Cycles of the soul primer

ADDENDUM 9/27/2018: I have slightly revised this post to reflect what I have learned since.

Mongoose Publishing published a few books about the planes. Two of them dealt directly with the passage of souls into the afterlife. In this post I will briefly compare them and then try to synthesize them into one.

Halls of Order

According to The Book of the Planes, souls were formed in Tarassein, traveled through life, and upon death arrived at the Halls of Order to be judged. Much like but not identical to Planescape canon, the fate of souls depends on their alignment and their deity. The book was fairly vague about some of the details but I think this is the intent:

• Chaotic souls are cast into Tarassein to be reincarnated.
• Evil souls are cast into Chasm, where they eventually fall to Infernum. They may be eaten by demons or promoted into demons.
• Good souls are ferried to the Afterworld (the plane of  to receive their eternal reward. The greatest may be promoted into angels at the Firmament.
• Lawful souls may be recruited to work at the Library of All-That-Is in the Halls of Order.
• Neutral souls are sent to the Vault of the Stars, where their ultimate fate is decided by the movement of the fixed stars.
• Godless souls are given to the Azroi, beings that inhabit the gulf surrounding the Afterworld.

Purgatorium

Purgatorium: Seasons of the Soul offers a completely different method of judgment. Here souls travel to the plane of Purgatorium through the Astral Plane, where they make a pilgrimage through the four layers or “seasons” of the plane before reaching the end. At the end they are transported to the afterlife that matches their alignment as per Planescape canon.

Combined journey

The cycle of the soul is complicated. Souls form on the outer plane of Tarassein, travel through the Astral Plane, manifest within the Plane of Radiance, then incarnate within a body on the Material Plane. The soul is stained by faith and corruption as a result of its actions in life.

When a person dies, then their soul rapidly travels through the Astral Plane until it reaches the Fourth Hall of the Halls of Order. The Fourth Hall, sometimes known as Purgatory, is divided into four layers or seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, in that order.

Souls enter Winter through one of nine great gates. Each gate admits souls by their manner of death: war, sickness, famine, spell, beast, murder, suicide, age or fate. Once admitted, souls are expected to make a pilgrimage through each of the seasons. The journey is typically one hundred days, if the soul is lucky. Once souls pass through Autumn, they will enter the Circle of Judgment and be sentenced according their deeds in life.

Souls are judged by god-like beings known as the Grey Judges. Souls deemed sufficiently corrupt and evil are tossed into Chasm, to hurtle towards Infernum and eternal damnation. Other souls are brought aboard great barges and ferried to Afterworld to experience their eternal reward. Those souls too slippery to be judged are cast back into Tarassein to be reincarnated. Some souls may be recruited by the Halls to works as clerks in the Library of All-That-Is.

Within Purgatory the soul's destiny is at its most tenuous. They may be raised or resurrected until they are judged, after which they are irretrievable unless one is brave enough to visit the afterlife to rescue them. Souls that have not completed their pilgrimage may choose to return to the Material Plane to continue existing in some fashion: perhaps to serve as ancestor spirits, reanimate as undead or reincarnate as fey. Purgatory plays host to any number of guardian angels, psychopomps and spiritual predators.

In Afterworld souls are claimed by their gods; while mortals pay reverence to all the gods depending on the circumstances, professionals and priests generally gravitate toward their patron saint. As Afterworld is devoid of desire and suffering, souls generally wander in a blissful fugue and engage in repetitive activities like hunting or warfare.

Atheists, philosophers and those too young to understand faith are claimed by the baleful Azroi. No one knows the origins of the Azroi, save that they already lived in the Gulf of Azroi when the gods built Afterworld beyond it.

Contrary to other settings, there are no evil gods: only demon princes and archdevils. Souls cast into Chasm will fall like rain until they land in Infernum. Their fates are generally bleak: the damned will be forever on the run from the demonic inhabitants and if they are captured they can look forward to an eternity of torment. The only ray of hope is that status in Infernum is determined by corruption, which is increased by tormenting other damned souls. Provided they prove their usefulness, the vilest of souls may find themselves promoted into demons.

References:

• Classic Play: The Book of the Planes
• The Book of Hell
• Purgatorium: Seasons of the Soul