Standing in a world of gray, you hear the quiet trumpet of a great song. It is color in a place of shadows, where black draws at your feet and looking up or down leaves you dizzy and disorientated. You walk towards the song, towards its player though you seem lost to the world around you. Fleeting images of what once was a mortal life no longer concern you. But to your great dismay the only beauty that you see in this foreign terrain - this astral world of shadows and wails - you cannot reach. It is the trumpet of the Gods, you realize, calling you to their great domain. Yet you are chained to these lands. Years pass as you wander over sea and plain alike, a feeble attempt to join at the seat of the Gods. And in this time you see the lives of Man pass, you see the figures of Demons and Angels alike and a strange world that exists outside of time. Through all of this you wander, recalling the mistakes you made in life, the reasons you are trapped from the great heavens. No. You were a devote follower of the Gods, you never cursed their name. Why has this cruel fate been placed upon you then?

Through the madness of inexistence you find yourself touching the mortal plane more and more. You follow people, like a cold breath over their shoulder. You live through others to entertain your mind to dull the sound of the Gods’ Trumpet. And one day, you truly live through them. Like a thief in the night, you steal the place of their body, pushing at their very soul to take control. And the sound is gone. The music has stopped for you are a mortal again.

Time passes and you live another mortal life, you feel the warmth of the sun and the touch of a waves pulling at your feet. You find your body withering, the slow creep of death. First the wrinkles on your face then the slowing of your bones. You dread to return to the wails of the world of gray and long to stay where you can once again feel. A body you search for, a younger habit to dress your soul. You relinquish the body you have used until now and let it pass to the Gods, but you live on anew.

Ghosts are not truly a race. They have no unique tongue in which they communicate. They have no unique way of dressing or mannerisms that set them apart from another culture. For ghosts are what they were when they were first alive. Yet existence is an idea that haunts ghosts, pulls at their thoughts; it is something they try to bury inside their mind as they clutch to life, not to return to the pains of the astral world that is bleak and cold. For have ghosts every truly lived, or have their souls always been attached to the body of another being? What was their first life?

Why ones soul is lost to the Gods is unknown even to those of the astral world. Criminals and pious alike have found themselves unable to transcend the mortal or astral plane into the world of the Gods. To sate their desire to exist then, they tie themselves to the mortal world, living through the bodies of other people as they leapfrog through time. Their first possession is harrowing. A foreign body that refuses to respond to the ghosts will, like a paralyzed man trapped inside what is his shell. Over time they again learn what it is to be human, to feel hunger and pain. But of greater value is the ability to feel warmth, the human touch. To one who has wandered the world alone and unable to speak, it is an indescribable ecstasy.

When the body dies, whether of age or in battle, the ghost is jarred from the body and left disorientated. As they recover, they must restart the process of orientating themselves to a new and foreign body. Through this strange means of possessions ghosts continue to live, perhaps centuries, even millennia, never able to break free of the astral world. Time to the ghost becomes lost. Which life was his first, which was the second? The ghost retains his memories of all the lives, but they become mixed. As the world of Man moves forward in language in style, the ghost must adapt to the new culture. Many times ghosts will be seen as out of touch. They dress in archaic ways or perhaps speak a strange tongue This is not always the case, but remembering what Age it is to a ghost is a difficult task. It is for this reason ghosts often fear to dwell on the past, for should they look back to far how will they know what existence is, or who they truly are?

When ghosts lose their body, they find themselves in a strange place. It is a world devoid of color or real joy, a land of shadows that seems to spread on into infinity as the planes dim and fade to black. To look up or down, there is no true direction. There is no gravity to hold your feet and no stars to show you your direction. In this land ghosts see many shapes. Buildings, fading in and out of sight. Pathways lead throughout the great expanse, yet few dare wander far less they lose themselves in the World’s great abyss. This is the Astral plane. It is the house of Demons and Angels alike who hold dominion over the land. The souls of wandering men can be seen, their wails fill the air. The Astral plane is fear. Can you die here? Perhaps. But worse is the prospect of losing yourself in the great shadow. There is evil here. Darkness seems to walk the land more than light, the transient structures teaming with strange aberrations that sicken any who would watch. There is pain here. The demons that stalk the Astral plane can shake a ghost to its core. It is like dying anew, except this time it is not just a body or shell. For the demons that stalk these lands can trap the souls of Man. Yet worse than all these things is the haunting sound of the Gods’ Trumpet, reminding a ghost forever more that there is no heaven or hell for them. They are bound to existence, perhaps beyond the end of time. And when there are no more men that walk the earth, they shall remain in the Astral world.

Life for a ghost is strange, because it is not truly living. What is today compared to yesterday? When was yesterday? It all depends what life you speak of. For time passes differently to an immortal. But unlike Vampires or the great Immortals, ghosts mark their passage through time by the different bodies they come to possess. Perhaps the ghost was once a noble of Mercia, or a tradesman in Medicci. All these memories slowly mold as one. Speech is one of the hardest things to master. The accent of one Age is rarely the same in the next. The style of one period is lost to time. Yet to a ghost, these are things they hold onto and remember as their core.

Not all ghosts are unable to contain their thoughts and memory. Many can still appear normal to outsiders rather than eccentric or out of place. Yet inside their minds a battle rages for what or who they truly are. To look back in time is dangerous, because what lies at the beginning may not be birth. What lies at the end is certainly not death.

There are ghosts who have walked the world since the creation of man. Yet for these rare few madness has overcome any hope of recollection and what was, is, and will be are indecipherable. For those who have just found themselves unable to pass into the Hands of the Gods, the sensation is both riveting and terrifying. For it is true they shall exist till the end of time, less they are some how trapped in the Astral world. They can live their lives with no care for the law or consequences as they shall be able to possess another body. The only restraints ghosts feel are the pains of being separated once more from a body as they must return to the Astral world for some period. It is perhaps the only fear ghosts truly have.

Rumors of necromancy and the dark arts tell tales of souls being used for rituals, or souls being given up to the demons of chaos. Likewise, there exist tales of alchemists using herbs to push ghosts from their possessed host, or even the Men of Gods calling for their gods help to relieve a body of its possessor.