Sleep, Death and 'The Afterlife'

1) What if you die by poison or by injury? Will the death be permanent?

Shailejron answers:

Penalty of Death
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Tildruin features an advanced death system. Characters that die are abolished to a featureless plane of existance - death. This featureless realm gives players the possibility to fill in the blanks and define their own death experiences. This rhymes well with Tildruins overall ambition to not impose a concept of reality, death, magic and religion upon players.

A dead character cannot return to the living without the help of the living. The dead character can contact the living through means like dreams and spiritism. Priest classes will play an important role in the process of bringing back the dead. The characters corpse rots within two (rl) weeks and a full decay will result in a permanent death.

2) Will there be a NPC (Non-player-character) that can raise people from the dead?

Sorshepsut answers:

Yes, there will be NPC priests can raise the dead.

3) Would there be a way to pay a player to raise oneself from the dead while one is still dead?

Sorshepsut answers:

The dead will not be able to interact directly with the living, but since they may communicate through dreams or spiritism it's entirely possible that some sort of agreement between the dead and the reviver could be reached. Greedy priests could demand a boon for their favours, while others could hope that their kind deeds would make the revived more interested in their particular faith, or those of caring nature could feel rewarded by the simple act itself - of helping someone in need.

4) Will sleep be forced and you will have to take time while you are playing to sleep?

Shailejron answers:

No, you choose when you want to sleep.

5) What will sleep do for a character?

Shailejron answers:

Sleep is a fast way to rest.

6) If one does not have a house and not enough money for an inn does one just fall asleep in a back alley?

Shailejron answers:

Sure, just have someone watch your back.

7) When you are asleep dead characters would be able to contact you, will there be anything else to do while you are asleep or will it just be a blank screen?

Shailejron answers:

The dream is an existence in full colour. You can move about and interact with items and beings in your dreams as in "real life". The dead can enter your dream and you will be able to see and talk to them.

8) When you log off from the game will that be when you sleep and if so how would you know the dead contacted you?

Shailejron answers:

The dead can also write dream messages in text that will be displayed to you the
next time you logon.

9) Will there be stamina factors that require sleep to regenerate? Will sleep heal wounds?

Shailejron answers:

There aren't any factors that "require sleep", but sleep can help you regenerate from fatigue and wounds. Sleep is not always the best way to regenerate and there are many other methods like simply resting (sitting down), bard music, prayers and spells.

10) Will characters have a limited life span or will they be immortal to age?

Shailejron answers:

Your character is mortal and will eventually die of old age. He/she will go through different stages in life. There will be ways to keep yourself healthy and young, but we will not go into those details here. Different races will have different lifespans.

11) When the game opens one assumes players who want to go in the path of the priest class will not be advanced enough to raise players from the dead. If this is true how would a player that dies early in the games development return from the dead if full decay is reached in 2 weeks?

Sorshepsut answers:

That is correct. Members of the priest guild will not be able to revive the deceased until they join guilds higher up in the hierarchy on the path of the priest. Young adventurers that are struck by the misfortunate of death will be aided. We do not wish to punish the new and inexperienced just because the world is young.

12) What are the ways to raise people from the dead?

Shailejron answers:

I will not provide you a full list, because we enjoy the thought of some of you gaining
esoteric knowledge and discovering much which we-have-not-and-never-will mention
within the game! Actually I think we've done a good job of concealing the best parts
yet.

13) Beyond magic and deities and the like, are their any other ways?

Shailejron answers:
I hear your concern about methods for atheists to return from the dead and I can
assure you that there will be. Time will be a critical factor, as the longer the corpse is
left to rot the more powerful means will be required.

14) As far as deities go, can an atheist be raised by a cleric of a certain religion?

Shailejron answers:

Nobody can be raised from the dead without giving the benefactor consent. So, the
dead can refuse and should refuse help that he/she does not want.

15) What are the options after death?

Shailejron answers:

A character has the possibility of listing dreams and entering them. He/she can also
send dream messages to friends that are not online at the time. The character can
communicate with the living through other methods like spiritism and songs, but
this communication has to be initiated from the living world. Dead characters can
also return to the world for a limited time in an animal vessel, with the help of druid.
These are some of the options that will be available.

16) Could I loot bodies I find just laying around?

Shailejron answers:

Looting a player corpse will require consent.

17) Is zombie-hood or vampirism a possibility?

Shailejron answers:

There will be no zombies, vampires, werewolves, frankensteins, mummies,
demons and ghosts in Tildruin. They simply do not fit the world setting.


18) If a spell is used to bring someone back would the spell take up a chunk of the Tildruin day?

Shailejron answers:

That's true all spells will have casting time. I cannot comment on the timeframe without
giving away too much about the actual process of bringing back the dead.

Now allow me briefly to extend this topic. There will be tons of scenarios that cannot be hard
coded, because they cannot be foreseen or simply take too much time to implement. Your imagination
and desire to RP sets the boundaries. We hope that the players will not restrict themselves to
built-in functionality. In most commercial games players come to "consume", we will expect our
players to equally help "provide" content. As many of you already have pointed out, the success
of Tildruin relies heavily upon its players. I think the project is doing a good job so far, by
attracting the right crowd with the right mindset.

19) When one dies will one go to a heaven or hell or will one just go to a spirit world?

Shailejron answers:

Death is a fairly dark featureless shadowy place. You will not move around in it and there's not much you can do except enter available dreams/respond to contact from the living world. The purpose of a featureless death is to avoid telling you what death is like. When and if you return to the living you should fabricate your own belief and view on the topic. It's easier to fill a blank if there is a blank to fill.