It depends on where they go – but most go to their “rightful resting place” as a reward for their actions or devotion, etc. etc.
I imagine these places are different to the areas of the Mists we visit in GW2. Is it possible – lore-wise – for somebody to enter these areas and leave again?
These places are – as far as we know – including the Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Realm of Torment, Hall of Heroes, Great Forge, Eternal Paradise, and Sky Above the Sky.
The first four we personally visit – and return from – in GW1. Only one of these places are seen in GW2 – the Underworld, or rather a subsection of the Underworld known as the Mad Realm (but presented to us as Mad King’s Realm).
The Underworld functions as a place for followers of Grenth as well as a general afterlife. For example, the Ice Wastes is where followers of Grenth go, the Chaos Planes is where those who were without valor or honor go, the Forgotten Vale seems to be a general village of souls, and the Mad Realm seems to be where the insane go (the afterlife’s personal asylum – which Thorn took over). It also seems like all souls enter the Underworld and are sent their merry way to another afterlife after Grenth judged where they go – unless they were deemed to remain in the Underworld.
The Fissure of Woe seems to mainly be where warriors, heroes, adventurers and overall those who lived a life of fighting go. The Hall of Heroes is where the greatest champions and heroes go. The Realm of Torment is more or less unknown for who usually goes there, as for the last 1,075 years prior to GW1 it was used as a prison for all things related to Abaddon, and since then has become Kormir’s realm with no knowledge of how it may have changed.
The Great Forge is said to be the dwarves’ afterlife, and the Sky Above the Sky is said to be the tengu’s afterlife. Eternal Paradise we only know by name, mentioned by Canthans.
Something I’m suprised Konig didn’t mention is that when a mortal dies, an envoy appears to escort the soul to the Mists. As far as I’m aware there is no in-game explanation as to why they don’t take ghosts…
This was learnt via Guild Wars: Factions, and Shiro using his powers as an envoy to create the Shiro’ken and Afflicted onto Cantha.
EDIT: Some things to note are that all of the envoys we saw were humanoid (if not human completely) so we don’t know if this stands for the other races…. Only the Oracle of the Mists could tell us more, and considering we are unlikely to visit Cantha any time soon, and have no idea of the fate of that individual, I can’t answer the likely questions this brings up with races like the Charr/Asuran.
I didn’t mention envoys because that’s a Cantha-only thing. The Envoys are assigned the role by the Oracle of the Mists, who dwells in Cantha, as a means to help send restless souls to the afterlife. I presume that this is why in GW1, Cantha was lacking ghosts – especially compared to Tyria and Elona. Wars are pretty much breeding grounds for ghosts by all appearances (the most common places to see ghosts are war-torn(ed) lands in GW1). The only ghosts we saw in Cantha were those in Tahnnakai Temple, that one Shing Jea Ritualist mentor, and the envoys – all of which were brought back to Tyria by a ritualist (the Oracle of the Mists is a powerful ritualist who employs the souls of criminals to do this job – it’s a volunteer job too, as Shiro refused the offer for 200 years).
Based on GW1?
When you die, if you were an exceptionally powerful and devoted servant, you go to Balthazar’s eternal battlegrounds. There you become an Eternal (a specific form of ghost) and fight the eternal war against the forces of Menzies, his half-brother.
Otherwise you go to Grenth’s Underworld until you “pass on”. Here you need to somehow earn the right to move onwards. There’s an entire village of ghosts waiting, and Dhuum . . . the old god of death . . . has servants who still plague the place and try to make it a more tormented experience.
I don’t think that the Forgotten Vale village are of waiting souls. The Reaper of the Labyrinth tells us to take new souls intending to devote themselves to Grenth to that village, and we’re told by enslaved heroes in the Fissure of Woe that they’ll go to Grenth to receive their judgement and their proper resting place. The Underworld is, except to devotees of Grenth and other special cases (insane folks, honorless folks, etc.), like the afterlife’s terminal – they go there to get their train ticket from Grenth to the destination of Grenth’s choosing.
Whether this applies to other races is unknown though.
