Ghostwalk
The premise is simple: the Land of the Dead is a real place, miles beneath the earth, and the spirits of the dead travel there when they cannot or will not leave the world of the living. These souls become ghosts, which aren't the horrific undead monsters of other D&D campaign settings, but are instead a form of playable pseudo-race/pseudo-class that can be player characters.
Written by the infamous Monte Cook, with assistance from Sean K. Reynolds, Ghostwalk adds some interesting new concepts and classes to the standard Third Edition roster, while complicating things by allowing the transfer of levels between ghost and living states of being. There are a lot of updates to skills and feats from base 3e that are updated in the sourcebook due to the oddities of Ghostwalk ghosts, and the setting as a whole really does add a lot of weird new things to the Third Edition.
It really does need some more notice and love.
Geography
The World of the Living
The World of the Dead
Unique among the D&D settings, Ghostwalks establishes a completely separate and unusual Afterlife that can be explored by players and DMs. Beyond the Well of Souls, in what is known as the True Afterlife, the spirits of the dead live a hollow existence reminiscent of their past lives. They lose all memory of this existence and this world upon revival, but so long as they remain they retain their memories of the living world.
Small islands float atop an endless sea, which plunge to unknown depths. These islands are not attached to anything, they merely float atop the water, like a piece of pumice in the bath. Various factions claim control of a series of isles near the Well of Souls, but it is possible to swim out into the ocean and appear next to islands never before known, far from the Well and other beings. Strangely, there are even undead monsters in this world, who somehow smuggled themselves through the City of Manifest to appear in this World of the Dead.
Beings in this world can survive as long as they want. When they are hungry, food appears before them. A pale kind of sunlight pervades during the "daylight" hours, while pitch darkness fills the "night." Only when a soul is tired and ready to move on, to be consumed by Dracanash, the Eater of the Dead, do they fade and experience true death.
Races
- Dwarves: They guard the doors to the Land of the Dead.
- Elves: They become one with the Spirit Wood and their ghosts merge into soul-trees.
- Ghosts: Physical beings made up of ectoplasm, which exist in the Material Plane rather than the Ethereal Plane.
Classes
Culture
External Links
Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Settings | |
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Basic D&D | Mystara (Blackmoor) • Pelinore • Red Sonja |
AD&D | Birthright • Council of Wyrms • Dark Sun • Diablo • Dragonlance • Forgotten Realms (Al-Qadim • The Horde • Icewind Dale • Kara-Tur • Malatra • Maztica) • Greyhawk • Jakandor • Mystara (Hollow World • Red Steel • Savage Coast) • Planescape • Ravenloft (Masque of the Red Death) • Spelljammer |
3rd/3.5 Edition | Blackmoor • Diablo • Dragonlance • Dragon Fist • Eberron • Forgotten Realms • Ghostwalk • Greyhawk (Sundered Empire) • Ravenloft (Masque of the Red Death) • Rokugan |
4th Edition | Blackmoor • Dark Sun • Eberron • Forgotten Realms • Nentir Vale |
5th Edition | Dragonlance • Eberron • Exandria • Forgotten Realms • Greyhawk • Ravenloft • Ravnica • Theros • Spelljammer • Strixhaven • Radiant Citadel |