What are Psychopomps?
Psychopomps are an Outer Planar race of creatures who are basically the scribes, guides and bouncers of the Dead Book. They’re there when a sod’s candle snuffs out, guiding souls to their final kip in the Great Ring. They’re there to welcome the souls when they arrive, keep them calm and happy—well, as happy as they can be once they tumble to the fact they’re dead—and then judge them based on how they lived their short lives. Did the cutter follow a particular power—and did they do it well enough to deserve a place in the afterlife? Or did they misbehave in life and now require punishment? The multiverse is messy, and so are souls, and the psychopomps have to sift through a berk’s life, sorting them out for the hereafter. The psychopomps run the show in the Underlands—the first stop for souls in the Outer Planes—managing all the archives, courts, and madhouses. They’re not confined to the plane mind, they step out when they need to, duking it out with daemons and other creatures of the Lower Planes, to keep the River of Souls flowing smoothly.
Despite their grim job, psychopomps are generally a personable lot. They’ve got freedom in how they handle their duties, using anything from sweet talk to mind-reading to get the job done. They’re curious about the living and even pick up hobbies and interests over their long existences. They enjoy a jaunt to the Prime as much as the next berk, and often stick around for a bit after they’re done with their business.
Most psychopomps wear masks—not to spook the living, but to keep a bit of their mortal past alive. Except for their ushers, most psychopomps were once mortals themselves, starting as lowly nosoi and working their way up. The vanth are the odd ones out, coming from a culture bred solely for serving as death’s warriors.
The high-ups of the psychopomp race are called Ushers, and these bloods handle the nitty-gritty of death. The rank-and-file psychopomps respect them but don’t put them on a pedestal. They see ushers more as managers than gods, although they’re probably demipowers in their own right.
Psychopomps are found all over the Underlands, and they’ve got their own kips in the Cumae, an endless network of tunnels under the Boneyard. Unlike some other outsiders, psychopomps can’t naturally hop planes, so they use the Dead Roads, a secret network connecting the Boneyard to the living world.
Psychopomps will team up with other monitors (a collective noun for neutrally-aligned planar creatures like inevitables and proteans…the slaadi team up with nobody) when it suits them but don’t cozy up too much, especially with aeons and rilmani. They’ve got a bit of a rivalry going, though it’s hard to say if the aeons even notice, and the rilmani won’t talk about psychopomps, or even acknowledge their existence unless forced to. The psychopomp are also chummy with fey, who as immortals are completely outside the soul cycle. The fey are curious about death, and teaming up with a psychopomp lets them dabble in it without getting too involved.
When psychopomps travel to the Prime, they’re usually there to round up souls, especially the stubborn or powerful ones. They also act as omens, warning of disasters or influencing bright minds, to keep the balance between life and death on track. Even though they’re not big on shape-shifting or invisibility, curiously mortals tend not to notice them, maybe because they’d rather not think about death. But the chant goes that those who’ve danced with death themselves are more likely to spot these mysterious critters.
Whenever they are abroad, psychopomps are also on the prowl for the undead and immortality-chasing mortals. With these more dangerous targets, psychopomps prefer to work in the shadows, nudging things along rather than going all grim reaper themselves.
Planewalkers know that psychopomps are a bit obscure and thoughtful compared with some of the more flashy outsiders like aasimon or baatezu. Mortals who do cross paths with them sometimes try to cut deals, but psychopomps ain’t easy to fool. They might play along with a cutter, but their help usually comes with a twist.
Further Reading
Source: Concordance of Rivals [PF1e] p34, Planescapified by Jon Winter-Holt, mimir.net
Notes: Psychopomps are a race of ‘outsiders’ (extra-planar natives) from the Pathfinder setting, and don’t have an equivalent in Planescape. I think they’re a really interesting race, and fill a niche that the Planescape mythos never really addressed—what happens between a mortal dying and appearing as a petitioner in the Outer Planes? This was largely glossed over in Planescape. If you do decide to use the psychopomps, I also suggest you include the River of Souls and the Dead Roads, two planar pathways these beings use. You might also want to consider the Underlands, a non-canonical hybrid I’ve written which adds the Boneyard, Pathfinder’s true neutral plane of Purgatory, to the flipside of the Outlands. It should be available on mimir.net soon…
>Psychopomps are a race of ‘outsiders’ (extra-planar natives) from the Pathfinder setting, and don’t have an equivalent in Planescape. I think they’re a really interesting race, and fill a niche that the Planescape mythos never really addressed—what happens between a mortal dying and appearing as a petitioner in the Outer Planes?
By the way, is it true that different Prime Worlds have different systems and courts that decide the path for the dead soul?
Each pantheon has its own way of judging the souls of the dead, like Celestial Bureaucracy for the Chinese pantheon, the Weighing of the Heart for the Egyptians and so on. I’ll be covering some ideas I’ve got on this even I finish the Outlands and move on to the ‘Underlands’…