Kumakyd

"The Kumakyd is the journey of the soul through the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. In the days when resurrection was even more rare, this was more of a mystery. Though most memories of the time between death and resurrection are fragmentary, and almost noone remembers the time before they were born, we have been able to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge with the help of ancient Grimhii myth and of course the Entropian Demigoddess herself. How true is it? A cynical person may accuse the ancients and that ancient creature of being self-serving or claiming the possession of knowledge which they lack as much as us."   "But then again, what else do we have?"   ~Creilis Bluespirit, Priestess of the Three Virgins   According to the Kumakyd, death is not the end. When a soul passes on, it goes on a journey influenced by its life and the strength of that soul.   The journey starts, if an endless cycle can be 'started', with the end of a life. When Elvenkind tell this story, they start it when the soul returns, but most agree to start it at death. When a person dies, they are visited by one of the Hamasana, daughters of death that guide souls to their afterlife. Which of death's daughters visits a soul is chosen by death's queen, in accordance to the life that soul lived.    Each of the daughters has dominion over a certain type of soul; Mara takes heroes at the end of their journey, Naoren takes condemned murderers after their executions, Hupa takes loving parents while Kreuge takes those who abandoned their children. The Hamasana are uncountable in number, and are usually associated with the stars in the sky. Most people aren't taken by just one, and a choir of them shepherd the souls along, deciding among themselves where a soul should be deposited. To make this decision, they recount the lives of the deceased, accuse them of their wrongs and defend them with their deeds. They take into account the love of those they left behind, and listen to the spiteful whispers of those glad to see them gone. When a decision is made, the soul arrives on the other side.   Good souls go to the Feywild. There, they appear as sprites, tiny humanoid creatures that resemble their soul in its prime (albeit a flawless and beautiful version). In rare cases, these sprites will remember who and what they were before, but usually they live in their eternal moment and simply enjoy their existence. They serve greater fey (and perhaps become them if they linger in the Feywild long enough) and will live whole lifetimes polymorphing themselves into the fey versions of various woodland creatures or sometimes even plants if they feel sedentary enough. When they meet their end, either serving good or at the hands of other, more evil Fey which they oppose or which prey on them, the eldest Hamasana, Kurakal, takes the fey soul and brings it back to Kobos at the moment of conception for a mortal life.   Unaligned or neutral souls are taken to the Dreamlands. There, they tend to lose themselves in un-existence, their essence spreading thin and fragmenting. They make up the bulk of the ectoplasm in the Dreamlands; they become the flora and fauna when their dead dreams imagine themselves to be such, and sometimes their spirits wander much as they were in life. It is supposed but not confirmed that those who linger long enough in the Dreamlands eventually become the Oneirites. Eventually, Kurakal comes for these souls as well to deposit them into the mortal womb or egg at birth on Kobos.   Evil souls go through something of a different transition. When judged by their Hamasana choir, they are dumped into the maw of Sivemajokuh where all the joy and happiness of their lives are digested and burned away. They are then deposited like so much excrement onto the Shadowfell as the Wretched. Here they persist in swarms ranging from a few dozen to several hundred. They rush about in torment, prey to nearly everything that exists on the Shadowfell, hunted for food and sport by the Shadar-Kai, and trying to find any scrap of psychic joy or energy to enrich themselves. When they finally do find enough sustenance to become plump, they attract the attention of Night Hags, which skewer them on long bidents and stuff them into sacks. They are taken to the Hags' residences and then sorted. Some are sold to other extraplanar entities in the market for fresh souls, such as liches or devils. Some are used as fuel for the Hags' own uses. Most are thrown into great cauldrons and melted into bubbling, agonized soul-flesh, stirred until what little differentiated one soul from another is more or less gone, and then ladled into wood or iron molds to make keh'mania. They are then used to plant evil back into the world of Kobos.   The new life, usually a good or neutral soul and sometimes tainted by evil, then has free will as a mortal to live.