkienan elves, but with a focus on their alieness and more spiritual nature.

You go to heaven. You get to chill out and play bingo with all the other old heaven people. It's an eternal retirement home for souls.

I really haven't thought about it, but that's the direction I'm steering in. You do have to pay off all of your karmic debts though to all the people you harmed somehow first though.

>>51195738
Depends on what you are.

If you're a flesh-and-blood mortal, you can end up just about anywhere. If you're good, you /might/ be rewarded, or might be misfiled into the local Hell-analogue. Luckily it won't be that bad... for you.

The guy next to you who was supposed to be there, though? He's having a horrible time.

If you're an angelic, demonic, or fey being, you just sort of 'respawn' in your home dimension, unless you lose the primary urge that drives you without succumbing to its opposite.

If you're unfortunate enough to suffer that fate precisely (i.e. a demon who can no longer indulge in Lust, but doesn't flip to Chastity), you end up with the Shades in Limbo. It is not a nice place, you have to be an incomplete being to go there. There's no torment besides the pain that comes with being an incomplete creature.

This is also the destination of any mortal who finds part of their soul missing upon death.

If you're a construct, then sorry - no matter how intelligent or heroic you were, you have no soul and you're not going anywhere. That's the end of you. Serves your makers right for trying to play at the work of the Gods.

If you're a golem or robot something you are ANGRY about this for obvious reasons.

>>51195738
>the void
I wish the game was just a little easier to wander around in. Wonderful atmosphere.

Nobody knows.

This is a bit more complicated than you'd think. Gods, for example, are utterly, completely terrified of death. They have so much power, and the thought of losing it all—and, worse, likely being judged for their actions—is horrifying on every level.

Mortals are more alright with it, to some extent.

>>51196115
Kinda, but not really.
Consciousness, like, the core kernel that IS you, rather than what you think you are, is the Soul.
The Mind is what you say you are. A Mind divorced from a Soul is a pattern, a schematic for action.
Carve out all that is a Mind, in a living behind, and they will slowly develop another one.
Carve out a soul, and that Mind will be stuck forever repeating the same things it does. It cannot change.

You need a soul to effect change, but you need a mind to decide what that change shall be.
Together they make a kind of engine, which draws in power from beyond the borders of the universe.
To a person within a universe (Such as the Gods), it's like a perpetual motion device.

Carve off a part of the world-soul, wrap it up in a buble of "me", and set it out in the world for a limited time.
In its efforts to continue to define itself, it yearns, and draws that power into the world (separate but similar to Magic, which mortals alone only use).
Then when it dies, separate the Soul from the Mind. The Soul is now larger, and more powerful than when it was bestowed.
Return the soul to the universe, separated from the Mind, the Ego, then file away the Mind template, out of respect for what it is.

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>>51195738
Lilium is the supreme goddess, do the math

>>51196046
>>51198403

Fucking horrible. One of the worst bits of 'worldbuilding' I have ever read.

>>51198366
There is still the easy patch now.