Essence ofRespawn

This essence tastes of grave-dirt and stale energy-drinks mixed together with burnt coffee, and shredded paperwork. On consuming it you can hear faint cursing in an unfamiliar eldritch language, someone in possession of a polyglot ability of some sort can make out a bureaucrat complaining about another Hades-Taunter protocol breacher.

• By drinking this essence, you gain the ability to Respawn.

• This ability has three options you can choose from, hanging around your corpse as an intangible ghost unable to move more than 3 feet away, until you make your choice.

• The first option causes you to rise back on your feet, your body healed to a point it can once more sustain life, erasing damage that would render you unable to live, but never more than half-way to the optimal health level you might have had. You will suffer 24 hours of weakened state, nausea, and headaches, unless you receive some medical attention or possess a healing ability that can restore you back to your optimal health, at which point these penalties can be erased early.

• The second option causes you to respawn at a pre-set location that you can declare by stating, whether vocally out loud or mentally in your head, that you set a particular place or piece of furniture as your respawn point. This can be a bed that you will wake up from in event of dying somewhere, a personal study somewhere safe, or inside the lobby of a building you are attempting to conquer.

• The third option will send your spirit on to the void, where you will find yourself face to face with an avatar of the celestial bureaucracy that will rant and rage at you for being a moron and getting yourself killed, before slapping down some hard to hear facts that may still provide you with some useful insights to things that you may have missed. This will always be truthful, even if potentially hurtful.

  • You will be given the option to return back in time a bit before you died, experiencing a second long deja-vu as you recall the life that ended poorly, before continuing on, armed with memories of what did happen, and memories of what did just happen, mixing and melding together quickly to avoid confusion.

  • You can also request to be returned back notably earlier, if you have screwed things up particularly badly, but if this happens, you will also find yourself slapped with a Geas that you must fulfill, that may take up to 1 year and a day to complete, but will always have a clear end-point and a goal. You will be sent up to 7 years into the past, to right what went wrong, and must complete your Geas prior to being allowed to use this ability again.

    • Failing to complete the Geas, such as failing to save someone else’s life at a particular point in time, will result this time-rewing ability to be locked for as long as you traveled back in time, and you can expect your next Geas to be even harder. Additionally, you will get an even worse ranting and raging session before you will be able to even consider jumping back.

  • If things are screwed up beyond any hope of repair, you can request to be reincarnated in another world, but this option relies entirely on just how much your celestial bureaucrat happens to like you, and can land you in a world of constant agony and repeated deaths, or a slice of life happy to lucky world that will bore you to death, or anything else. You may make requests or offer suggestions, but this depends on your bureaucrat, so you may have to be on your toes.

    • Knowledge of laws and contracts may be useful for negotiations, as they will hold onto their side of the bargains, but may very well require additional tasks to be completed for them in exchange for help.

• Additionally, if and when you might decide you want to die for good, you get yourself an internship in the celestial bureaucracy after you die, and may offer a similar package deal for someone else as your Essence granted to you in life, whether allowing all three options, or only offering the last third.

  • You can request vacation time to return to life if you happen to find suitably interesting world at one point, but you will only be able to request this after spending at least 10 subjective years as the celestial bureaucrat and death-handler of someone else. Your vacation will be life-long, until you choose to stop respawning.