Soul, Spirit, and Afterlife

Soul and Spirit

Soul: The soul is an entity of pure energy from the Positive Energy Plane. It powers the body, giving it life and consciousness within the physical realm. Think of it as a battery that bonds with your spirit to bring life to your body.
Spirit: The spirit contains the personality, memories, and identity of a person. It is the essence that manifests these traits in the living world.

Upon death, your body dies, releasing your soul back to the Positive Energy Plane, leaving the spirit to either move on to an afterlife after being judged by Kelemvor or to be claimed by a spirit guide that worships your God.
Spirits who are not resurrected remain ethereal and eventually become wisps, ghosts, or revenants depending on the circumstances of their afterlife. For example ghosts are spirits who are bound to haunt a specific area or person that held especially high significance to them when they were alive.
The longer a soul remains in the Positive Energy Plane, the more challenging it becomes to retrieve it for resurrection, requiring increasingly powerful magic. While Gods can use any soul to resurrect a person, most mortals need to retrieve the specific soul that was tied to the deceased person’s spirit.

The only way to completely annihilate a soul is to expose it to the Negative Energy Plane.
Consumed souls result in the permanent end of a being’s existence, making resurrection impossible (for most mortals) and potentially leading to the creation of a ghost or revenant.

Souls can grow in power through life experiences, especially those involving significant challenges, learning, and personal achievements.
The journeys, battles, discoveries and accomplishments of adventurers contribute to substantial soul growth.

While incredibly rare, it is theoretically possible to travel to the positive plane of energy to obtain a new soul.

There's a hierarchy of spirits, ranging from lesser ancestral spirits to greater celestial spirits. The most powerful of spirits can bend the rules of nature that normally apply to spirits.

Transfer: Some rituals and spells can transfer the spirits between two bodies. These rituals are complex and often require deep magical knowledge, experience, and rare ingredients. This procedure is also incredibly risky.
Expulsion of Spirits: The expulsion of a spirit from a body is highly unusual and typically results in death of the body, or in the best case, a comatose state. Some exorcisms can expulse a spirit from a body.
Splitting a Spirit: Splitting a spirit into two is a forbidden practice with great consequences. Since the spirit is closely connected to a person’s identity, this practice leads to madness and total loss of identity.
Seeking Knowledge: Knowledge about expulsing, transferring, or splitting spirits is rare and can only be found in ancient tomes, hidden libraries, or guarded by those who practice these dark rituals.

Elves: Elves undergo automatic reincarnation after a period of reflection. They are reborn with modified spirits, as Corellon erases their old memories and personalities, which are accessed only through trance.
Bhaal's Mark: Souls cursed by the Mark of the Bhaalspawn can be claimed by Bhaal upon death (instead of the soul going to the positive energy plane). He plans to consume these souls to regain full godhood.
Ven's Experience: Roamed as a spirit in the Feywild before being resurrected, retaining his personality and memories.
Vaan and Naav: Two spirits in one body with one soul, but only one spirit can occupy the body at a time, resulting in a dormant spirit and an active spirit.
Arimis and Ezna: This case is very peculiar. At a glance, there are two personalities with one spirit, which doesn’t really make much sense. Arimis’ body and soul remain, but then what happened to her original spirit, and by extension, what happened to her personality?

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