So often modern imagery depicts death as skeletal, or ghoulish. It presents anthropomorphized death as evil, a relentless hunter who seeks our destruction and then revels in it when he inevitably wins.
In the campaign I am currently running, Death goes by many names, among them the Hunter of Shadows, the Mistress of Ravens, and the Drowned King. However, should the player characters fall, they will encounter a kindly old woman.
Click here to read the passage I have prepared for my players.
A note: We are playing Dungeons & Dragons™, 5th Edition. I intend to give this passage to any players whose characters have failed two death saves. Should they fail the third save and die, the Crone will lead them out of the Forest of Souls. Companions who survive will have the opportunity to rescue the character(s) from the Otherworld. Should they succeed their death saves and stabilize, the Crone will light their path back to the mortal realm. But the characters will have the opportunity, at two fails, to choose to move on.
This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
A Worldwalker's Guide to the Multiverse 