Hardhead wrote: It's the supression of emotions thing that I don't really get.
Millions and millions of Buddhists are okay with it. The idea, as espoused by Siddhartha
Gautama, is something like this:
1. Existence is painful.
2. Pain is caused by desire.
3. By ending desire, you end pain.
4. By ending desire and pain, you remove yourself from the endless cycle of rebirth (and more pain). This is Nirvana (True Death).
The factotum says something like this:
"How are you enjoying your afterlife? Could be better, right? It *was* better. It kind of had to be.
"And it's not going to stop. You're tied to this endless dying by your emotions, your passions and desires. As long as you want things you're going to keep being drawn to them. You know how ghosts are usually tied to things they knew in life? You know how revenants relentlessly search for the beings that killed them? It's because they're trapped by their desire. So are you. Even petitioners are eventually reborn as planar phenomena, if they aren't actually reincarnated on the material plane. Think of those rocks in Baator that look like tortured faces, or the gears in Mechanus that look the same way, for Death's sake. Only by letting go of all that can your soul finally find rest.
"A vampire or ghoul is tormented by endless cravings. A wight is tormented by endless hate. You're tormented too: by hunger, by thirst, by money, by longings for things you can never have. The so-called living are just as haunted as the so-called undead. Only by joining the Dustmen and learning our disciplines can you gain release. "