The Scarterran Afterlife, initial draft

Most souls of dead mortals rise into the Aetherial Realm, functionally the realm in the sky above Scarterra   When questioned, the the honored dead seem unwilling or unable to coherently explain how they got there. Some describe it as a journey, some describe it as sort of reverse gravity, and others describe death like when a child falls asleep in an unusual place and his/her parents quietly carry them to bed without them realizing it.   A soul that picks up a lot of Void taint does not rise to the Aethereal Realm, it is pulled into the Void and either faces Oblivion or warped into a form of undead. A soul with a minor amount of Void taint and a lot of unfinished business will linger in the mortal plane as a one of the restless dead, aka "a ghost".  

Forgotten History

  Turoch loved to consume souls, this was more or less the alpha and omega of Turoch's existence.   As far as anyone knowns, the Nine have never consumed a single soul. Not even Maylar or Greymoria have eaten a mortal soul. Theologians debate whether this is because the Nine can't or won't eat mortal souls. Many argue the answer is both. Turoch created the Nine and he seemingly didn't want to share his food with them.   Souls of the dead seemed to naturally congregate on the Aetherial Realm and the Nine didn't see a reason to interfere with this process. Exceptional mortals that greatly pleased one of the Nine or greatly offended one of the Nine might receive a blessed or punitive afterlife, but the vast majority of the souls of the dead were left alone.   This caused problems that the Nine did not foresee.   The Nine are powerful and wise, but they are not all-knowing. When they planned the various aspects of the Divine Rebellion, the Nine put a lot of thought into what would happen after the battle, but they didn't put any thought into what the afterlife would look like, choosing instead to focus on improving mortal's lives. They might not have even had a concept of an afterlife because the very concept was foreign to them.   Left to their own devices, some souls of the the First Age's honored dead did not stay in the Aethereal Realm. Dragon souls were especially hard to pin down, but they were not the only mortal souls to wander.   These wandering souls had a limited ability to haunt the material plane as much as they would have liked. Many of them ended up falling into the Void and either become consumed by Void Demons or in rare cases being warped into very powerful undead.   Having powerful minds and no earthly bodies, a lot of the souls of dead dragons (and others) often ended up in the Astral Plane where the mind is king, The Astral Plane is so far removed from the material that even the memory of material existence, that minds drifting in the Astral Plane ultimately go mad and lose their original identity completely. After being bombarded by constant fragments of the thoughts and feelings of millions of living creatures, these new entities become entities of thought that often have little to no resemblance to the being that used to be, effectively becoming "Astral Monsters".   Astral Monsters cannot physically affect the living (usually), but they can and often do haunt dreams of the living. This has driven many into madness and catatonia among the living sometimes resulted from this. Even if a mortal is strong or lucky enough to avoid being completely broken by an Astral Monster, this is not an experience anyone relishes, and it is very difficult for soldier or adventurer to battle a monster made out of disembodied thoughts.   To prevent further problems, the Nine collectively agreed to put more effort into maintaining and improving the afterlife. They created spirits to shepherd the honored dead to the afterlife, so they are less likely to get lost. They strengthened the borders of the afterlife regions of the Aetherial Realm, so souls were less likely to escape and they tried to make the afterlife nicer, so fewer souls would wish to leave.   The Nine do not like to admit their shortcomings to mortals, so very few living Scarterrans have heard the tales of the Nine neglecting the afterlife during the the First Age. Most take it for granted that the Nine always looked after the souls of the honored dead.   Whether or not the First Unmaking or the Second Unmaking impacted the afterlife is unknown, but there is no verified meeting before a Third Age mortal and a soul of one of the honored dead of the First or Second Age. Encounters between modern mortals and the honored dead of the Red Era are rare but not unheard of.   Many of the ancient Astral Monsters of yesteryear were not destroyed and when they show up in modern times, mortals doesn't know about how they came to be, so they aren't especially well-equipped on how to fight them. Sometimes, souls of the dead still slip through the cracks and new Astral Monsters continue to be spawned (though at a reduced rate). Modern Astral Monsters are often the result of ghosts getting trapped in the Astral Plane.