After passing through Athael's judgment, a mortal soul is carried onward to one of the nine Outer Planes. There it takes on a stable form suited to its new existence and becomes a petitioner.

Petitioners remain the individuals who lived and died. Their memories, personalities, relationships, convictions, and sense of self continue into the afterlife, while the plane they inhabit gradually influences how that existence develops.

Each Outer Plane affects its dead differently. Some petitioners remain much as they arrived for immense spans of time. Others develop new forms, become true planar beings, or eventually surrender their separate existence to the plane around them.

Becoming a Petitioner

A soul becomes a petitioner when it reaches its final Outer Plane destination.

The form it assumes is shaped by both the soul and the plane receiving it. Mortal wounds, disease, and the physical circumstances of death no longer determine the petitioner's condition, though other aspects of the person's appearance may remain important to their identity.

There is no single petitioner form shared across the Outer Planes. Celestia tends to preserve a recognizable mortal appearance while gradually introducing celestial qualities. Elysium often restores the person to a period of life associated with deep contentment, while Arborea gives greater expression to the individual's own sense of self. The Axis and Lower Planes have their own forms and processes.

Recognition between souls does not depend entirely upon physical appearance. A person can recognize someone they knew in life even when that person's petitioner form differs from the body they remember.

Identity and Memory

Petitioners retain their mortal memories upon arrival.

Across immense spans of time, ordinary details may become less immediate. Dates, minor conversations, forgotten errands, addresses, and other parts of daily life can gradually lose their clarity, particularly when they no longer carry much importance to the individual.

Defining memories tend to endure far longer. A loved one, an oath, a betrayal, a sacrifice, a profound failure, a treasured friendship, or an experience that shaped the course of a life may remain clear for as long as the petitioner continues to exist as an individual.

The emotional meaning of a memory can also persist after some details have faded. Someone may eventually struggle to remember every conversation with a child while retaining a clear knowledge of that relationship, the love they felt, and the ways it changed them.

There is no universal timetable for this process. The nature of the destination can also affect how memories are experienced, especially in planes such as the Gray Wastes where emotional vitality itself is gradually eroded.

Life After Death

Petitioner existence can continue for centuries, millennia, or far longer.

The Upper and Axis Planes contain communities where the dead establish homes, form new relationships, practice crafts, pursue study, travel, work, rest, or simply continue living according to interests they carried from mortality. Death ends mortal life without ending the individual's capacity for new experiences.

A petitioner can continue changing as a person. New friendships can be formed, old beliefs reconsidered, skills learned, interests abandoned, and new purposes discovered. The afterlife therefore becomes part of the individual's continuing history.

The Lower Planes offer far less freedom. Their petitioners remain thinking individuals, but the conditions surrounding them expose them to exploitation, coercion, degradation, predation, or forced transformation according to the nature of the plane.

Planar Transformation

Some petitioners eventually become capable of transforming into true planar beings.

This is a profound change in metaphysical nature. The individual's identity continues, including the history and memories that shaped them, while the mortal soul becomes fully integrated into the essence of the plane.

A petitioner transformed in Celestia may become an Archon or another Celestial. Elysium can produce Guardinals and other celestial forms, while the Axis Planes have their own expressions of planar transformation. The Lower Planes can reshape petitioners into Devils, Gloomfiends, Demons, and other Fiends.

Once this transformation is complete, the individual has left the mortal soul cycle. Their continued existence follows the rules of true planar beings, including the relationship such beings have with their native plane.

The Upper and Axis Planes generally allow the petitioner to choose whether to undergo this change. A soul may remain a petitioner indefinitely if that existence suits them. Within the Lower Planes, powerful authorities and local conditions can impose transformation upon a soul that would have preferred to remain as it was.

Planar Assimilation

A petitioner can also cease maintaining a separate individual existence and become part of the plane itself.

Within the Upper and Axis Planes, this occurs through deliberate acceptance. The form varies according to the plane. A soul in Elysium may enter the waters of Oceanus, while an Arborean petitioner may join a forest, river, sea, mountain, or another place with which they have developed a profound connection.

Such choices may occur only after an existence lasting thousands of years. Many petitioners never seek them and continue as individuals indefinitely.

The Lower Planes can produce the same final loss of separate existence through much harsher means. Baator may impose assimilation, the Gray Wastes can gradually erode a soul until it can no longer maintain itself, and the Abyss may absorb or consume a petitioner through its inhabitants and planar processes.

In every case, the separate individual ceases once assimilation is complete.

Return to Mortal Life

A petitioner can still be reached by resurrection while the soul remains capable of returning to mortal existence.

The soul must be willing, and Athael must permit its return. A recently arrived petitioner may remain readily accessible to sufficiently powerful resurrection magic, while a soul that has existed in the Outer Planes for an extraordinary length of time may be more difficult to restore.

Complete planar transformation creates a much firmer boundary. Once a mortal soul has become a true Celestial, Axisborn, or Fiend, ordinary resurrection can no longer recall the former petitioner as though the transformation had never occurred.

The Upper Planes

Celestia, Elysium, and Arborea receive souls whose lives were shaped most strongly by Good. Their afterlives preserve individual identity while allowing the soul to develop according to the different values expressed by each plane.

Transformation and final union remain matters of choice throughout the Upper Planes.

Celestia

Most souls sent to Celestia begin in Lunia at the base of Mount Celestia. A petitioner arrives recognizably as the person they were in life, restored from wounds, illness, and physical frailty. A faint radiance often develops around the body and may become more pronounced as the soul grows increasingly attuned to the plane.

Many Celestian petitioners eventually become involved in the ascent of Mount Celestia. The journey through its seven heavens involves personal growth as well as travel, with compassion, responsibility, honesty, restraint, justice, courage, service, and the ability to understand one's own failures becoming relevant at different points.

The ascent has no required pace. A petitioner can establish a home in Lunia or another heaven and remain there for centuries or indefinitely. Others continue upward until they find a place where they wish to stay.

Some eventually become aware that they could assume a true celestial form. This awareness arises from the petitioner's own attunement to Celestia, and one possible result is transformation into an Archon. Other celestial forms may arise through divine service or a long association with a particular realm.

The decision remains with the petitioner. A soul capable of transformation can accept it, postpone it, or continue its existence in petitioner form.

Jovar is home to many who have completed much of the ascent, including petitioners who choose to remain there permanently. Beyond it lies Chronias, the Illuminated Heaven, whose nature remains uncertain even to many Celestials.

Traditions concerning Chronias describe either final union with Celestia or a further state of celestial transformation. Reliable accounts are absent, and those who enter rarely return. Reaching Chronias remains a voluntary final step rather than the expected conclusion of every Celestian afterlife.

Elysium

Elysium has no single required point of arrival. A petitioner may appear in Amoria, Eronia, Belierin, Thalasia, or within a compatible divine realm according to the nature of the soul and the life that brought it there.

The petitioner's appearance usually reflects a period of mortal life associated with deep happiness, fulfilment, or contentment. This may be youth, old age, or any period between them. Wounds, chronic illness, exhaustion, and other physical suffering are absent from the new form.

Those who knew the person recognize them instinctively even when they never saw them at the age or appearance the soul has taken.

Life in Elysium carries few expectations. Petitioners may establish homes, cultivate land, practice crafts, travel along Oceanus, form communities, undertake difficult work by choice, or spend long periods at rest. The layers offer different environments rather than stages through which every soul must progress.

The Isles of the Blessed in Thalasia are particularly associated with lasting petitioner existence. Souls who settle there can remain as individuals for as long as they wish, free to maintain relationships, interests, and a recognizable personal life.

Some Elysian petitioners eventually become aware that a celestial transformation has become possible. Guardinal forms are among the best-known expressions of this change, with the resulting form reflecting the enduring character of the individual. Acceptance is voluntary and permanently changes the petitioner into a true Celestial.

Others eventually choose union with Elysium itself. Oceanus provides one path, allowing a willing petitioner to enter its waters and gradually become part of the plane. The same waters remain safe for ordinary travel because this union depends upon the deliberate choice of the soul.

A petitioner may also remain in Elysium indefinitely without choosing either transformation or assimilation.

Arborea

Arborean petitioners arrive in a form shaped strongly by their own sense of identity.

The soul expresses the person as they genuinely understood themselves, free from physical limitations or circumstances that prevented that identity from being fully expressed during life. Meaningful scars or other features may remain when the individual considers them part of themselves, while unwanted injuries and physical damage are usually absent.

Arborea also heightens vitality. Color, movement, expression, and physical presence tend to become more vivid without forcing a single appearance or temperament upon those who live there.

Petitioners choose how they spend their existence. Some settle in cities, villages, forests, mountain valleys, or islands. Others travel for centuries, sail Aquallor, create art, build communities, pursue difficult journeys, compete, study, or live quietly in places they have made their own.

Long residence can make the petitioner's form increasingly expressive. Someone whose afterlife becomes deeply connected to a forest, sea, animal, craft, or way of life may gradually develop physical traits reflecting that relationship.

Some petitioners eventually gain the ability to assume temporary spirit forms. These often resemble animals or more unusual creatures that express an aspect of the individual's identity. A petitioner may possess several such forms while retaining the ability to return to their familiar appearance.

These spirit forms remain part of petitioner existence. Animal Lords belong to a separate and far older order of Celestials and do not arise through this process.

A deeper transformation may eventually become possible. The petitioner can become a true Arborean planar being, perhaps retaining a humanoid shape, adopting a favored spirit form permanently, or developing into another individualized celestial or nature-oriented form.

Arborea also allows voluntary union with the plane. The place matters more than any single prescribed method. A petitioner may join a forest, mountain, river, grassland, island, or the waters of Aquallor after developing a sufficiently deep relationship with it.

The Axis Planes

Concordium, the Outlands, and Pandemonium receive souls whose lives were shaped most strongly by Law, neutrality, or Chaos without a stronger moral resonance drawing them toward the Upper or Lower Planes.

Their afterlives place greater emphasis on the ways individuals relate to structure, circumstance, change, and personal identity.

Concordium

A Concordian petitioner initially retains a stable and recognizable mortal form. Subtle crystalline or metallic qualities may gradually appear in the skin, hair, eyes, or other features, while geometric structures often develop within the irises.

Over time, fine patterns emerge across the petitioner's body. These markings change as the individual gains new experiences and develops a better understanding of their actions, relationships, responsibilities, failures, and place within larger systems.

The patterns are unique to each petitioner. New understanding can extend them, alter existing structures, or reveal relationships between parts that previously seemed disconnected.

Patterns can also respond to one another. When two or more petitioners share a meaningful resonance, their markings may align into larger structures known as a Concordance. This reveals a relationship between the individuals without placing any obligation upon them to remain together or change their present form.

A petitioner who develops a sufficiently complete understanding of their own pattern can reach a state known as Resolution. At that point, deeper forms of Concordian existence become possible.

One path is individual transformation into a Navan, a crystalline planar being whose new form preserves the petitioner's identity and unique pattern.

Another is Convergence. Several compatible petitioners, Navan, or existing greater axiomites may willingly combine their patterns and identities into an Aveneva. The resulting being possesses one consciousness formed from several continuing identities, carrying the memories and perspectives of those who chose to join.

An Aveneva can partition its awareness and draw more heavily upon one constituent perspective when useful, though the original participants no longer exist as separate beings. Convergence is permanent.

Both Navan and Aveneva are commonly classified as axiomites.

Petitioners may also remain in Concordium indefinitely without undergoing Resolution or transformation. Some eventually choose assimilation into the greater order of Arcadia, Mechanus, or the relationship between the two.

The Outlands

Petitioners of the Outlands undergo less immediate physical change than those of most other Outer Planes.

They arrive in familiar mortal forms, restored from the physical cause of death. Their surroundings may also take on recognizable qualities drawn from places or landscapes they knew in life, giving the newly arrived soul a comprehensible place from which to begin.

Over long periods, the petitioner's form becomes more adaptable. Apparent age, build, coloration, facial features, and other details may become somewhat fluid while the individual remains recognizable.

Long residence near the borders of another Outer Plane can also leave temporary traces. Celestia may lend a faint luminosity, Concordium greater symmetry, or Arborea stronger organic variation. These qualities fade as the petitioner returns toward the central Outlands.

Many souls remain petitioners permanently, living in cities, villages, portal towns, rural communities, or along the roads crossing the plane.

Those who eventually choose true planar transformation become Rilmani. Their forms remain broadly humanoid while taking on distinctly planar qualities, often including pale or muted coloration, unusual features, and a natural ability to float above the ground.

Rilmani carry forward the adaptability developed during petitioner existence. Their long lives and lack of allegiance to another Outer Plane have made many well suited to diplomacy, mediation, scholarship, trade, and the maintenance of neutral spaces, though these are occupations rather than obligations.

A petitioner seeking final union with the Outlands must reach the center at the summit of the Spire beneath Sigil. Those who reach it and freely accept assimilation become part of the plane, ending their separate petitioner existence.

Pandemonium

Pandemonium's petitioners usually begin within the more stable outer regions, where Great Masses, cavern settlements, freeholds, and long-established communities provide environments capable of supporting ordinary life.

They initially appear much as they did in mortality, restored from the physical circumstances of death. As centuries pass, their relationship with physical form becomes increasingly flexible.

A petitioner may learn to change hair, coloration, apparent age, facial features, proportions, sex characteristics, horns, tails, or other parts of their appearance. Greater experience allows more substantial changes while preserving a coherent body chosen by the individual.

A form can remain unchanged for thousands of years. The ability provides freedom to alter the body when the individual wishes rather than creating constant instability.

Many petitioners also learn to influence Pandemonium's mutable matter. They may shape small amounts into shelter, reinforce unstable terrain, redesign a home, or work with others to maintain larger settlements.

The regions nearer the Stillpoint provide greater challenges for those who wish to explore more unstable parts of the plane. Such journeys remain optional, and many petitioners spend their entire afterlives among the stable Great Masses.

Some petitioners eventually choose transformation into Shardminds. A Shardmind possesses a stable crystalline core surrounded by independent shards that can rearrange themselves into different configurations.

The core preserves continuity while the surrounding body remains freely changeable. One Shardmind might favor a conventional humanoid form, while another uses four arms, unusual proportions, asymmetry, or widely separated crystalline components.

Shardminds are true Axisborn beings and continue as the same individuals who once lived as mortal petitioners.

A second final path leads toward the Stillpoint. A petitioner who deliberately enters it and accepts the loss of separate existence can become assimilated into Pandemonium. Ordinary travel near the Stillpoint carries no automatic risk of this fate.

The Lower Planes

Baator, the Gray Wastes, and the Abyss receive mortal souls shaped most strongly by Evil.

Their petitioners retain identity and memory upon arrival, though the conditions surrounding them provide far fewer protections for continued freedom or individuality. Transformation and assimilation may occur through coercion, exploitation, degradation, or violence.

Baator

A soul judged to Baator usually arrives as a recognizable petitioner with its memories and personality intact.

New arrivals enter the infernal receiving system, where their identities, abilities, previous obligations, and any recognized claims upon them are recorded. From that point onward, they fall under the authority of Baator's infernal order.

Most uncontracted petitioners receive assignments according to the needs of the Hells. Their mortal skills can influence where they are placed, particularly when knowledge of warfare, administration, magic, engineering, trade, or another useful profession can be exploited.

Infernal jurisdiction and private ownership are separate matters. A petitioner belongs under Baatorian authority by virtue of having been judged to the plane, while a particular Devil or institution requires a recognized legal claim to possess additional rights over that soul.

Contracts made during mortal life can establish those claims. Some grant rights over service or custody, while more extensive bargains can determine the petitioner's assignment, protections, privileges, or eventual infernal form.

A sufficiently valuable contract can even require immediate transformation upon arrival.

Petitioners can remain in mortal form for immense periods when Baator finds that form useful. They may gain limited privileges, influence, or positions within infernal society, though infernal authorities retain broad control over their continued status.

Reforging transforms a petitioner into a true Devil. It may occur through contract, promotion, punishment, military need, judicial sentence, or the decision of an authority empowered to order it.

A lemure is one of the lowest infernal forms produced through reforging. The transformation greatly diminishes intellect and autonomy while leaving the underlying mortal memories present. A lemure may therefore remember the people and ambitions of its former life while possessing little ability to understand or act upon them.

Later advancement can restore greater intellectual capacity as the Devil assumes more capable forms. The memories themselves were present throughout.

Once reforged, the former petitioner exists fully as a Fiend and enters Baator's infernal hierarchy. Further promotions and demotions can reshape its form many times while preserving continuity of identity.

Baator can also assimilate souls into itself. Such a fate may be chosen in rare circumstances or imposed as punishment, disposal, or the final disposition of a soul the infernal system no longer intends to preserve separately.

The Gray Wastes

Most petitioners sent to the Gray Wastes first appear in Othrys, often near the River Styx and the communities that have developed around its routes.

They arrive with their memories, emotions, ambitions, attachments, and recognizable mortal forms intact. Color begins to fade soon afterward as the plane gradually imposes its muted character upon them.

The deeper danger is emotional erosion.

Love becomes harder to feel. Hatred loses intensity. Pleasure grows distant, curiosity requires increasing effort, and ambitions that once drove an entire life can begin to seem exhausting.

Memory can remain clear while its emotional connection weakens. A petitioner may remember exactly who someone was and understand that they once loved them while finding the feeling itself increasingly difficult to reach.

Purpose can help a soul resist this decline. Work, rivalries, obligations, ambitions, relationships, bargains, and responsibilities give petitioners reasons to remain active even as the plane makes sustained motivation more difficult.

This has helped produce the strongly transactional cultures found among Gloomfiends and many other inhabitants of the Wastes. Petitioners who remain useful to a company, settlement, patron, or ally gain practical reasons for others to help preserve them.

Severe degradation can eventually produce a larva.

A larva remains the same mortal soul in a greatly diminished state. Fragments of memory and basic emotions continue, while much of the complexity that once supported the person's identity becomes difficult to express.

Some petitioners reach this state through prolonged exposure to the plane. Night hags and other specialists can also accelerate the process deliberately, producing larvae for trade, magical use, or later transformation.

Larvae can be transported throughout the Lower Planes, though the condition itself is closely associated with the Gray Wastes.

A petitioner can also become a Gloomfiend without passing through larval degradation. Powerful patrons, companies, magical practitioners, and other forces may transform a valuable soul directly, preserving much more of the individual's coherence as they pass into true Fiendish existence.

Larvae can undergo the same transformation when someone considers the remaining individual worth preserving or using.

A soul that continues to lose the ability to sustain itself may eventually be absorbed into the Gray Wastes. Larval form can delay this process, but the plane's erosion continues unless something intervenes.

The Abyss

Most ordinary petitioners entering the Abyss appear in Pazunia, one of its most stable and well-connected layers.

They retain their mortal identity, memories, emotions, ambitions, and recognizable appearance. No central authority receives them, and their future depends quickly upon the region in which they arrive and the powers active there.

Life in the Abyss depends heavily upon the ability to protect oneself or become valuable to someone capable of providing protection. Strength, cunning, magic, knowledge, alliances, reputation, followers, and territory can all provide security for as long as the individual can maintain them.

Settlements and strongholds can offer stability, though local authority lasts only while those enforcing it retain sufficient power.

Long exposure to the Abyss gradually alters many petitioners. Their forms can acquire demonic characteristics suited to the layer and conditions surrounding them, including claws, horns, altered skin, fangs, unusual proportions, or other physical changes.

The soul remains a petitioner through much of this degradation.

For many, the process eventually reaches a point where mortal petitioner existence gives way to true demonic nature. The resulting form is commonly a mane.

A mane retains continuity with the mortal who became it. Memories survive, along with enough awareness and emotion for the demon to understand aspects of what it once possessed and what it has become.

The Abyss also permits direct transformation into stronger demonic forms. A Demon Lord, powerful Demon, ritual, layer, or other source of Abyssal power may reshape a petitioner without the soul first becoming a mane.

Such transformations may be accepted willingly or imposed by a being powerful enough to control the petitioner.

Once transformation is complete, the individual becomes a true Demon and leaves the mortal soul cycle. Further changes can follow according to accumulated power, the influence of a layer, the actions of a patron, or the creature's own development.

Manehood therefore represents one common route into demonic existence rather than a required first rank through which every former mortal must pass.

Petitioners also face the danger of consumption. Some Demons can absorb a petitioner in a way that incorporates the soul's essence into themselves, ending the victim's separate existence.

The Abyss itself can produce similar outcomes. Layers, rituals, sacrifices, and powerful local forces may absorb souls directly into their surroundings.

A sufficiently capable petitioner can resist these outcomes for an extraordinary length of time. Others may remain in mortal form because a powerful patron deliberately preserves them that way. The Abyss provides no general protection ensuring that either condition will last.

The Continuing Afterlife

Petitioner existence has no single final form.

A soul may remain an individual petitioner for as long as its plane and circumstances allow. It may develop new relationships and experiences for ages beyond the span of its mortal life, gradually becoming more closely attuned to the world it now inhabits.

Some eventually transform into true planar beings while preserving continuity of identity. Others choose union with their plane, while the Lower Planes can force similar endings upon souls with little power to resist them.

The Outer Planes therefore serve as places of continued existence as well as destinations of the dead. Arrival marks the beginning of the afterlife, and what follows can extend across an immeasurable span of experience and change.