Editing Magical Realm Cyoa/Diaspora/Secrets/Afterlife (section)

== '''Afterlife''' ==

The people of the Seven Great Cities are of the opinion that there is an afterlife of peace and wellbeing which comes after death.  Their faith in this afterlife is based on their belief in a pantheon which was old and ill-understood even before the breaking.  Their faith also has no basis in reality - it is simple faith in what their parents believed.

The truth would shock and apall them - and the fact that the already reviled Xanatos is responsible would redouble their hatred of him.  Because the truth is that there is no afterlife in Diaspora - only a new life.

Anyone who dies within Diaspora is immediately reborn, in a different pocket realm of Diaspora, far from any portal, and in a new body.  Their memories of their previous lives are locked away in their deep subconscious mind, giving them gentle guidance so that they may learn more quickly those skills they were once good at, but only really accessible to the most powerful of mind-mages, and then only if they go looking.  All bonds and beliefs held in that past life are lost, only the experience and knowledge are retained and that only subconsciously, used in the forging of better and more useful skills for the newly reborn.

The knowledge and skills of the deceased also become part of the collective unconscious of the realm itself (see [[Magical_Realm_Cyoa/Diaspora/Secrets/Unnatural|Unnatural Nature]]), so that the specialist skills, abilities, knowledge and magic of those who die in the realm are added to those that the realm it can grant as part of quests and as bonuses for 'special actions'.  In effect, this means that any time a person with a skill set the realm hasn't had access to before dies within Diaspora, that person's abilities become available to the people of Diaspora as a whole.  It may be some time before these skills are given out again, and the individual most likely to get those skills back is the re-incarnated soul of the one who 'donated' those abilities in the first place, so this doesn't mean that a person's capabilities are copied entirely simply because they died.  But it makes it much simpler to learn to create an internet if an internet expert comes to Diaspora and is accidentally killed.  And it makes it much easier to research angel-summoning if an angel summoner is likewise killed in Diaspora.

There are other, more mundane means of acquiring skills from visitors to the realms, which are covered in the skills section (not yet finished).