ahem!!! your intro message says you have some magical world building going on. would you care to share?? -please please please please please please please-
YES ABSOLUTELY THANK YOU FOR THE ASK AHHHHHHHHHHHH
Anyways beware. Many paragraphs of yapping ahead
Alrighty. So the basic idea is that some god (I haven’t figured one out yet but I’ve made several gods before, so I could recycle one from a dnd campaign I’ll be doing) has made a challenge to get to the afterlife. Almost everyone who dies gets sent to one of these cute little hellscapes, and there’s 100 per In-Between (as I’ve come to call it), but only 3 people get to go to the afterlife. Everyone else is basically a sacrifice to the god, and it is very unpleasant and it also means they don’t get rebirth. The moment you die in that dimension, the god basically eats your soul. Not very fun nor desirable.
Each In-Between looks different, but the one I came up with first is a big stretch of woods. There are funky animals that either look nothing like a real animal, or look a little too much like some animal or other. At night, there are no stars, just a big moon, if it can be called that. Everything feels like it’s watching you, and has malicious intent. It can and will drive you slowly insane.
You don’t get to keep many memories, just warped snippets of your life. You don’t even know if it’s your life, but you tend to cling to those snippets like lifelines.
There are challenges that the people have to go through, and they differ for every In-Between, but for my purposes let’s pick three.
The first is that the contestants have to go into an abandoned-looking house filled with traps and find a ring. The second they touch the ring, they get transported out of the house and wake up elsewhere.
The second trial is going through a funhouse-type subdimension (look at me thinking up all these fun words), where it tries to drive you insane, since isn’t that fun. Oh also the insanity causes you to forget who you are and where you want to go, so they have to basically write a reminder on themselves somehow, or be lost there forever.
The third trial is the same in every In-Between. There is a weapon somewhere in the dimension, but of course, it’s a really big world. It has its borders, but it’s still impossible to search. The weapon is super powerful, think like a sword that can kill you with one touch. It alters itself to suit the first person to get to it, and if you get it, you automatically make it out. You then get to choose two other people to accompany you to the afterlife, which makes for a really hard choice.
AND NOW FOR THE FUN PART EHEHEHEHEHEHEHHE.
How you die is so important in the In-Between. Being this close to the source of a god’s power for an extended period of time does irreversible things to you.
One thing that happens to you is that you start to look like you belong in your In-Between. For the one I’m using, you can get things like extra eyes, too-long limbs, body horror galore. And it all. Feels. Normal. “Hey how long have you had this many teeth?” “Haven’t I always?” And they genuinely believe that.
My absolute favourite part is why how you died is so important. It’s not a gradual transformation, it’s super abrupt, and happens to everyone at once. It feels like a blinding pain, then you relive how you died. Then you wake up, and you are changed. How you died dictates what happens to you.
One of my OCs died in a landslide. He controls plants. Another died by falling off a cliff. They grow wings. My MC died in a house fire, and she now gets to control fire. Another OC died by brain cancer, and she can now manipulate people’s thoughts. Not blatant mind control, more like suggestions.
My personal favourite backstory, it’s quite gory so be forewarned, is that he’s a trans boy, and his dad does not like that. He’s from the 1800s by the way so no one would like that. His dad tied him up to a fence In the woods behind their house, cut off his hand so the flesh died, then all the scavenger animals (wasps, rodents, crows…) came and ate the hand. Animals wouldn’t eat live flesh, so that’s why the dad cut off the hand most of the way. The animals then ate him alive :D. Anyways, that got slightly out of hand, but he can now talk to them and “suggest” things to them. Of course, he hates his new power the most out of anyone, because he developed a crippling fear of scavenger animals.
Do I pick favourites then give my favourite oc the most trauma? Yes of course.
