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Psychopomp: Difference between revisions
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'''Subtropes:'''
* [[Afterlife Express]]: When the psychopomp travels in or actually takes the form of a vehicle, usually a train.
* [[The Grim Reaper]]: a psychopomp, and usually a bringer of death as well.
* [[Shinigami]]: essentially the Japanese version of the Grim Reaper, these usually act as psychopomps as well.
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** It is extremely important to note that none of her siblings call her "Death", only mortals do. Her actual function is to escort everyone into life and then escort them out. Her siblings simply call her "our elder Sister" (presumably since there is no mortal word for her true function/concept)
** In his afterword to the [[Vertigo Comics]] artists' showcase ''Death Gallery'', [[Neil Gaiman]] mentions the inspiration for this portrayal. A Kabbalistic teaching has it that when a person is about to die, the Angel of Death comes to him in the form of a woman so beautiful that his [[Even the Girls Want Her|or her]] soul leaves their body in ecstasy.
** In the spin-off comic ''[[Lucifer (comics)|Lucifer]]'' the titular character declares himself as a Psychopomp while persuading a demon to allow herself to be killed by him, so that she can come back as his servant. It works, since she has a huge bone to pick with her current masters.
* Veitch and Edwards [[The Question]] miniseries featured a hitman named "Psychopomp", who specialized in not only killing his victims, but sending their souls to a specially-constructed personal hell.
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* ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' was rife with characters whose duty it was to show the protagonist that he/she was dead in reality, and to guide him/her to the afterlife.
* ''[[Life On Mars]]'' and ''[[Ashes to Ashes]]'': {{spoiler|Gene Hunt takes on this role in response to being killed as a young policeman. Out of what is essentially Purgatory, he creates an entire world in which he's an amalgamation of [[Cowboy Cop|Cowboy Cops]] and [[Judge, Jury, and Executioner|"the Sheriff"]], and uses it to help fellow coppers who die in tortured circumstances through their issues. The thing is, he doesn't remember any of this himself until the [[Grand Finale]].}}
** {{spoiler|Jim Keats, the [[Big Bad]] of Season 3, is also a [[Psychopomp]], being Hunt's "opposite number", as it were. If you sin in Dead Copper Purgatory, Keats is the one who takes you, and it's pretty clear [[Fire and Brimstone Hell|where]].}}
* ''[[Lost]]'': {{spoiler|Once Desmond realizes he's dead in the flash-sideways verse, he becomes one and attempts to get everyone to realize it to so they can move on. Hurley later joins him in this task.}}
** {{spoiler|Then Christian fulfilled the really psychopompic threshold keeping duty.}}
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Geist: The Sin Eaters]]'': You play as one of the Bound, who has partially fused with a type of ghost, and go around doing to work of the dead, or just doing the shit your Geist wants. One of the [[Splat|Archetypes]], the Advocates, is pretty much devoted to helping ghost resolve their [[Unfinished Business]] and allowing them to pass on.
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* [[Guild Wars]] Factions has a rogue Psychopomp as it's [[Big Bad]].
* ''[[Jade Empire]]'': The Spirit Monks serve the Water Dragon, who is the Shepherd of the Dead. The monks have the duty to deal with restless ghosts, and can bind spirits in order to escort particularily troublesome specimens to Dirge, the gateway to the Underworld. They can also temporarily disperse spirits through [[Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting|applied force]].
* The world of Haephnes in ''[[Soul Nomad and The World Eaters]]'' has a being known as a Master of Death, a god who serves as a psychopomp to gods and humans alike and controls the flow of souls to the afterlife. Souls there go through a cycle of reincarnation, and without a Master of Death the cycle stagnates as souls are unable to flow freely between life and afterlife. That's their job in theory, at least. Gig [[Omnicidal Maniac|certainly made the souls flow, but it was a purely one-way ticket]].
** ''[[Soul Nomad]]'' also has an inversion known as a Master of Life, the counterpart of the Master of Death. Its job is to see that souls that flow into the world from the afterlife are born properly.
** {{spoiler|The truth behind it all is slightly more complex: The afterlife is another world in itself, called Drazil. Drazil has its own Master of Death and Master of Life, who are minions of the [[Big Bad]]. The [[Big Bad]] sought to stop the balance of souls in order to make Drazil flourish at the cost of Haephnes. Thus, he makes Drazil's Master of Death stop the souls of Drazil's dead from returning to Haephnes, and arranges for Haephnes' Master of Death to be assassinated so he can't stop souls from flowing from Haephnes to Drazil. Needless to say, [[Depopulation Bomb|this ends up messing up things royally for Haephnes]] -- [[It Got Worse|and then Gig comes along...]]}}
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[[Category:Afterlife Tropes]]
[[Category:Psychopomp]]
[[Category:God Tropes]]
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