Gods and Religions, Part 2: Death, Undeath, and the Afterlife

Death - it comes for us all, eventually.  Sorry, that's not how I usually start my articles.  Welcome to part II of Gods and Religions!  Usually, an adventurer's main interaction with death is in the dealing thereof, but sometimes - hopefully not too often - the characters get to meet death face-to-face.  If they are lucky enough and rich enough (or know a druid and aren't afraid to come back as a different species) they might even get to come back from the dead.  This can make death seem like just another game mechanic, but it is so much more important than that.

A religion's attitude towards death can have a profound effect on the beliefs and attitudes of the individual and on society as a whole.  And that's just in our world!  Imagine how much more important religious ideas about death become when the afterlife is not just a matter of belief but of verifiable fact (heck, you can just plane shift there!), when there are a number of spells that can bring the dead back to life, and when dead bodies returning as undead monstrosities is a very real danger.

With that in mind, there are some questions you need to ask yourself about death when you are creating the gods and religions of your world.  Questions like:

Can dying in a certain way have consequences for a soul?

Einherjar - brave souls who died in battle - are fêted by Valkyries in Valhalla. Walhall by Emil Doepler, via Wikimedia

Most belief systems have the concept of a 'good death' vs a 'bad death'.  Suicide, for instance, is often considered a bad death, but dying for your faith is a good death (see for example the many hundreds of early Christians who were martyred by pagans and became saints as a result).  For the ancient Greeks, drowning in the sea was a particularly bad death because your body often could not be recovered.  In most cases a good death means a fast track to the nice afterlife, but a bad death means a longer waiting period, or even being condemned to the shitty afterlife that no one wants to go to, even for a quick visit.  In pagan Norse belief, for instance, a brave death in battle might see you whisked by Valkyries up to the halls of Valhalla for an afterlife of feasting and drinking, or to the field of Fólkvangr where Freyja's hall of Sessrúmnir stands (and where women who die a noble death also go), but dying of disease or old age gets you sent to the dark halls of Hel.

Consider having the idea of a 'bad death' manifest mechanically in-game with tougher resurrection costs.  Maybe a character who dies in a way that their god considers 'bad' cannot be raised by the raise dead spell and require the more expensive resurrection or even true resurrection.  

At the very least, having a concept of a 'good death' vs a 'bad death' can affect the risks a believer might be willing to take.  With the promise of divine reward, maybe a character will be more willing to fight to the death in battle.  With the threat of a tougher afterlife, maybe that same character will be a little more cautious fighting at sea, where the risk of drowning and having their soul sucked into a black abyss is very real.  Or maybe a character dying of disease will throw themselves recklessly into battle in hopes of reaching a better afterlife.

Speaking of the afterlife...


What kind of afterlife can they look forward to?

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Heironymus Bosch, via Wikimedia. 

Traditionally, Dungeons & Dragons has featured a bewildering array of twelve alignment-based planes that serve as the afterlives for all departed souls from the Prime Material Plane (the main campaign world).  Things needn't be that complicated, though.  Your campaign setting might have one plane for each of the nine alignments, for instance.  Guns of the Western Kings has an even simpler afterlife system - Paradise, Hell, and the Plains of Purgatory where the two meet.

Alignment-based afterlives tend to work best with Universal Gods (as described in part I of this series).  With the Local Pantheon approach, consider having a few afterlives per pantheon/religion.  Christianity has Heaven and Hell (plus maybe Purgatory, if you ascribe to the Catholic cosmology).  Norse religion has Valhalla, Fólkvangr, and Hel (and maybe others - sources are limited).  Remember, not every god needs their own afterlife for their followers - this is rarely how it works in real pantheons.  Devotees of the God of the Sea might die and go to the God of the Dead's realm, for example.

If multiple afterlives get too complicated, give some of your religions a single afterlife.  In Homeric times, the Greeks believed in just one Underworld where all souls eventually went.  If Greeks wanted luxury or glory, they had to attain it in life, for they all endured the grim misery of Hades' domain equally in death; the shade of Achilles once famously told Odysseus that he would rather be the lowliest slave alive than the king of the dead.  But single afterlives need not be so monolithic.  The ancient Egyptians had a very different afterlife - everyone went to the same place, but those who were rich in life could assure an afterlife of luxury through their funerary offerings and tomb adornments.  There was no bad afterlife for evil people - their souls were simply devoured by Ammit.

Speaking of evil souls, what becomes of them in the afterlife?  Are they tortured in hellfire for all eternity?  Maybe evil souls are tossed into a hell where most of them endure unending torture, but the most powerful and promising evil souls rise to the top and get a chance at becoming a demon or something.  This offers a bit more incentive for evilness without actively encouraging it.  Or perhaps there is an evil version of heaven (let's call it 'nega-heaven') where truly evil souls can go about their evil ways for all eternity under the tutelage of their evil gods.  You don't see that sort of afterlife crop up very often.

If the thought of coming up with so many different unique afterlives is discouraging, remember you don't have to plan out every last detail, just the general idea of the place.  Quick descriptors like "unending torture", "fountains of wine and manna", or "never-ending feasting and brawling" should suffice.  Plus, it is likely that the inhabitants of your world don't know much for sure about the afterlife.  After all, the vast majority of the population doesn't have access to powerful spells like plane shift that would let them visit the afterlife in person.  It would be sort of like Europe's view of the Far East in the Middle Ages - only a few people have gone there and returned to tell about it, but mostly people think its full of giants and cyclopes and griffins and other weird mythical beings.

What burial customs do these worshipers have?

Nubian pyramids at Meroe, by BN Chagny, via Wikimedia

Funerary customs probably won't come up much for the players, but they have a huge impact on the world they interact with.  After all, some of the best dungeons are tombs.  If the religion says that tombs provide an eternal resting place for the body of the deceased and influence their prosperity in the afterlife (like the ancient Egyptians), then tombs are likely to be grandiose and dangerous, full of great treasures, devious traps, and malign curses.  Tombs, sepulchers, mausoleums, burial mounds, catacombs, graveyards and the like provide some iconic scenes for any campaign world.  But burial and entombment aren't the only ways to dispose of your dead.  Perhaps they are purified by cleansing flame, or laid out on a raised platform under the open sky, or ritually consumed by close family members, or commended to the depths of the sea, or any number of other funerary customs that might develop.  If possible, try to key the funeral customs to the character of the god - worshipers of a fire god might be cremated after death, while worshipers of a nature deity might have a tree planted on their burial place.  You might even make it so that a body not given proper funeral rites is harder to resurrect.

Funerary customs affect what sort of scenery or even dungeons your characters will run into (imagine stumbling onto a forest of twelve-foot-high wooden biers holding the desiccated remains of the nearby town's dead).  They affect what sort of loot adventurers might find when delving into tombs (Two coins on the eyes?  Lavish gold jewelry?  An entire chariot?).  They even affect what sort of undead you might run into (a society that burns their dead isn't likely to be attacked by zombies, but they may have a problem with vengeful fire ghosts).  And speaking of the undead...

Where do undead monsters come from?

Triumpf des Todes by Jan Breughel the Elder, via Wikimedia

Well obviously necromancers make undead, but in your average campaign setting there are way too many undead monsters just lying around to be the work of a handful of necromancers.  Maybe undead are caused by residual evil magics, or the interference of a malign god or demon, or seepage from the plane of negative energy.  Or we could tie it in to the idea of funerary rites and 'bad deaths'.  Some ancient Mesopotamian writings, for instance, indicate a belief that those who died out in the desert away from civilization would return as evil spirits.  Perhaps people who die in a way contrary to the teachings of their religion are robbed of divine protection and more likely to have their corpse used as a plaything by malicious spirits.  Similarly, the corpses of people who are not given the proper funerary rights might come back as undead monsters as well.  It all relates to the idea that living and dying in accordance with one's religion grants the believer certain divine protections, but violating those religious precepts or dying in a way where your god cannot protect your body leaves the door open for necromantic mischief.

When you think about death a lot (note: I do not normally recommend thinking about death a lot), you can see how great of an effect it can have on your campaign setting's religions, on the societies your players interact with, and even on the dungeons they delve and the monsters they fight.  So when planning the religions of your campaign world, think about how each god interacts with death and what that means for that god's worshipers.

-your macabre d20 despot