Full disclosure:
This is about death.
And not in any grand, heroic way.
Nor in prosaic tragedy.
Take that as a warning, if you will.
I have sat at two deathbeds in my life, and more end-of-life visits.
It always strikes me as something deeply human. Dear. Singular.
And it has never been “pretty.”
But it has been meaningful. Held with the wishes of the dying.
Afterwards, the body seems smaller.
Devoid of something I can’t explain—
something that is not just life.
I remember watching my mother tie a band around a family member’s head,
to keep the mouth shut after rigor mortis had set in.
It will stay with me forever.
And I am neither religious nor spiritual.
Since then, I’ve come to believe most (at least i) are not afraid of death—
We are afraid of dying.
We want death to mean something.
So we make it grand. Or tragic. Or ironic. Or heroic.
To hide it away.
In our stories. In our games.
We invent rules for it.
We give everyone a “last act.”
We have to do and function in death.
Instead of allowing being for once.
At the last time where it is possible.
We deny it dignity, desecrating it for brutality or horror.
We wrap it in the gothic until it becomes grotesque.
But what if we gave it time to just be death?
Part of life, not separate.
Witnessed. Tenderly. Without expectation.
The nonmythologies of death
Some say there is nothing beyond death.
Others say there are heavens, hells, and gardens of memory.
Some say the dead drift as stories.
Some say they wake again, elsewhere, otherwise.
Some say there is Nothing.
They are all right.
Because what lies beyond death is shaped—partially, imperfectly, irrevocably—by what we believe about it.
Not in the simplistic way: This is not "belief makes reality."
This is: Belief is the core of reality, and what refracts reality—and death, as the most mysterious thing we can encounter, refracts most sharply.
There Is No Soul (And So It Cannot Be Lost)
This world does not run on souls.
Souls do not exist.
There is no single, immortal core inside you.
There is meaning-stuff, and matter-stuff:
Memories
Gestures
Body
Desire
Emotion
Ritual
Form
The way someone said your name
These are what make you you.
They are scattered across the flesh, the mind, the world. Meaning engraved.
And they can be remembered, re-collected, rewoven.
This is for worlds that follow the second law of thermodynamics, with a twist. Where that tendency towards disorder and entropy can be reversed, and made crawl back up in itself as new order. Entropy dances with negentropy.
Not death reversed. Not trauma healed. Because there was never undone.
But continued.
This is resurrection. Not the return of a pristine “soul,” or of a broken half-thing, but the reanimation of meaning. This means that death too is not an absolute erasure. It is a transitional state—one which may end in rest, rebirth, memory, haunting, nothing, or something unnameable.
You do not cross into Death. There is a moment of Dying. Then what is you dissolves into sacred disorder of that meaning-stuff, into new things, or nothingness, or crystallization.
Or you may refuse it.
Or you may be called back different, out of it by need, love, or violence.
Refractions, Not Dogma
There is no One Afterlife. There are many—layered, flickering, contradictory. They exist because people believe in them. Or have believed in them. And they need no continued power. They are reality, carven out. Because a belief carves reality. And because your belief carries weight.
Indras net continually expanding. The system is not enclosed, so entropy does not only increase.
Your character may:
- Believe they will sleep forever
- Believe in sheer nothing
- Believe they will burn until their crimes are redeemed
- Believe they will live in the memory-palace of their lover
- Believe they will return as a beast or a song or a storm
- Believe they will not die until all they love is safe
Let that belief shape what happens when they die. It doesn’t have to be verifiably “true.” (Hint-hint, it can't!). But it’s true enough to mark what follows. The world (that is also, the world-player or GM) must listen.
Even within shared beliefs—two characters who worship the same god may experience death differently. Your cosmology is never fully universal. You die alone - but you are never alone in after-death. It is a Coincidentia Oppositorum - a unity of opposites, a holy paradox, like we see enshrined in our faiths in our world.
After-death is how you believed it. Or how you feared it would be. Or how someone else believed it would be with such ferociousness that you let it become your dogma too.
It is not just what is top of the mind belief. It is the deepseated, innermost, belief unwilling, the conviction etched into your body—the mind, the flesh, the atom, meaning-stuff—that decides. If you believed in blissful oblivion, that is what the meaning is.
The Refusal of Final Erasure
Some traditions speak of soul-death. Of utter annihilation from the outside. Of someone being unresurrectable.
These cosmologies—and my playworld—reject that idea.
... And the idea of a soul.
Yes, there are forms of death from which you cannot return in body.
Yes, there are mistakes that make a certain ritual impossible.
But no one is beyond meaning. Because the world is not, and never was.
No one is unworthy or worthy of return. But return is always theirs (or the nothing that took was left in their place as space) to reject.
That is why the soul-less undead are the surefire sign of disrespectful necromancy. If they did not want to return as a whole being. They won't. If one believes that their death was ultimate—there is no meaning or mind stuff to recall. Because that was their meaning. Only the body rises.
If one does not—and I mean completely not, with every fiber of their meaning, does not want to return—no god can cast that back into the world. This is magnets, not hierarchical power levels. It is not god over prophet over humanity. One meaning weighs the same as all other meanings together on this cosmic scale.
Meaning cannot measure against meaning.
Even if you are scattered—physically, spiritually, narratively—there may be some form in which you are remembered, and thus playable. You may not return as yourself. But you may return as myth. Or echo. Or name, spoken in the right voice. Or mask, picked up by another. And it is up to you, the player, not the world, to decide.
What Is This For? This view of death invites exploration, not closure.
- You may create your own cosmology, rite, or mythic logic, per world and per player.
- You may co-create afterlives with others.
- You may contradict what the GM, world-player, or anyone else believes is “real.” That is allowed.
- Your death story is as meaningful as your life story.
This is not about denying grief or fear. On the contrary: It makes grief sacred. It makes fear poetic. Because you do not die into this thing or that thing or nothing. You die into the unknown. And the unknown can be anything in play. And we play to explore unknowns.
Ars Moriendi - Ars Limen
Art of Crossing the Threshold Well
A ritual of surrender, disruption, and meaningful death
"Do not fear what lies beyond. There is only to fear the crossing, and we hold your hand."
Death does not ask to be beautiful. It asks to be real. And when we know it is coming, we are given—if we are lucky—the chance to shape it. This ritual is a structure for dying in play—for the moments when a player character is mortally wounded, doomed, fading.
It is not a mechanic to avoid death.
It is a ceremony of meaning-making in death’s presence. With hand held, or at the executioners block.
It is not graceful. It may be incoherent.
But it is shared.
The Threshold Ritual
When a character is dying, and there is time for their death to unfold (not instant, not annihilation—and this is the player's choice.
They cannot choose if the death ray kills them, only whether it immediately obliterates them - They can choose to either die instantly, or begin the treshold ritual. The moment of death may be meaningless or malicious, but it is up to the dying how.
Its method may be horrid. Or gentle. Or absurd. But refute the idea that death must be violent.
The dying is free to say once it is determined that they die, how - but it is the next important thing that happens:
“After the battle with the demi-lich, you try to nurse me back to health, but the wounds are too grave. I turn grey over the coming days. I am dying. I open the pouch.”
Let death be strange, ceremonial, empty, or full—but not required to be bloody.
Step 1 – The Hidden Pouch (or Pool)
The dying character opens the pouch. These are not hit points. They are the gravity of the threshold. The more stones, the more meaningful-moments in time. They mark how close the final unbinding is.
Each person present (or part of the world that the character wants to share their death with if no people are present - the lapping waves, the birds near, and the chirp of crickets) may add or remove up to three.
The dying player starts, and also takes a last round.
Take or add stones for emotional reasons only.
"I wanna lie here just a little longer"
-
“The wound was clean.”
-
“You have unfinished business in Anun-heim, right? What shall i say to your mother?”
-
“He was loved, deeply.”
-
“I forgive you.”
"There are so many things left unsaid"
"I pray for you"
"I hope for your easy passing."
"The tree gently supports my back as blood pools onto it."
This is a currency of meaning, the semantic tie to the amount of stones up the person present. You may start with fewer if the death is brutal, or more if the character is holding on for dear life but brutalized. You may add one if someone prays, remove one if it is to ease the passing. More or less if a lover holds their hand, or if an enemy forgives them. These choices are not numerical—they are emotional.
The pouch reaching zero means death.Not before. Not until.
No world-player, no one can refute it. No words on a paper, or rule in any book, may refute this.
Step 2 – The Open Circle
All present may speak. The dying may speak.
The dying, for each truth, pain, meaning drawn from the dying person—each final memory, confession, regret, or gift—removes a piece from the pouch. It is up to the dying what counts.
The dying may also remove a stone in response to any question, or in waiting.
Each question answered, truth spoken, secret given—removes a token.
Topics:
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Pains, joys, regrets
-
Memories shared
-
Promises asked
-
Confessions
-
Futures that won't be
-
Warnings, wishes, goodbyes
The dying may also as part of any answer give of themselves:
-
Cast a curse or blessing
-
Let go of something that defined you
-
Offer a touch, gesture.
Lapse unconscious
The dying may at any time remove all remaining tokens.
Death then comes.
They may die mid-sentence.
They may fight it to the end.
When the last token is remained for any reason. They are Dying.
Interruptions - In and Out of Consciousness
At any time during the ritual, any player may interrupt with one of the following—not during a response. This is what they see, not necessarily what your character is:
- “You are slipping.” How?
- “It hurts to stay.” How?
- “You are floating outside your body.” What do you see?"
- “You see someone who shouldn’t be there.” Why?"
These are visions or impressions. Not truths. Not lies. Just the shapes that death casts in others’ eyes.
The dying player may respond as if the question was asked in any way they like. Here are some poignant examples:
The dying may in response (just examples:)
- mumble
- speak truth or prophecy
- forget
- remember
- With nothing
- With refute, and respond with what they see happening
This is the ugliness of a real death: The surrender doesn’t come all at once. It may never come, and the person may go railing into something that is no good night. Desperate to hold on.
Dying - at the moment of crossing
When the last token is gone, or if a character dies instantly:
Say some final words
-
Let someone else speak for you
-
Fade without sound
When a character dies, it is a transition—not always to continued play.
But always to continued meaning.
No beyond-death is meaningless.
Only if its meaning is refused, forgotten, or denied.
You, player playing at that treshold, are invited to - Pick any and all
A final exchange, farewell, curse, confession, gesture, item(s) — describe what it is and how they may take something from you.
Offer a role, name, or power — say what you give. They decide whether to receive it.
Leave an echo in the world — describe the after-imprint your character leaves behind. Others may describe how it echoes within them.
Dream one final meaning — describe the otherworld, memory-place, or imagined shore they cross into: the moment before meaning becomes untranslatable to the living.
Death-play.
You are still in and of the world, even if only as myth.
And we can carry memories forward.
We die our first death when we die.
The second one when our learnings, ghost, spirit, whatever provide council in the minds of those near to us.
The third when no one remembers our actions.
The fourth when no one remembers our name.
Yet our actions are still engraved there, in the world.
Then the ritual ends. The character dies. All other save the death may note what seems different about the corpse now, or the same.
This is not tidy.
That is why it is somewhat real
And Sometimes, You Carry Another
This ritual is not only for player characters.
Any being in the world—lover, friend, rival, creature, stranger—may be chosen for the Threshold. You may enact this rite with an NPC you have loved. You may ask the world to pause, not for power, but for presence.
You may hold their hand.
You may say their name as they cross.
You may open the pouch, and lay your memories within it, one by one.
You may shape their death so it means something to you—and to the world they leave behind.
And if the world listens, it may echo.
This is not resurrection.
It is witness.
And sometimes, that is what lets them remain—if only in myth, in name, in ripple.
You may carry another over the threshold.
You may love someone enough to make their dying matter.
You may give their departure the shape they never had the the words to ask for.
And that, too, is play.
Ars Ressurectionis - and the again-living
Just as the arts of dying are not reserved for player characters, neither are the arts of returning, of coming back different.
The Again-Living.
Not the Un-dead.
Not all who die are gone.
None of those who return are the same.
No return is unearned.
No resurrection is clean.
And no resurrection is ever without cost and gift
The diamond of reality refracts, both on the way out and back in.
Until these arts are defined, and when the treshold is passed, the dead may always
- Choose to appear again as figment—in dreams, in hauntings, in memory—even while playing another character. The character is still yours to return to, inhabit, or be haunted by. The world may offer, but you decide.
- You always decide if you want to return on a resurrection.
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