Upon the Northern Isthmus: The Afterlife and Undeath

The Afterlife

In death there is the gravhela. After death the dead begin their trek to the bottom of the world. Deep underground in the cold and dark beyond the Death Goddesses’ lake sits the realm of gravhela. The winds are cold and biting, there is no light. The only solace is ale provided down there erases all memories of what you were before you died, so your soul can finally rest.

Virtuous or Vile when you die gravhela waits.

One cannot let the certainty of death hold you back, you will be born, you will do what The Weird demands, and you will die. Shirking this fate is cowardice.

The Undead

Ghosts and Revenants

Those that have not fulfilled their obligations in the realm of the living are bound to return in one form or another. Death cannot and will not stop their Weirdbound duty. To counter the will of these rare heroes of Weird is vile, those that do may never taste the sweet ale in gravhela. 

Monuments and runestones dot the landscape, telling tales of the undead who completed their purpose, and the living who helped them. 

Liches

Lichdom a whispered secret, one can delay their death if they just know the right spells, if they only had one more year they could hold onto power in their petty kingdom. All the nobles know this is what happened, they can smell the rot in the air but still the coward king upon the throne holds on for dear life.

The slaying of a lich is not an act of heroism, it is an act of mercy towards a wretch.

The Mindless Undead

Bodies reanimated for use and command are rare. It is no sin to use what has been made once its soul has no use for it; those who can create such a thing are few and far between. It was once common, in the era of the 1st cycle, but anything from the 1st cycle is buried under ash and flood too deep to ever be remembered. Deep somewhere the secrets of this things are waiting.

Vampires

Burials must be done correctly. Those that do not are inevitably dug up by the scavengers. Those bodies dug up are and what remains of them become vampires, drained of their blood these rail thin creatures take on the forms of what consumed them, donning and doffing the furs or feathers of the beast to assume a bestial or human form.

While in human form they can hide themselves as those they have killed to sate their hunger. They have just enough memory of humanity to hide their bloodlust until the right moment.

Their true corpse form is only revealed once struck with weapons of silver and gold.