Afterlife

Where did a mortal go upon death? This article describes the beliefs about the afterlife held by the inhabitants of the Forgotten Realms.

What Is a Soul?
The soul was the lifeforce of a mortal, the part that gave essence and a separate existence to a creature. When a mortal died, its soul and body were separated, and the soul automatically began a journey to the afterlife.

In contrast, the case was different for some other kinds of creatures that did not have such a dual nature. For example, some creatures, usually from other planes of existence and sometimes referred to as outsiders, did not have a dual nature. An outsider's soul and body formed a single spiritual existence, tied fundamentally to the essence of its plane. If an outsider died, no soul left the body. Instead, its essence merged with the plane. Moreover, when such an entity traveled to another plane, it remained anchored to its original plane with a mystical silver cord. If the visitor to another plane was killed on that other plane, the silver cord would pull the essence of the creature back, where it would reform into the creature it once was given enough time.

Most plants, oozes, and vermin were not sufficiently sentient and thus did not have souls. Undead and constructs did not usually have souls either, though the creatures from which they were constructed might have.

The Journey from Life to Death
As earlier stated, when en-souled mortals on the Prime Material Plane died under normal circumstances, their souls departed their bodies and were pulled to the Fugue Plane. The journey was not instantaneous, although it would seem that way to the soul itself. Some argued that the journey could take as long as three days to even a month of time on the Prime.

In some cosmologies, the souls had to first progress through the Astral Plane. In other cosmologies, the souls were believed to first pass through the Shadowfell on the way to the Fugue. Some souls, for a variety of reasons, never made it to the Fugue Plane. Some became trapped in the Ethereal Plane or the Shadowfell as ghosts or other incorporeal undead.

The Fugue Plane
Once arriving on the Fugue Plane, a soul resided in waiting,  wandering about aimlessly, unaware that it had even died, until retrieved by a representative of one of the powers. When—after a time that on Toril would usually correspond to between a day and over a tenday—such a representative arrived, the soul would always recognize the outsider and would then accompany the being to its final plane of existence to live out the rest of eternity. However, sometimes, if a soul had not been very faithful, it might take centuries for the representative to come. Some souls were said to fade out of existence if a representative never arrived. Others were eventually judged by the god of the dead.

There had been several gods of the dead, including Jergal, Myrkul, Cyric, and then Kelemvor, who held sway over this primarily transitory plane. For his part, Kelemvor ensured that it was impossible to trick or convince a soul into following a divine messenger to the wrong god or goddess' realm.

Bargains & Raids
However, there was one exception. The baatezu had an agreement with Kelemvor that allowed them one final chance to bargain with souls. The baatezu were forbidden to injure or deceive the waiting souls in any way; however, they were permitted to offer them bargains to reject the patron that they worshiped in life in exchange for special benefits in the Nine Hells.

What the baatezu really wanted was more souls with which to create lemures, a form of devil from which more powerful kinds developed, thus building the power of their devilish armies. Most souls would refuse such an offer, of course, but if a soul had lived an evil life, sometimes the chance to avoid torment in the afterlife or to skip a step or two in the hierarchy of the Hells was appealing. Or perhaps the idea of service to the Lords of the Nine seemed better than obeying one's original chosen deity. The most powerful of mortals were sometimes even offered a chance for early promotions to higher forms of baatezu or the promise of some task or gift to be performed or given on the Material Plane in their behalf—for example, money to surviving relatives or a fiendish act of revenge on enemies.

Souls were a valuable commodity to demons as well, who used them to create the lowest forms of their own kind, the manes. The tanar'ri of the Abyss used a different method to acquire them—they stole them in periodic raids upon the Fugue Plane.

Petitioners
The majority of souls who died from the lands of Faerûn had dedicated their lives to particular power, their patron deity. When these souls were taken by the representative to their deity's divine realm, they were transformed into petitioners.

What happened to a petitioner upon arriving at its final destination varied wildly by which deity that petitioner served. A good number of petitioners appeared much as they did in life, but by no means all. Petitioners of some divine realms took on traits of that realm, such as those of the House of Nature and the Plane of Shadow gaining animalistic or shadowy features, respectively. Petitioners who arrived in the Demonweb Pits lived lives as slaves and appeared similar to drow. In similar manner, most petitioners of Arvandor, Dwarfhome, the Golden Hills, and Green Fields appeared as elves, dwarves, gnomes, or halflings, respectively, even if they were not those races in mortal life. (It should be noted that all dead halflings first had to pass through the realm of Urogalan before reaching their final resting places. )

Those souls who ended up in the realm of one of the deities of fury sometimes took on elemental forms or the forms of wild animals.

As mentioned earlier, souls stolen by demons became manes and lost all memories of their earlier lives. Manes often did not survive long, but if they managed to persist for many years, they could advance into a more powerful form of demon.

Souls who accepted a bargain with the baatezu most often became mindless lemures in the Nine Hells, but these could be promoted into higher forms of devil. Less sufficiently evil souls were believed to sometimes be made into nupperibos instead.

Most former worshipers of Bane, Beshaba, Hoar, Loviatar, and Talona became soul larva. Soul larva served as little more than a currency for the Fiendish planes, as they could be transformed into other lower fiends or simply consumed for power. Petitioners whose journey ended in the Blood Rift had the same fate.

Petitioners of Mount Celestia and many within the House of the Triad became lantern archons. Over time, they were promoted into higher forms of archons or perhaps into aasimar.

The Faithless
The Faithless were those souls who had never chosen to follow a patron deity or never believed in the gods at all. As such, they would never have a representative sent to retrieve them. Instead, it was mandated that they should enter the City of Judgment to be judged by the god of the dead. Some believed that the judgment was the same for all Faithless; they became a part of the wall that surrounded the city. Sometimes, the souls were stolen from the wall in tanar'ri raids, but given enough time, a soul would dissolve into non-existence.

The False
The False were those who failed to serve their chosen patrons or who had betrayed the commitments to their prior faith. Such souls were also judged by Kelemvor, who assigned them a task in the City of Judgment for the rest of their existence, such as the guiding of lost souls. The most wicked and unfaithful among the false were actively punished. The majority of the citizens of the City were in fact among the False. The most evil of souls were sometimes transformed into larva and cast out.

Life After Death
What a soul did after death also varied based on destination. For example, some souls might live in pure, unadulterated bliss, with all of their needs ever met. Others might suffer in anguish, slaving away in perpetual punishment for the sins of their mortals lives. Still others might engage in epic, never-ending warfare, in a cycle of death in combat followed by rebirth the next morning.

Advancement
Petitioners were not static. In some cases, overtime, they changed into new forms. On other planes, they eventually merged into the essence of the plane itself.

For example, especially good and noble petitioners were sometimes transformed by the will of their deities into agathinon, the lowest type of angel, forming new bodies for them. Other spiritual entities, such as couatl and ki-rin, where also supposed to have started their existences as mortal souls.

Not all souls remained in the afterlife forever. Some elves believed that Sehanine Moonbow worked with Corellon to guide elven souls back to the Material Plane to be reincarnated in a cycle that eventually led to perfection.

Resurrection
It was easier to raise someone more recently deceased from the dead than it was to resurrect someone long dead, because in the former case, the soul might not have reached its final destination, whereas in the latter case, the soul would have to be recalled from the realm of a specific deity. For this reason, it was often risky to attempt to resurrect an individual of an opposing alignment; it might anger either the cleric's or the dead creature's deity!

Once a member of the the Faithless or the False had been judged by Kelemvor, it was impossible for that soul to be resurrected on the Material Plane by magical spells unless one of the other deities chose to directly intervene. Such a deity would most likely have to negotiate with the Lord of the Dead.

It was said that a soul that was returned to life after living part of its existence as a petitioner forgot all memories of that experience.

Alternate Views of the Afterlife
The illithids did not believe that they would travel to an Outer Plane when they died. Instead, they hoped for their minds to be merged with an elder brain to obtain immortality of thought. It was not clear what happened to the mind flayers' minds or souls if the elder brain were to be slain.

In other crystal spheres, the rules of death were different. For example, in some cosmologies, the souls of the dead were said to travel through the divine realm of the Raven Queen in the Shadowfell, before reaching their final destinations.