After either the 10 minutes of being in the dying state or when the dying PC decides, the character enters the dead state. Once dead, a character can no longer be targeted by any powers or skills that do not explicitly affect a dead character. What happens to a character once dead is determined by their faction.
Players of Human Characters: You may continue to represent your character’s dead body IG as long as you desire or until the body is destroyed. Once you are done or the body is destroyed, you must go OOG.
Players of Shifter Characters: You may continue to represent your character’s dead body IG as long as you desire or until the body is destroyed. Once you are done or the body is destroyed, you must go OOG.
Players of Vampire Characters: Your character’s body immediately turn to ash, and so you must go OOG.
Players of Wraith/Specter Characters: Your character immediately goes to Oblivion, and so you must go OOG.
Players of Spirit Characters: Your character immediately fades to nothing, and so you must go OOG.
Once OOG, all players are required to do two things. First, the player must drop all in-game items (tagged items, in-game items, shillings, and pence) where your character's body was. The only exception to this would be if the player is concerned about environmental damage being done to their props. If there is such a danger that damage may be done to props that the player owns (or props owned by another player, such as journals, weapons, or other props), then the player may remain in the area OOG until there are no characters present and take any remaining props with them to ST camp. To reiterate: all items owned by the org (coin, rituals, etc.) should be left where the corpse was and cleaned up by the player after game ends if another character has not grabbed them yet.
Then, the player must report to ST Camp and inform the StoryTellers of the character’s death. The player must also email Check-In at least a week prior to the next event to report their character’s death.
The Storytellers will then help the player prep their back-up character or give them an NPC to play. It is also a good time to sit and process bleed that often comes with losing a character. Many players choose to bring a back-up character in case their current character dies, but it is not required.
The back-up character must have gone through the check-in process for them to be played that event. The player shows this by having an approved and filled-out character sheet from Check-In. Upon choosing to play their back-up, the player can collect production items (purchase crafting tags, collect income, etc.) from ST camp upon showing their copy of their character sheet, as well as showing a check-in signature for the current event (indicating the character was checked in).
Even then, death isn’t always permanent. Any human character can be rewritten as a wraith for the next event. Any shifter or vampire character with the merit Lost Soul also has the option of becoming a wraith at the next event. However, if a vampire with the Lost Soul dies due to amaranth, they may not use the merit and remain permanently dead. If the human, shifter, or vampire character has the merit Mortwight, that character, upon becoming dead, may immediately become a specter and does not need to wait for the next event.
Upon becoming a wraith, all character knowledge is retained. The conversion of a pre-existing character into a wraith character must go through the Character Guide process.
Character death is often very hard to process on an OOG level, as you are losing a persona you have put a lot of thought and energy into. This can have a strong toll as you mourn, grieve, and process. Several members of the community have shared that they really benefited from playing an NPC for awhile after, as they could interact with the game in a neutral way before making a new character. Your way of approaching this is your own; however, we want to highlight that character death can come with difficult emotional struggle. Please connect with those in the community during this time, and reach out to staff for support as you need.