Death and Dying

“It is uncomplicated theology to know that all beings capable of it will one day die. The more complicated theology is figuring out why some seem in an all-fired hurry to get there.”

• Miko Ansume of Jerroh, Ruminations on Mortality (1907)

It is said that the god Jerroh, seeing a world overfilled with life, ailing and injured but without any source for relief, took up his duties not with eagerness but with solemnity – and that his twin sister, Stasa, curious with how life could be made, remade, subverted, and changed, undertook a different route, claiming not those who would have suffered from age and illness, but those lives that were cut short. The truth of any story of the gods is reasonably subject to some skepticism, and these two not least.

What certainly is true – and which is ably captured within that same fable – is that there are a great many ways that a life can end, even in a world so filled with magic. Adventurers often meet creatively violent ends, and many experience death many times over before any final reckoning.

Dying

Any living creature rendered insensate through violence, poison, accident, or any other potentially fatal source of injury is dying. Depending on how tough they are, they may die quickly or slowly – a recently felled ally may have anywhere between two to ten minutes before the breath stops short, the heart ceases to beat, and/or enough blood is on the outside to provide a serious hydraulics issue (Rulebook p. 7). This may be shortened if an already dropped victim is struck again, or if the initial wound was especially grievous; in such cases, there is a scant sixty seconds before death claims them.

Even basic first aid can be useful at this juncture. Healing tinctures, magic, or wrapping a bandage around the most grievous of wounds may be enough to stave off death, although still being in a perilous scenario may make that respite regrettably brief. Those already in a perilous situation are more likely to be critically injured once again, after all.

Some traps, talented warriors, or extremely rare magical effects may cause instantaneous death. At this point, powerful magic is required to resuscitate the fallen.

Death

Someone who has succumbed to their injuries, or who has been subject to an attack or injury that their body could not conceivably survive (such as decapitation), has died. No mundane means can revive them, and only the Life spell is capable of restoring them to life.

The departed will retain a spirit of life within their body for what sages and mystics have determined to be a period of precisely five minutes. They are a viable subject for the Life spell during this period, and while the experience of death may strain a spirit, no lasting harm is done to the spirit if this occurs. The spirit is still shielded within the fallen frame. Nevertheless, someone who has been brought to this extremity has died – and only saved from further harm by the interventions of powerful and expensive magic.

The Spirit Rises

After five minutes, the tenuous grip that a spirit retains on its former mortal coil is broken, and the spirit rises from the body that held it. (This may accelerate if, by some means, the body is sufficiently destroyed; a body turned to stone and then shattered, or a body immersed in lava, is no longer capable of sustaining a spirit). The spirit has all of the knowledge that they had in life, but finds themself on an occluded grey plane, loosely detailed to match the topography around them.

The spirit is without form, and invisible to all but those with Spirit Sense, who may be able to see the spirit, and even identify them if they knew them in life. This perception is one-sided however, and extends only to the ability to see the spirit; to hear the spirit, or be heard by them, the living must cast Speak With Dead upon themselves. The spirit may only perceive those that can work the magic of Resurrection to restore them to life, although they may hear and converse with any who have worked the Speak With Dead spell.

In spirit form, the dead have but few things to fear from the living. Most sources of injury are ineffective (and indeed, superfluous), and only powerful necromancy can directly affect a spirit adversely. This said, in addition to being mostly blind to the mortal world, the spirit has only a few next options.

1. Seek out resurrection. Capable of sensing resurrectors, spirits may somewhat discern between them, and may choose to move swiftly toward someone capable of restoring them to life.
2. ‘Go Home’. Spirits fallen in distant lands may focus on a place that they think of as ‘home’, and vanish from their current location to appear elsewhere. This takes about five seconds, and the spirit may not move or undertake any other action while so focusing.
3. Move on. Some spirits may choose not to continue in the world that has, at least recently, been so unkind to them. Such spirits vanish, moving on to whatever comes next – and no one who has so chosen has been inclined or able to speak to that part of the journey.
4. (Non-Optional) Get mad about it. Spirits have a finite amount of time to return to life or move on to what comes next. The mortal skein is harsh on spirits, and enduring it for too long may cause a spirit to become a form of spectral undead called a wraith.

Resurrection

If a nearby spellcaster is capable, spirits may be brought back to life. Such magics can simply fabricate a new body out of whole cloth for the spirit, wrapping them in mortal flesh (and, alas, leaving them bare to the world) once more. Alternately, if the body from which the spirit was recently shucked is still available, they may be restored to it – possibly helpful for sentimental reasons, and certainly easier magic to work.

New bodies tend to conform not merely to what the original body looked like, but how the spirit envisions themself. Resurrection has been known to produce bodies with scars and tattoos, but only if the recently revivified thought of those marks as an inherent part of themselves. Body parts that were sacrificed in life for magical power are not consistently restored however.

Restoring the dead to their former mortal coil may leave them still adversely affected in some respects. A body that is a part of the resurrection spell is healed… but only enough to sustain life. Grievous injuries such as missing limbs are still absent, although wounds are sufficiently healed to prevent the recently returned from expiring again, and poisons or curses that have a lasting effect may survive the resurrection process. Such afflictions are remedied separately – causing some to believe that a fresh body is often the cheaper option in the long run.

The resurrected do not recall the events for the hour preceding their death, and have no knowledge of what they may have gleaned, decided, or learned as a spirit. This is thought to be a magical grace extended by Jerroh – for most all who are capable of being resurrected are not fond of the memory of what caused that situation to come about in the first place.

Repeated Death and Finishment

Life’s a joke, and it gets a little less funny every time you hear it. Those unfortunates who have died and had their spirit rise are left with lasting injury to their spirit, and can only be resurrected so many times before their spirit simply lacks the cohesion to hold itself together. The precise number of times a spirit can be resurrected varies based on a number of factors, but there exist meditative exercises that can increase it. Once a spirit is unable to rise, it passes along to the next plane, and moves on to What Comes Next.

Deliberately causing this to happen to another by way of repeat murder and resurrection is known as ‘Finishment’. In most settled lands, deliberate finishment of another without the permission of the state is a heinous crime, often punished with finishment in return. Where it is not met with finishment, those who have so assaulted the spirit of another are often ostracized or exiled from the company of civilized folk. While some exceptions may exist, there is a strong cultural view in a lot of Ariel that such an act is one of brutality.

What Comes Next?

The afterlife is an open question that lots of people seek to answer. Many scholars and theologians have theories, and some adventurers claim to have seen visions of where spirits that move on go after death, but not being dead themselves, there is always the question of whether their expectations or experiences have coloured their interpretation. There is a wall beyond which the living cannot see, and in the nature of such things, the living are immensely curious and prone to speculation.

Some have described the next step for spirits as a river, carrying the spirits along and made up of them – while others describe a desert that must be crossed, or a mountain that must be climbed. Whatever the case, it is clear that the next step is some kind of journey, with no distinct answer to what might be on the far side of it.

Old Age

Not everyone dies of violence of course. Each species of life on Ariel ages and grows weary with time and affliction, with average and maximum ages at which their bodies simply expire. Unlike deaths by violence, death by old age does not cause a spirit to rise; with their body too old to be restored to life, the spirit moves on immediately. In many senses, this is a victory; in a world so full of violence, living a full life is a triumph, and this is a death that walks instead of runs. Many organizations, such as the Church of Jerroh, provide ministerial services for those who sense that their time is soon to come.

With powerful magic, even age is malleable however. Some speak of powerful magic capable of restoring Youth, although most never see it, and it is said that there are those who are made Undying, who cease to age or feel the effects of time upon their bodies whatever. Conversely, old age may be sped along with necromantic workings that prematurely Age the body, or other magics that have similar effects.

Authored by: Andrew Dunlop
Fantasy Alive Lore Team 2026
Copyright © Endless Adventures Ontario