Editing Self (section)

===Afterlife===
There are [[Others]] responsible for ferrying the soul to their appointed afterlife after death.<ref name=":9">As in, that thing you’re looking at is an embodiment of a moment of suffering.  What you see there is all there is.  The ''real'' June went on to the afterlife.  This is an emotional event that hit the world hard enough to make a dent shaped like ‘dying of hypothermia’.  - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/01/25 Excerpt] from [[Damages 2.3]]</ref><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":10">“Whatever’s supposed to help you on to the afterlife, I think the Hyena scared it off.  It’s why you’re so… whole.”  - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/04/03 Excerpt] from [[Collateral 4.12]]</ref> Sometimes known as [[psychopomp]]s, one type of Other that fills this role are [[Daena]]s - although, [[Farnaza]], the one example that we know of, will only guide the innocent, while the guilty they condemn to eternal wandering.<ref name="17.ze1">Daena were those who managed key duties, in a manner that made them spirit-adjacent and angel-adjacent.  They were tied into the great wheel of creation, with a corresponding ability to manipulate or manage spirits.  Most handled one thing as a key duty, with the classic being that they were Psychopomps – guides of the dead.  There was one Daena on record as having handled seven, but the greatest were typically assumed to have five at a maximum.  Daena Farnaza had three: sorting echo and soul with an eye to the guilty, maintaining cycles of Nature, and dispatching those who defied the Fates. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/04/02/gone-and-done-it-17-z/ excerpt] from [[Gone and Done It 17.z]]</ref><ref>“Musser stole a Daena familiar.  A Zoroastrian psychopomp.  When seen by wrongdoers and murderers, she appears ugly, and she condemns them to eternal wandering.  Others she guides as a psychopomp will.”<br><br>“Bit crude,” Ann Wint said.  “I don’t like black and white tests of character.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/10/05/fall-out-14-1/ excerpt] from [[Fall Out 14.1]]</ref> A [[Revenant]] can be created when a soul persuades or fights off these beings, in order to return to their body and pursue some urgent mission.<ref name=":4">“I delivered the pizza,” he said.<br><br>Ah.  My mind flashed back to that scene.  Goblins had impaled him on the fence, and the faceless woman had taken his face, all in an attempt to bait me outside.  I hadn’t fallen for it, and he’d mocked me after the fact.<br><br>I ventured, “Can I ask what you are?”<br><br>“I don’t know so much, not really.  I died, and I kicked and screamed so much that they wouldn’t take me,” he said.<br><br>The wan smile and relaxed attitude he offered me did not look like the expression of someone who’d clawed their way back from the afterlife.<br><br>“A revenant,” I said.<br>[...]<br>“I’m not a big fan of murder myself, but when Death comes calling, as he might do for me, or when the world wants to swallow you up and digest you, as it might be in ''your'' case, sometimes you’ll do what you have to.  Get the power you need to stay here, clock the hours you need to clock, do your part to keep the universe running.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/08/19 Excerpt] from [[Mala Fide 10.2]]
</ref><ref name=":16">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O7zIP49SfHf41c7G3HL5LLWYw8VWQY3t5tmC-YCapE4/edit Example Revenant by Wildbow]</ref><ref name=":3">“Tallowman.  Originally thought to be possessed, modern thought points to him being a revenant.  Died, or suffered some gruesome injury, but didn’t go down.  Soul couldn’t rest, too hungry for revenge, basically a serial killer zombie.  The spirit didn’t leave the body, and the body came back for unfinished business.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/13 Excerpt] from [[Subordination 6.7]]</ref> [[Valkyries]] would sometimes position themselves as such figures, making use of religious concepts of an afterlife to gain an agreement that they could collect a person's soul on death. They would leverage the agreement to collect [[Ghosts]] or [[Vestiges]] of the person.<ref>“Right.  In this case, you’ve got practitioners convincing warriors, usually dying soldiers, that there’s an amazing afterlife of parties and respect for their deeds waiting for them, so the warriors agree to give up their spirits after death.  Use that agreement to help make a vestige or create a ghost, a representation of their skills or their knowledge, their strength, whatever else, and imbue all of that into a vessel.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/01/25 Excerpt] from [[Damages 2.3]]</ref><ref>“As Valkalla, male Valkyries, Max and I are combat practitioners, we’d belong in the moot.  We transport spirits, manage and harvest Soul and Self, we can act as psychopomps to get credit with the universe, we’re already halfway there, we might as well do that.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2022/11/12 Excerpt] from [[In Absentia 21.10]]</ref> The soul may also be trapped in their [[ghost]],<ref name=":1">“-nevermind.  Okay.  Evan.  He… ''he’s'' still there.  The echo, yes, but there’s the consciousness, and he’s still got the consciousness.  It never moved on.  He doesn’t want to move on.”<br><br>“He’s a soul?” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/04/15 Excerpt] from [[Conviction 5.3]]</ref><ref name=":11"/><ref name=":17" /> corpse,<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5">''The Bane is form’d of one with a blight of body, already within the grasp of Death, they yet hold a breath of life.  The Dark Necromagus must be at the bedside of the deceased as they cross over, to catch the breath in a prepared vessel.  Thrice must the blighted man be bestowed that foul breath that escapes the mouth of the long dead, as airs and humors bloat the corpse, the soul released at death introduced between each to accept and accommodate those airs most foul.  During these times the body will be well restrained, as the soul will be in the worst of agonies and the body will not be limited to their normal strength.[...]<br>The Bane is oft used as a devise against those who practise, for death has already taken them thrice over, while their spirit and soul are inured to the worst torments and agonies.  Barriers will serve their purpose, but hexes and deleterious magics will often glance off the Bane, rendering them a potent devise against the unwary.  Without expecting their workings to go awry and come back to them, such a Magus might find themselves dealing with their own practises and the Bane both.''<br>''The creator must deliver their instructions to the Bane with gravest care, as the Bane is obedient to a fault, the soul broken many times over.  Once destroyed, the Bane will never return.''  - ''Morte Vilify: Perversions of Death,'' [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/10/14 Quoted] in [[Duress 12.3]]</ref> or a suitable vessel<ref name=":6">“The Shepherd collected his soul,” Rose said.  “Not just the echo, but the soul.  He got in touch with us yesterday, offering a trade.  Laird for Fell.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/06/07 Excerpt] from [[Void 7.4]]</ref><ref name=":12">“Yeah.  Can you keep my [Fell's] soul or whatever it is out of his [Conquest's] grasp?  Killing my mortal body won’t be enough.”<br><br>“I can try.  I might need to make a container.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/17 Excerpt] from [[Subordination 6.9]]</ref><ref name=":21">I dragged the bodies together, and as I reached the Necromancer, he fought me, weak.<br><br>He had what appeared to be a doll in one hand, fashioned of some soft material.  It wore another man’s face, hyper-realistic, distorted in agony.  In moving the necromancer, I’d broken a black ribbon that stretched from his neck to the doll’s.<br><br>I watched as he struggled to wind the ribbon around his own neck with hands that grew steadily weaker and clumsier.  Once the connection was formed, he touched his thumb to his bloody wound, running it along the ribbon, from himself to the doll.<br><br>A hyper-realistic wound started to open on the doll’s throat.  His own wound started to close.<br><br>He stopped, his hands trembling, and the transfer reversed.<br><br>The Hyena’s effect taking hold?<br><br>I watched him try and fail again.  Using ghosts as some sort of repository or sympathetic replica, to take his pain.<br><br>No, a ghost wouldn’t be enough.  Just like with the Bane, something like this might well require a ''soul''.<br><br>Very gently, I pulled the doll from his grip.  The ribbon came undone again.  Weak hands reached for and failed to grab the doll.<br><br>“Be free, soul,” I said, before cracking the doll down the middle.The agonized face separated, and a moment later, the doll’s face was only two depressions for eyes, a bump for the nose, and a line for the mouth. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/10/28 Excerpt] from [[Duress 12.8]]</ref> by a [[Practitioner]] or Other. 

Some powerful magic can also recall a soul from the afterlife.<ref name=":15">Example Advanced Astrologer Rites:<br>[...]<br>Dedicating the Star - Carefully tended diagrams can be a source of power that is then used to call forth a specific being, on a date relevant to that being.  Can be a way to call forth deities in physical form, great Historics, the souls of dead loved ones (with caveats), and so on.  Essentially the result of a magic circle drawn out on a city-sized scale. - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kV_klLE4EpbBVWrglXg51UoXD7C2K8AFKF5Gq316xtY/edit Pact Dice: Astrologers]</ref> A [[Deities|Deity]] can create a soul or draw one from the afterlife as well, though it is easier for the deity to just make a reasonable facsimile.{{cite}}

[[Karma]] is implied to determine whether you receive a good or bad afterlife, with [[Diabolists]] going to something akin to Hell.<ref>The next thought outside family was the lawyers, the nebulous idea of dying and going straight to some miserable afterlife, simply because of the karma that dragged me down.<br><br>That was a bit more of a push.  The concrete idea that I wouldn’t find peace, going down that road.<br><br>I took a step back, slowing the rate at which Conquest closed in.<br><br>I didn’t want to go to hell, or whatever equivalent I was due. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/06/17 Excerpt] from [[Void 7.7]]</ref><ref>“I grow tired of this.  One of your champions has been claimed by Death, someone precious to you is on the way there, and the younger Rose Thorburn has informed me that you have nothing good waiting for you on the other side.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/06/03 Excerpt] from [[Void 7.3]]</ref>

[[Bogeymen]] return to the [[Abyss]] when they die rather than passing on to an afterlife.<ref>, I found myself lying between fire and fence, my heels almost touching the wing-tipped toes of the Necromancer’s boots.<br><br>He hit me with distilled ''[[echoes]]'', every single one of them a dying memory.<br><br>What I experienced was very similar to having my vision go dark, darkness creeping in around the edges, the vision that remained getting spotty.  Thing was, it happened all at once.  I might as well have been hurled into a deep, dark well, with only meager light at the top.<br><br>I could hear the Drains [...] I had to claw my way back to reality.  Out of the well, past the darkness that creeped in around the edges of my vision.<br><br>I was out and up for about one second before the Necromancer hit me again.<br><br>Back into the well, now with visions and sensations to go with all the fleeting images. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/10/28 Excerpt] from  [[Duress 12.8]]</ref> [[hang dog]]s with sufficent power can inflict punishing afterlives on their targets trapping them on the material plain.<ref name="HG">Hang Dogs - Come about from mindless, often group-targeted mass-lynchings and killings (to meet the criteria for the faceless dead or the 'dead as statistics, not people'), sometimes with hysteria involved.  More focused against one side in a conflict, with ‘favored enemies’ that they are more effective against, have weaker equipment, more personality from the outset.  Stem from hate rather than war, very effective against their favored enemy and against the unaware, are difficult to track and pin down, may have other abilities relating to their means of death or the hysteria surrounding them.  May be protectors of 'their' people, but their way of going about this (targeting and mutilating/killing the aggressors) has a tendency to perpetuate or escalate hostilities and do more long-term harm, where such is possible.  Can arise from genocide in war, in which case they would band together with other Dogs, but can just as easily appear in groups on their own in a rural area, if there's sufficient murder of a subgroup.  Hang Dogs tend to swell in strength more than other Dogs, especially as time passes, and Hang Dogs of sufficient strength may be able to claim souls and imprison them (a consciousness forever embedded in an object, tree, or corpse, watching and unable to speak/act) or to drag or send aggressors to other realms, such as the Abyss or the darker places that lie beyond the gates of Death.  Many are put to rest by the very groups that they came from. - [https://old.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/goyerk/_/frpaibe/ Wildbow on Reddit]</ref> [[Barbatorem]] is said to be able to sever his victims from the afterlife, "forever and irrevocably denying them whatever good things might await them after death". <ref name=":13">On a more abstract level, [[Barbatorem]] deals a deeper form of damage that is hard to encapsulate in this text.  Rather than state the myriad ways he might harm his victims, this author would suggest a few key points to note, suggesting the wider variety of feats he can accomplish: It is believed that he can sever his target’s ability to access any higher plane, forever and irrevocably denying them whatever good things might await them after death, and he can remove any ability a practitioner has. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/01/11 Excerpt] from [[Bonds 1.7]]</ref> The Nightmare Tromos claimed that, after the woman whose [[familiar]] he was eventually died, she might join him in dreams.<ref>S:  What happens after?  Annabelle isn’t immortal, I presume.<br><br>A:  We’ve talked about that.<br><br>T:  I enjoy her company.  If she is strong enough, she will join me in the dreams.  When I visit nightmares unto others, I ride them down.  The great black wolf, the bull, the horse, the brutish man.  They flee, tripping and injuring themselves, climbing to their feet, only to trip again, until they are too battered to stand.  Or they run out of strength and hear my footfalls as they lie there, panting, and then they feel the injuries.  They feel pain, they know terror.  I could see Annabelle there.  A rider astride me, a taunting voice, someone to trip them up one final time, to bar their way.  When we were not riding down our prey, we might roam, visit realms, domains and demesnes freely open to Others.<br><br>A:  That sounds like a fun way to spend a few decades or centuries. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/02/06 Excerpt] from [[Gathered Pages: 2]]</ref>