When a person dies, their soul is drawn to the god or superior spirit whom they most served during their mortal life. Sometimes a person unknowingly serves a god by acting out that god’s essence and will.

• People who strongly served a god or devotedly practiced a religion pass quickly through the Ethereal and onto their afterlives.
• Other people linger in the Ethereal as ghosts. This occurs with those who were spiritually lukewarm or torn between multiple gods or excessively attached to something in the world. Sooner or later, a ghost will pass on from the Ethereal to its afterlife, though sometimes this requires outside aid.

After departing the Ethereal, a soul arrives in a spiritual body at the domain entrance of their associated deity. In other words, the person is transported to an outer plane where their god dwells.

Heaven

Vera Via and other religious groups teach that good-aligned deities (and some neutral-aligned) will ultimately be brought to the Glorious Domains of Heaven, along with the souls of those in their domains,

Hell

Most evil-aligned deities (and a few neutral-aligned) dwell within the Dread Domains of Hell, as do the archfiends and their subjects. There is great variety among the various locations here. Some domains have grim battlefields and strongholds, others are nightmarish hellscapes, and others still are fiendish prisons where souls remained trapped, even if resurrection magic is cast upon their remains in the world.

There are many complexities and mysteries involved in the topic of afterlife, and scholars debate it to no end.

Revival

A deceased person returning to life is a major ordeal that bends fundamental cosmic laws. It is a matter of divine sanction from the gods, and requires the sacrifice of diamonds—one of the most precious kinds of gemstones in the world, which took in great amounts of ichor during the Age of Cataclysms.

Before casting a spell that restores life to a dead person, the caster must present the diamond material component and pray to his patron deity. The god judges the soul of the deceased. Is the soul free to return? Does this person align with the god’s personality and will? Has this person been revived previously, and is there a sense of attempting to cheat death? Would this revival cause the deity problems with another?

Only if the patron deity finds the revival to be worthy and favorable may the caster proceed with the spell.

Revivify. If the spell revivify is cast within 1 minute of someone’s death, it is not subject to this divine sanction, as it occurs before the subject’s soul has departed its body.

Clone. When the cloned creature dies, there is a chance for divine denial equal to 10% × the number of times the creature has been cloned. If denied, the gods take offense to this arcane scheming. All clones of that creature immediately die, and its soul passes onto its afterlife. The creature cannot be brought back to life by any spell.

GM Instructions. A revival can only be attempted during a session. Play-by-post is permissible if it is a serious session, not a “quick and easy.” When a revival is attempted, the GM must make a note on the character profile of the deceased.