Death
Character death can be due to unrecoverable injury, old age, or self-termination. On the normal server, in the event of a character death, the character's equipment and physical inventory are lost. On the casual server, the character's equipment and physical inventory are automatically uploaded into the Matrix. In both cases, the character experience is lost, but their global experience is not effected. (Death is rogue-like, not arcade-like.)
A character cannot die of old age while a player is offline. If the character ages beyond their lifespan while the player is offline, they will still have one final hour of play before they are deceased. They will gain the Final Hour status for this period, as with any character dying of old age. If a player logs out in the middle of a character's final hour, the time is paused (does not reset) until their next login.
* You have died. Chances are it was coming to you anyway. You still had much to learn about the unforgiving life on a post-decentralized space station. Perhaps your journey can still continue.
Retirement
Alternatively, a player can choose to retire their character. Like death, their character experience is lost, but their global experience is not effected. On any server, the characters belongings are all uploading into the Matrix. A character cannot be controlled by a player after retirement, but the character persists as an NPC, remaining affiliated with the faction they belonged to at retirement for the rest of their life. Retired characters are valuable to their factions, and will be given F. longevitus to maintain their current age.
There are some benefits to retiring characters. See Seasoned Spirit.
* You have retired. You have lived a rich and full life in the brave new world, but it is time to pass the torch on to the next generation.
Inheritance
When a character dies or retires (option available upon reaching level X or age X), their Matrix is inherited by a new character. The belongings in their Matrix are locked for download until the new character reaches half of the previous character's experience, half of the previous character's age, or pay a flat (5000) InCred fee, whichever occurs first. The space taken up by the previous characters' Matrix or Matrices do not take up data space in the current character's Matrix.
Ancestral Recall
A newly character can choose to start with a relation to another of the player's living/deceased/retired characters. If they choose to be related, they will acquire 25% of the earned reputation of the other character.
A related character will also have bonus attribute points that are reflective of the bias of the distribution of the previous character's base attributes. E.g. a new character related to a previous character with Intelligence as their highest base attribute will receive a large bonus to their starting Intelligence attribute.
Deceased/Retired Vendors
If a vendor dies or retires, that character's goods are immediately removed from search results.
Think time (and effort) delay in KoL after transcendence.