Einstein’s Tongue–Ghosts and Planes: The Question of Ethereality
I remember some time before in which I wrote a blog about contemplating the death of my dear character Ken Koitsu. And in all honesty, it was a true struggle fighting the concept of his death. He was that strong: the man Ken Koitsu 
could not be so far from “awesomeness” as to die and never be seen again, given a certain supernatural skill set in dealing with the Ethereal Plane and travel via this plane of existence. Recently in role-playing, Ken was murdered, and his death spurred on the grief of several and kicked off an extrapolation inevitably leading my fellow players into civil war and depression; interaction was not necessarily derived purely from the sudden loss, but things happen. And consequences arise. Let imagination run its course as it tends to do frequently.
With a brief explanation for my motivations in writing this out of the way, I proceed with my blog. The Question of Ethereality is, all cliches aside, a tough spirit to clench. Using help from the DnD cosmology, I traced down a number of origins from which someone might awake in their after-life. A very quick process of elimination given planar characteristics and Ken’s general persona made it easy to figure which world Ken would wake up in, and how he might fare: The Heroic Domain of Ysgard.
Originally from Nordic mythology, if my short research stands correct, and adapted to suit the DnD campaign, Ysgard (or Asgard, as it is sometimes spelled) is a world of never-ending battle. Each day the warriors wake up, from either sleep or death, and resume their fighting and war until the sun sets, in which case they either lie in deceased slumber 
until the next day’s battle, or stumble into one of several taverns about the plane to spend the night having their way. The place seemed to suit Ken’s life up till then, by far more appropriate than Elysium, or the rising mountain of Celestia, or the Depths of Carceri, Hades, or other abyssal planes. He was neither good nor evil, despite public opinion; he was a warrior, a natural born denizen of Ysgard.
Even in death, though, Ken is not one to leave his beloved home without giving them visits, and even be introduced to the possibility of another life. This is where his skill set, mentioned above, comes back into play. The ethereal plane, by nature, acts as a bridge to all the planes of the cosmology, a parallell world that lies on top of all the universe to grant travelers access if they can reach it. Believe it or not, Ken can attain this bridge with almost ease. He being able to access the Ethereal Plane like this can grant him that bridge back to the Material Plane, our world, should he so choose, and should he be capable to attaining that ethereal form that haunts our scary stories and inhabits our ghostly nightmares, voila. We have our ghosty Ken.
From a well chosen, prepared skill set, to a death and awakening on an Outer Rim plane, to access of the ghostly levels, and back. Being a ghost, theoretically, seems not that difficult. Oh, if only fantasy could be closer to our Material Plane.
April 8, 2011
Posted in: Einstein's Tongue
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