Life, Death, Afterlife, Undeath...

I've been pondering the meaning of life in PS for a long time.

Say you're a Clueless on some remote prime world. You're a devout worshipper of the Earth-Mother and tend your field. That's basically all you can do. Then one day a horde of Hobgoblins raids your village and kills you.

You wind up on Arcadia or the Outlands... you've forgotten everything from your past 'life' -- all you remember is that you used to tend fields... you just love tending fields... so as a petitioner that's what you're gonna do for the rest of your -er- afterlife. I'd say petitioners are not undead. They're 'afterliving'.

Now say you're a high priest of a self-styled LG god on some prime world. You're an inquisitor, you torture people to have them confess they're up to something horrible with the complicity of the Devil. You actually love torturing them bastard heathens. You like the sound of cracking bones, the smell of crushed flesh, the way the flame of life slowly abandons their evil souls... One day a revolt sweeps your city. Armed peasants enter your dungeon and kick the f**k out of you. You die in terrible agony...

...only to re-awaken in terrible agony on some filthy plain in a hot place. Your body's a horrible writhing vermin... and you're amidst thousands and thousands of similar monsters.... you've forgotten everything from your past life... except the pain.... the pain you are suffering and that you'll be one day able to inflict on somebody else. That's what you're gonna do for the rest of your afterlife.... suffer or make some berk suffer.

Let's get back to the petitioner on Arcadia. See, this guy meets the Harmonium and really likes what they say. Yeah... they're right... everybody should be acting like we do... so he joins 'em and works as a namer on Buxenus, helping with the work at the camps an' all. Then one day, an anarchist squad attacks the camps to free some friend of them... in the attack, our hardhead petitioner gets killed. Poof -- he vanishes into nothingness -- NOW HE IS DEAD.

What about our larva friend? Well, he's been really lucky for a larva... He's been sold to an ambitious fiend who needs troops to be promoted... he's made into a low-rank fiend -- just wait 'til he becomes someone more capable... oh, the pain he'll inflict!
(a few centuries later)
He's a good friend of Orcus' now... dabbling in loathful magicks, necromancy an' all. He's been summoned on a prime world to assist some evil primes there. They've brought him a few maidens for a sacrifice. Orcus shall be pleased... but actually he is most pleased... He tortures them all with great care... their agony must be slow... their pain unbearable... but their bodies must remain in good shape.
Because now they're dead (and their souls're afterliving on some plane) he can use their bodies to craft zombies... useful UNDEAD to help his Clueless allies spread some terror in the name of Orcus (and his).

See what I mean? Life-death-afterlife-undeath; four very different things.

Yet I think the views expressed in this page would not coincide with what happens for Egyptians... an Egyptian basher has a body, a ba, a ka, an akh... much more complicated :-/

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