That all seems to still be true, but now the Shadowfell has been added by Shar as a waypoint (or gauntlet to run?) in the journey of death. There isnt much detail that I know of, about how this works. In generic 4E, souls fly through the Raven Queen's stronghold or whatever on their way to the afterlife. Clearly not applicable to the Realms.
Now that my campaign is leading to the Shadow plane, I'm wondering how best to work souls of the recently dead into the setting.
The plane was created by Shar, goddess of loss, so I'm thinking this is some pre-Fugue plane step to cause as many lost souls as possible. Less souls returning to their gods, hurting Shar's opponents and depriving them of followers. That sort of thing.
Its not clear if a dead soul goes directly to the place they died in the Shadowfell (coterminous place of death?). Unless its already been descibed as one way or another, I'm going to have newly-dead souls appear at a 'lost' version of a place they had a strong attachment to in life. Clerics will appear at a ruined temple, farmers at a rotten field, etc. More powerful dead may even have their own Ravenloft-style Domain pop up, like a twisted version of a dead king's nation, temporarily tormenting the soul until they can escape to the Fugue. This is Shar's test, and there the soul can despair and give in to loss, becoming undead of some sort. Or they can stay true, and after a time disappear to the Fugue plane to meet their fate.
I'm not clear on whether souls in the Shadowfell or Fugue can interact with the living visiting those planes. I'm guessing if killed they probably just reform soon after.
Good/bad idea? Already described somewhere else?
templates of a quasi setting ne'er mix with anything other than itself.
you would do best just to use the 3.x description, they go straight to the fugue plane.
you would do best just to use the 3.x description, they go straight to the fugue plane.
This was really a 4e-specific question, I dont care about previous versions. I'm running a 4e game and the Shadowfell has a purpose there. I'm seeking a deeper explanation for how things work, and will fill in the gaps for my game where the source material is lacking.
If souls arent going to the Shadowfell, the plane loses its primary residents and the resulting struggle for their souls. It becomes little more than a haven for Shar worshippers and creatures from the old Plane of Shadows.
Skipping the Shadowfell also removes a lot of interaction players can have with the recently deceased or souls trapped and unable to move to the Fugue. The Shadowfell makes a nice place for religous confrontation - servants of Kelemvor freeing souls and destroying undead, various factions tempting souls to not continue to the Fugue and instead join their cause, etc.
By comparison the Fugue is pretty unusable from a gaming perspective. Its not really a place players can go to and interact with multiple different groups.
What I can imagine happened with the Spellplague, was that somehow the Shadowfell became interposed (whether through the machinations of Shar, or as a natural byproduct of the rearrangement of the planes) in that mechanism in such a way as to require the souls (aka petitioners) to pass through the Shadowfell on their way to the Fugue. Either all the Astral conduits now route through the Shadowfell, or the conduits start in the Shadowfell and the souls now have to get to the Shadowfell first in order to hitch a ride to the Fugue.
A possible explanation may have to do with the ethereal plane being fused into the Shadowfell. Even in 2e, souls often seemed to get diverted from the trip to the Fugue finding themselves instead lost in the Ethereal Plane where they became ghosts and other types of undead.
I think Ritorix has it basically right. There is now an extra step. The way I see it, once deceased, a soul slips into the Shadowfell and wanders for a bit (perhaps extremely briefly, from a few seconds to a few days) until it is caught up in an Astral conduit that brings it to the Fugue. A few may form a petitioner body in the Shadowfell, becoming a ghost, or if infused with necrotic energy perhaps some other kind of undead.
Note that Shar used to have her dominion in the Shadow Plane, but now her dominion is in the Astral, and there is a hole in the Shadowfell where her dominion used to be (pre-Spellplague). So it seems that all "gods" must have their dominions in the Astral now.
People that worship Archfey or Primal Spirits can probably be diverted to the homes of those respective types of entity, although in 3e that would have required a pact or ritual or contract (usually signified by the taking of a special feat) in order to bind the soul to a non-divine entity; although, In 4e I am not sure if they have figured out how that all works yet.
Primal spirits live in the Material Plane (aka The World) and as such, a soul that is bound to a Primal Spirit need not even leave the Material Plane to meet its destiny. I would imagine that souls that are bound to Primal Spirits do not have to journey through the Shadowfell or the Fugue, but rather are draw straight to the Prime Material domain of their respective Primal Spirit, wherever that may be. Or if there is no domain, perhaps the soul fuses directly with the Primal Spirit and increases that spirit's power.
In fact, that is how I might handle it myself. I would guess that it would usually take an Astral dominion for a soul to form a petitioner body, or at least a stop-over in the Fugue Plane. My strong suspicion is that non-divine entities without a specified Astral (or even a Prime Material) dominion probably just merge the soul directly into themselves to increase their power. Their worshipers probably have no strong objection to this, seeing it as a desired thing to become "one" with their patron upon death.
This was really a 4e-specific question, I dont care about previous versions. I'm running a 4e game and the Shadowfell has a purpose there. I'm seeking a deeper explanation for how things work, and will fill in the gaps for my game where the source material is lacking.
If souls arent going to the Shadowfell, the plane loses its primary residents and the resulting struggle for their souls. It becomes little more than a haven for Shar worshippers and creatures from the old Plane of Shadows.
Skipping the Shadowfell also removes a lot of interaction players can have with the recently deceased or souls trapped and unable to move to the Fugue. The Shadowfell makes a nice place for religous confrontation - servants of Kelemvor freeing souls and destroying undead, various factions tempting souls to not continue to the Fugue and instead join their cause, etc.
By comparison the Fugue is pretty unusable from a gaming perspective. Its not really a place players can go to and interact with multiple different groups.
when they created 4e, they made everything non campaign specific, and going through the shadowfell was more or less how it states in the phb and I assume the manual of the planes.
and thus was instated into the FR, likely Ebersux as well.
following them grehawk, dragonlance, etc depending on which gets done in what order.
as I said, I'd just use previous ed lore and save myself the headache.....
each to their own
I'm seeking a deeper explanation for how things work...
Then Dude, you are SO playing in the wrong edition.
Then Dude, you are SO playing in the wrong edition.
this my associate I agree with.
best thing to do, take the best of it, and leave the rest in the elemental chaos, on asmodeus's pice cream bowl for desert after munching on azuth.
I just think its ridiculous to expect the kind of consistencey and logic we got in earlier editions in an edition strictly designed from the ground-up to be about encounters, and an edition that will only have a mere two books dedicated to an entire setting.
1e/2e/3e Realms were made to be a fan of, whether you gamed or not. 4e is designed to be a game, and nothing more - just PLAY IT, and try not to think too hard.
BTW, this is why I will NOT be reading 4eFR novels - I am no longer a fan of the setting (the new one, that is). However, as a gamer, I can appreciate the 'dumbed-down' version for D&D, though. I still haven't decided whether my next campaign (which will use 4e rules and start in a couple of weeks) will take place in the pre-4e realms, or in my Homebrew, but it certainly won't take place in the 4e Realms.
Then Dude, you are SO playing in the wrong edition.
lol, yeah maybe. :D
I'm just trying to run a 4E game without the setting feeling like amateur hour. A lot of gaps to fill in, mostly for which I go back to the rich and detailed books from previous editions.
So for my game I'm going with the Shadowfell as a place of temporary torment as a soul realizes "Oh crap, I'm dead. I didnt dodge that arrow." Once it copes with that fact it will then fade away to the Fugue. Or not, and instead become some form of undead, be dragged away by demons raiding for souls, try to stay in Shadow and avoid judgement in the afterlife, etc. Sort of like the Egyptian afterlife - a journey followed by ultimate judgement.
Generalized knowledge of that fate may lead common people to give funerary offerings to Shar just as they do to Umberlee before an ocean voyage. That may step on Kelemvor's toes a bit, but he doesnt do much for the faithful and has no influence in the Shadowfell.
This was really a 4e-specific question, I dont care about previous versions. I'm running a 4e game and the Shadowfell has a purpose there.
Then ask yourself, are you running a 4e game first, or an FR game first? If the former, use the 4e default lore and adapt the realms to fit 4e. If the latter, either adapt the 4e default to serve the FR lore, or just use the FR lore without trying to impose the 4e default setting onto something it was never intended to be part of.
In the pre-spellplague cosmology the appearance of ghosts was always enigmatic. As I understand it a ghost is merely an echo of the real persons soul. That soul has propably reached its patrons heaven when the ghost is spotted. In some cases the souls can get trapped in the ethereal, in which case the ghosts bound the souls on the material untill some fetter is broken.
The novel Ghostwalker and Bloodwalk have protagonists that interact heavily with ghosts and travel through the plane of shadow. Especially Ghostwalker has a good example of ghosts that act as faint visual memories of the dead that dwell in the ethereal. Their interaction with the Fugue is not properly explained though.
As I understand it a ghost is merely an echo of the real persons soul. That soul has propably reached its patrons heaven when the ghost is spotted.
Ghosts and pretty much all incorporeal undead -are- souls, empowered by or infused with negative energy, and for whatever reason unable or unwilling to migrate to their normal afterlives when they originally died.
I understand the way allips and shadows can empower a soul to become one of their own. But ghosts, especially the not neccesarily malicious ones that can be seen in some realms stories, have always been more ambigueous in the explenation where the souls energy comes from.
This "unfinished business" doesn't necessarily itself generate negative energy. Presumedly, they attract the negative energy they need to sustain themselves through sheer force of will.
Properly speaking, "faint visual memories of the dead" are known as phantoms in D&D, though the novel you cite might have called them ghosts. True ghosts are souls. Phantoms are "images left behind by particularly strong death traumas." [AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual, page 287] Phantoms are not undead. They are usually not intelligent or aligned, though phantoms created by the banishment of powerful fiends can be malicious.