The Afterlife?

[Eastep]

I've been tempted to pile high yet another RP onto my stack of things to do, and with my notorious willpower (that you've never heard of, 'cause it's so notorious) I've refrained myself from starting it up and then sadfacing when it flops from lack of attention. But! Regardless of my epic fails in the ways of the roleplay, I wanted to ask you, the roleplayer, what you thought of including an afterlife in a game world? The reason I wanted to ask, is I wanted to involve the afterlife and necromancy heavily into the roleplay, and just wanted to see your ideas and thoughts on the matter.

Here's just a few thoughts that went through my head with the pegging on of an afterlife.

Death is not the end of your character(depending on the afterlife you've added)
When a player leaves the roleplay, you can just dump them into the afterlife and leave them there until somebody wants them.
There's a little extra for you to use upon character creation, and could also prove to be useful as a plot tool
There were more, but I forgot them. O.o

Would you use an afterlife in your world, for the character to use, or at least influence them with? Have you already used such an item in a roleplay or story of yours? Can I use it, pwease?
Tell me what you've done for the afterlife in your worlds, and proudly announce your opinion on whether it should be in a roleplay or not!

[Terrus]

I've never actually used it in a roleplay....but if I did I would use it as more of a torture kind of basis, with an option of being revived after a certain amount of time.....kind of like a limbo effect. People can still die, but others could just be stuck in limbo for a few days before returning to the real world. Or ghosts.....spirits.....phantoms....that kind of thing....I always like that kind of stuff.

[VitaminHeart]

In a long term plot I did we ended up creating a fairly elaborate afterlife/death system.

Basically a character that diead becomes a ghost, simple enough. A ghost that felt it was ready to move on would pass onto the afterlife to await reincarnation...that was unless they were considered to be a soul too dakr to re-enter the system, in which case they'd end up in a sort of netherworld. Ghosts that remained on earth too long began to lose their human shape an memories, until they became rather horrific, malevolent creatures.

Overseeing all of this were the reapers which were the third outcome of death, aside from staying as a ghost, or moving on. Reapers were souls that had 'wasted' their lives, and while not evil, owed some sort of cosmic debt, so thery had to work it off shepherding souls to the other side, and sorting out other death-related problems. Reapers had physical forms, though were incapable of dying or getting involved with mortal conflicts, so while a Reaper could theoretically raise someone from the dea,d they couldn't be swayed to unless there was a huge, universal reason why someone needed to be brought back.

[Kestrel]

I've always wanted to kill of a character, then use him/her as a ghost in the roleplay later ;p

I haven't actually used it, though, but it sounds like fun and a good idea for roleplays with a lot of activity and droppers.

[Eastep]

I'm glad to see all this discussion going on here!
I have another question for you all now, which is using afterlives and tidbits of certain religions in your own roleplay. Do you rip off the afterlife of Viking mythology word for word and include it in your rolelplay, or do you prefer to reorganize and rename a few things, leaving the same idea in place, but with a new flavor or look? Maybe you're the kind to make up a new pantheon of gods and their realms, or perhaps you just like playing in worlds like that?

Tell me what you think! You know how much I love listening to you guys. <3

[Kestrel]

In reality, the world is captured in an hourglass. Every twelve hours, it turns around and sand slips from the one side to the other. First creating earth, then water, then sky, then life. The entire process takes only few minutes and all life loses consciousness during this period.

The sun and moon are the same luminary body, named ‘Lunol’. In contrast to our world, they have the same size, as both the sun and the moon are one half of Lunol. Inside of Lunol, there is another, very small world which exists for the minutes in which the sand gathers before being scattered back into the hourglass. Man, beast, plant, stone and water alike shape one sculpture, the sand castle, the home of Isis and Hedetet. Here, the two sisters inform each other about the happenings on their respective sides of the hourglass. Isis travels with the humans, Hedetet with the grines.

The grine world is a contrast to the human world. It is an immaterial mirror-world to the humans and the other way around. The sands are a mixture of purple and blue, it’s inhabitants look like what a human would describe as a spirit. A grine is a very pale creature, which can be human, animal or even a plant, with a skin that resembles torn clothes which looks as if fluttering in the air. Regardless, grines are very similar to their counterparts in behaviour.

In fact, for every life form in the human world, there is a grine. But the two never contact each other, in a conscious state at least, as they create the sand castle together.

Basically this was what I had for an RP I ran on another site, upon death the person and grine would be reborn, but in each other's world. If the Goddesses didn't judge them worthy they'd become djinns (spirits) forced to forever remain on either bottom or top (so for example human world at day, grine world at night, depending on where/when they died)

And I know Lunol is a lame name, but I don't give a shit.

Other than that, in my current fantasy-style RP I haven't ran into it yet, but as its religion is ripping off Christianity I will prolly do the same to afterlife. In my more modern RP's the afterlife is up to interpretation, but the practice is that the body becomes lifeless, which is all you really need to know to go on ;p