Every religion on Earth has tales of what happens after death. Some of these stories are so incompatible with each other that it has led many to conclude that it is impossible for them to all be true. What they don’t realize is that this assumption is incorrect and every religion has a piece of the full story.
Every version of Heaven or Hell that exists in any mythology exists. When someone dies, they are told which afterlives they’ve qualified for and get to choose. Some people only qualify for a series of hells and just get to pick the one they think will be least terrible. Others qualify for a list of heavens and get to pick the one they think is best. Because the rules for the different religions are different, most people end up qualifying for both heavens and hells and need to be careful that they don’t accidentally pick a hell thinking it’s heaven. Similarly, afterlives that would be heaven to some people would be hell to others. Some afterlives allow for visiting others and some allow for “dual residency” so some souls end up traveling a bit and staying in touch with loved ones that ended up in other afterlives.
It used to be that people didn’t get a chance to argue their case and just had judgment passed against them, but in modern times necromancer lawyers will argue on behalf of people that they qualify for particular afterlives. The practice started with some militaries arguing that heroic soldiers who died off the battlefield qualified for Valhalla, but has since expanded to other uses.
Also, some dead souls have the option of reincarnation if they don’t like their afterlife options. They don’t remember their past life until they die again, so without a conscious threat, they could just make their situation worse. However, if they feel like they were on the path to improving as a person, they can live another life and hope for better options next time. If this option is provided the first time, it will continue to be provided after each death unless a necromancer files an injunction that removes their reincarnation right.
Some souls end up perpetually choosing reincarnation regardless of what afterlife options are offered. These are people who love life enough that for them returning to Earth to live again is the ideal heaven. After enough lives, they start to remember things. At first, it is subtle things like picking up certain skills unusually fast. But, over time, they will find themselves retaining conscious memory of previous lives. The more lives they have been through, the faster they remember in each new life.
Many of them end up making a habit of burying their worldly goods somewhere that is easy for them to retrieve in a new life, though sometimes they won’t have another life in the same location leaving their treasure buried for centuries. It has resulted in great hordes being hidden away in seemingly random places across the globe. It is also thought to be the origin of the practice of many religions burying the dead with their worldly possessions to take it with them to the next life. A few Old Souls may have told people to bury them with their possessions so they had a marked grave to dig up and retrieve them in their next life, and the practice was mimicked by people not returning.
Crayshack 