> What kind of bad afterlives are available from Daka Fal? Depends on
> your culture what you believe in, but plenty of Orlanthi in Dragon Pass
> believe that you end up in what amounts to the troll afterlife...
> This, of course, makes trolls even more frightening -- they are the
> demon-tormentors of the afterlife!
In my Esrolite game, the afterlife (Ty Kora Tek's) was not meant to be a reassuring place. In her Halls of Silence and Subservience, the gloomy spirits of the dead pass from one place to another, eating clay and drinking dust, until they are ready to slough off their last life like a snake's skin and be reborn into the world again.
When we add to this the fact that the Esrolites (troll-dominated for two Ages plus chunks of Godtime) are familiar with trollish ways, they think that Life for the trolls is like Death is for us humans, and vice versa. Dead Trolls go to Wonderhome, where there's all kinds of succulent food (juicy beetles! yum, yum) and running around and so on. But living trolls live up on the Shadow Plateau, that immense drab desert of black sands, where there's nothing to eat but lava rocks, and nothing to drink but sand (from an Esrolite pov, naturally).
Add to that the trolls' nocturnal habits, and the fact that many ancient Esrolite institutions are set up to accomodate them, and they come to fill quite an interesting niche in their mindset.
(Just adding something from our games to Sandy's post, which was, as usual, most entertaining and informative).
Apropos of which, I wonder whether Esrolite mummification and embalming rituals are done to assure the beneficiary of a better afterlife, maybe preserving them in the same state that they lived in? Not sure how this fits in with Ty Kora Tek, so probably it doesn't. I imagine mummies are "free from decay" in some spiritual sense: TKT can't compel them to obey her laws of Silence and Subservience, because they are still in some way like living people when they descend to her halls. I don't think Esrolia is a "mass-mummification" society like Ancient Egypt, but I'm sure this practice is carried out for certain persons: maybe just the old Year Sons and Pharaohs? Let's chuck that in the pot and stir, and see what happens.
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