A soul requires a body to give it form and function, to give it definition and meaning. When the body dies the soul loses that connection and stability and begins to pass on.
Most souls move forwards onto the afterlife, feeling the pull of the natural movements of spectral energies, pulling them towards Postea. These souls wake on a vast expanse of shoreline with sands made of black diamonds, the shore of Postea. Ahead of these shores are calm waves with waters that look like they’re filled with galaxies. Beyond these calm waters, the ocean becomes a turbulent churning riptide.
The soul wakes on the shore with spectral counterparts of the things that were buried along with them, so that they may keep their fondest possessions. Some are buried with things intended as gifts or bribes for the gods they go to serve or aid for the things they expect to find in the coming journey.
After some time has passed, these souls eventually come to realize that they have died and they face a choice. Some of these souls choose to dive into the deep waters, where the churning tides corrode and destroy them, returning the energies of their soul back to the flow. Fiendish souls and those who committed great evil find themselves chained, bound to the shore while they wait to be collected. The souls of the devout will be met by servants of the deities they followed.
When a soul has tired of the shores, they make their way to the fields. They walk under a grand archway and come onto a pathway, once there they begin a great journey, traveling for ages on the way to the fields of Bern. The agents of gods will accompany spirits on their journey, weighing their behavior and further deciding their fates while helping to guide them along the path. During this journey they may come across the souls of those who have given up and decided to settle along the path, delaying their journey. Some encounter fiends hoping to tempt wanderers down to the pit. But those who persevere make it to the fields of Bern.
Once there, souls accompanied by divine servants may be brought before their gods to be offered to be taken into the god’s service. These souls are empowered, becoming servants or angels. Some are offered a place in the gardens to spend an afterlife in that paradise. Others are taken to the battlefields, where their energy and skill are turned to the protection of the plane from outsiders. All of these choices are placed on the soul of the departed, and it is up to them to choose.
The souls of villains and of those dedicated to acts of evil do not get to choose their fate. Their choice is made for them. Upon their arrival to the shores they are chained down, the more evil they committed, the stronger and more numerous the chains. A red glow appears from between the sands and a demon or a devil claws its way up through the pit. This fiend seizes the soul, dragging them down into the pits. Down there they are subjected to extreme torture, a crude but fast system for extracting the energy from these souls and taking it from the flow. Some souls survive the torture for longer than normal or have made deals to a powerful field. These are rendered, ripped apart and converted into a new lesser fiend in the service of Incancatus and the damned court.
The majority of unclaimed souls, and the final choice left to those blessed souls, is service in the fields of Bern and Sildrin. Those souls here are put to work, tilling fields, sowing crops and making what will be food for the gods. Those working here feel no pain, no exhaustion, they are expected to work, but are not demanded to. Though everyone there will feel a pull to service, an extremely subtle compulsion to work. Every winter the fields are reconstructed, allowed to grow wild and fallow and the labor begins anew.
The central idea for the fields of Bern is for those there to gradually lose themselves in the simple repetition of labor. Eventually, they will come to peace and pass on.
Some souls resist the pull of the afterlife, something keeps them rooted in the world they knew in life. Sometimes it's a grudge or regret, sometimes its a love or fondness. These souls begin to haunt, stalking the ethereal plane, haunting the places and people they knew in life. Spirits like this gradually lose memories of their old identities, focusing more and more on their grudges or their memories.
The oldest of these spirits with the weakest ties to their old lives may gradually become more attuned to places they are tied, rather than the people they once were. Ghosts and specters gradually lose their old identities and grudges, becoming nature spirits, they become more like Fey than what they were before. There are those who believe that the more esoteric fey spirits have their origins in this process.