Death

Dying

There are three ways to die:

• One way is by taking so much damage that your character hits -10 hp.
• The second is failing a saving throw versus a spell that kills instantly.
• Lastly, if any of your characters 'status' meters get to -100%, they will die (that is to say; thirst, hunger, exhaustion and sobriety but not piety).

When a character is losing hitpoints, they can still act normally untill reaching 0 HP. Once a character runs out of hitpoints, they will proceed to fall to the floor and "bleed", gradually losing hitpoints each round.

When a character is dying, one of these things will happen:

• Divine intervention may occur at the moment your character would normally die. Your character will be restored to full hitpoints, all effects (good or bad) will be removed from them, and they will be granted a Greater Sanctuary effect that lasts a few seconds. This can only happen to characters whose deity is of the War & Destruction or Hearth & Home aspects. All the other diety aspects have a minor chance of divine intervention though. Its chance of occurring is dependent on the character's piety, and it will significantly drain the character's piety if it does occur.
• The character may "stabilise", where the gradual loss of Hitpoints is halted and reveses, until the character has one hitpoint left.
• The character, if not healed, will bleed to death and die. This is the most common outcome.

Being killed by a NPC Monster will incur a small experience penalty upon death. Being killed by a Player Character will not. In both cases, all the gold and corpses character carried will be gone from their inventory and left behind. All carried equipment will stay with the death character. When a character dies (by any means) they leave a corpse on the ground at the location where they fell.

The death area

Once character has died, dead character's spirit will be transported to a foggy area known as Fugue or the Death Area, where they are able to interact with the spirits of other dead Player characters (if there are any). A character cannot engage in PvP or cast magic while in the Death Area.

Please note:

• The Death Area is in character area and all rules apply here. Stay in character.
• Characters don't remember anything that happened inside the Death Area after returning back to life.
• Characters don't gain roleplaying bonus, since any experience they may accumulate in the Death Area will be lost with their memory when they return to life.
• Characters don't suffer thirst, hunger or tiredness.

Memory loss

In short:

• Living characters can not, do not, and must not remember anything from "Death Area"/Fugue Plane.
• Players are free to RP their characters as remembering anything and everything up until the moment of their death.

Your character will absolutely not remember a thing about the Fugue Plane. As a rule, memory is only attached to the living. If your character isn't alive, there's no way they can remember anything.

That said, some players like to employ various "personal rules" on how much their characters remember. For example a "six minute rule", saying that due to the trauma of being killed, they can't remember anything for the six minutes prior to dying (or one in game hour). This is purely up to each player's judgment and neither expected nor required!

Characters can remember everything till the moment of their death. It does not matter if they died in PvP conflict, were raised or used the respawning option by entering the light. They can still remember everything, but they must of course also follow all of the 5 golden rules. Meaning, that for example the twenty four hours rule is still valid and character has to abide by the rules of engagement.

Amnesia (loss of memory) is often used to provide IC justification for following the twenty four hours rule or to stop character from permanently seeking revenge, if it is not desired for their storyline. It can also prevent characters from looking like a fool in character, should they try to report own murder after getting back to life.

"Its generally considered bad taste however to run up to a guard 2 seconds after respawning, pointing at XXXX person and going "THEY KILLED ME ARREST THEM PLZ!"

Casually going on about how you were once eaten and digested by a Red Dragon once is a bit silly as well at times. But hey! Its your call, really." msterswrdsmn

It makes sense after dying and coming back for character to go to where they died and try to do what they were doing when they died. Or try to figure out what happened to them if player is roleplaying a mild amnesia or confusion. For example: "How did I end up back in town? I thought I was halfway through the forest." And then taking the exact same path where character were killed because that's what they had planned to do.

"This, to me, is a great starting point for some interesting roleplay. There has been many times where my characters have bumbled around, confused and disoriented after respawning. There have been many other times where there has been some sort of IC explanation for it." DM Watchtower

Jjjerm on memory loss:

"When you enter the fugue plane, you will not recall any of the events that occurred within the fugue plane when you exit the fugue plane and return to the living.

That is all.

The reason for this is essentially to prevent the metagaming aspect of "oh, hey, I told you where my body was when we were in death together, go raise me! hyuk hyuk hyuk". But the above explanation in bold is the exact and full expectation of the server. Everything else is hearsay and a shadow rule. Also, note that it's not so much a rule in and of itself as a clarification of this issue in how it relates to the REAL rules of 1 and 4 (see journal for reference-all actual "Rules" are located in the journal).

Don't feel too badly if you've thought differently, it's one of those cases where Billy tells Susan that it's a rule, Susan tells Frank, Jim, and Ted that it's a rule, and they all start authoritatively speaking to other players in exponential numbers explaining quite rationally that this is a rule, whereupon it grows in urban lore to the point that it is accepted as a rule by the players.

But it's not.

This urban lore legend started when a couple players in pvp decided that to end their cycle of killing, that they'd "not remember" what happened before they died, so that there would be no reason to continue vengeance. Which, honestly, in and of itself is absolutely fine. I'm generally not opposed to two players agreeing ooc to do something that will smooth the storyline and RP, that only helps. The only issue came at some magical point when it started being touted about as a "rule", because it's not."

Returning to the living

One of two things can happen once dead.

• Someone can pick up your character's body and raise him/her via spells (Raise Dead, Resurrection), or a scroll purchased from various vendors (usually in temples) around the server. Your character is once again alive. Neither Resurrection nor Raise Dead incur an XP penalty (except for the small one you will suffer on entering Death if you are killed by an NPC/monster).
• You can have your character respawn. Respawn is walking into the light, literally. The pillar in the center of the area will bring your character back to the real world at their respawn point. There is an XP cost for respawning, however. It is possible to talk to the Soul Guardian to see what this cost will be. The corpse that represented characters' dead body will disappear on respawn.

If a character has a Mark of Despair or a Mark of Destiny, then a death counts as a death, regardless of whether they resurrected or not.

There are a few important things to note about this:

• The first character to lift corpse will gain all of the gold that dying character was carrying.
• Using the "bash" command, or certain Area of Affect spells (like Ice Storm) will destroy the corpse and prevent it from being raised, forcing a respawn and thus, an Experience point penalty. Some players consider this to be griefing or poor sportsmanship, but it is never considered obligatory to provide the chance of a raise, and you are free to "bash" a corpse if it suits your character's roleplay. That said, doing it purely to inflict an experience point penalty, or having a character whose roleplay is built around "bashing" for the sake of it, is likely to be considered a breach of both the Be Nice Rule and the Roleplay Rule. When a corpse is "bashed", the remains include an otherwise-unobtainable "skull" item bearing the name of the character killed.
• Player will get a message while in death for every action taken with corpse, including if it is picked up, dropped, or destroyed.
• Characters have to wait five minutes in death before they can respawn.

Respawn points

Your "respawn point" is the place your character is returned to once they respawn. The default is the point where the character first entered the server, such as the boat in the Temple District.

You can change your respawn point at any time by 'talking' to one and choosing to 'bind your soul.' There are respawn points hidden all over the island, including in most major settlements. It's up to your character to find them in-game.

Consequences of death

Mithreas:

"There is no server rule saying that death has to mean anything beyond the mechanical impact. I quite agree, however, that this leads to unsatisfying stories. But writing a good story can't be done against a background of ooc competition. The only way to get good conflict stories is to co-operate in their writing, which means ooc communication between the parties involved to agree a context in which actions can be interpreted and the story progressed.

The friendly DM team are around to judge on any specific cases, but I'd encourage anyone engaged in conflict RP to maintain open and friendly ooc channels with their IC opponent(s)."

Permanent death of character

Permanent death of character can occur in one of these cases:

• Characters with a Mark of Despair or a Mark of Destiny will die permanently when their count of lives is over.
• All players can at any time decide to permanently kill their characters with console command -delete_character.
• A player with a character of level 16+ can perform the Epic Sacrifice.