Death

"Are you quite sure you want to know this?" Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"Death in the Fifth City isn't necessarily the end. If you're stabbed or shot, someone may come along and sew you back together soon enough. If you're drowned, you'll wake with a hangover. If you die of old age or disease, or if you're hacked to pieces, it's a more serious matter. But in any case, once you die and return to life down here, you'll never be permitted to return to the surface...unless you're one of the few who find a way to immortality."

Death is strange, needless to say.

Not Again

"Placid black water. Barren trees. A boat filled with pale and shivering passengers. That must be the place of the dead, over there on the far bank. Oh good."

Thanks to the light of Stone, people who die in places such as London may recover from death; those who die far out in the Unterzee often aren't so lucky. Death's elusiveness has caused some... changes in London's society. Serial killers such as Jack-of-Smiles aren't nearly as feared as those on the Surface, and the game of Knife-and-Candle basically consists of players competitively murdering each other. Furthermore, the elusiveness of death led to significant revisions of the Bible, thanks to God's Editors. All are not free from mortality's grip, however, being chopped up or dying of natural causes is often permanent.Those who die many, many times often become tomb-colonists, especially when their ages and scars catch up to them.

The Boatman's Hat

People who die in the Neath, whether temporarily or permanently, end up on a slow boat passing a dark beach on a silent river, which serves as a limbo of sorts. This mysterious realm consists of two shores and a river. The dead await the boat on one shore, and the deceased go to the other side to rest. The dead that pass here have neither bodies nor souls, as both facets of their being still exist in the world of the living. The land of the dead is completely disconnected from the land of the living, though on occasion, items such as spectacles may cross over. This land also has five rivers, and it's implied that it may have ties to the land beyond the mirrors.

The Boatman's Lantern

The Constables have agents that die and return regularly to ensure that certain personages stay dead permanently. Such a task is extremely mentally taxing for obvious reasons.

The Far Shore

"The ground erupts. Grey, wizened figures scrabble from walls of meat, clawing at one another, fingers locked in bone and socket, dragging at your wrists and ankles, tangling hair and tendons. With cracked tongues they beg for transport, promising grisly favours for one day's respite."

The Boatman

"Well, apparently he plays chess in paintings and folk-songs. Which are always accurate, of course."

The Boatman

The Boatman is the Neath's Grim Reaper; it is his job to ferry the spirits of the dead across the river to the far shore. The Boatman appears to the dead as a skeletal figure, always wearing a brimmed top hat and possessing a softly glowing lantern. He has a special fondness for chess and dice, and winning against him may grant a spirit a little more time in the lands of the living. He also likes weasels, bats, and dice. The Boatman has hinted that he may answer to a higher power, possibly even the Judgements themselves.

The job of the Boatman seems to be a bequeathed one to some extent, as the current Boatman is actually capable of passing on his position to those who seek it. Taking up the Boatman's oars gives the recipient a skeletal appearance, though those who have died several times are sometimes capable of telling the Boatmen apart. The Boatman is actually capable of looking into the memories of the dying, which can be useful for gathering intel, and he is held in his boat by a mysterious force; there must always be a Boatman, to prevent the dead from piling up on the near shore.

The High Wilderness

"The Ephemera are the many, many dead who have come to the Blue Kingdom to enter by Death's Door. They are Ephemera only until they pass through, and then... but it is forbidden to speak of that higher mystery."

A Shade. Art from Sunless Skies.

Dying in the High Wilderness sends a spirit to the Blue Kingdom, an enormous bureaucracy that processes the dead. The spirits who roam the Kingdom are called shades, and they often wear white, porcelain masks. All sorts of creatures, including animals, end up in the Blue Kingdom. Those who are dead are considered Ephemera by the Kingdom's bureaucracies, and are eventually sent to Death's Door. But those who are deemed unworthy of passing through, such as immortality seekers, often end up in the White Well or simply fade into nothing.