The Folklore of Discworld

Cohen and his Horde rode for the stars because they wanted to, and gods had nothing to do with it. In any case, becoming a constellation is not a permanent solution:
    Mrs McGarry looked up at the stars.
    ‘In the olden days,’ she said, ‘when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars.’
    T HE HEAVENS CHANGE , said Death. W HAT TODAY LOOKS LIKE A MIGHTY HUNTER MAY LOOK LIKE A TEACUP IN A HUNDRED YEARS’ TIME. [ The Last Hero ]
    There are a few who, when Death comes to them, refuse to move on, preferring to become ghosts – certain kings of Lancre who haunt their ancestral castle, for example, and dwarfs who may choose to walk the earth in torment if they have not been buried with their finest weapons. According to the myths and folklore of our world, such situations are pretty common here; people linger as ghosts because they have not been properly buried, or have been particularlywicked, or have died by violence, or are looking for money they buried, or simply can’t bear to leave home. But nobody, in any universe, can match the obstinacy of the political activist Reg Shoe, who insists on remaining a zombie in order to campaign for the rights of the dead and the undead.
    The normal course of events is that Death escorts those who die to the edge of a vast desert of black sand under a brilliant starry sky, where he informs them that what they do next, or what happens to them next, is not his responsibility – for in the universe of the Discworld Death is never the supreme reality. It appears that no two people have the same experience, since it will accurately reflect the beliefs and personality of each one.
    In Small Gods , for instance, five deaths are described. One, a sea-captain who believes that the souls of sailors become friendly porpoises (in British lore, it would be seagulls), sails away in search of paradise in a ghostly ship (for ships too have a soul), with a ghostly crew, and ghostly rats, and an escort of ghostly porpoises. The second and third are soldiers – Fri’it, an Omnian general who secretly disbelieves the hell-fire doctrines of that church, and Ichlos, a private who has never given much thought to religion. Both remember a childhood song:
    You have to walk a lonesome desert,
    You have to walk it all alone …
    Fri’it asks Death: ‘What is at the end of the desert?’ and is told, J UDGEMENT.
    The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is.
    And now, you can think clearly …
    There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That’s what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
    What have I always believed?
    That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly,not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside , then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.
    You couldn’t get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
    Fri’it set out.
    It is the same for Ichlos, though he puts it more simply:
    ‘My mum told me about this,’ he said. ‘When you’re dead, you have to walk a desert. And you see everything properly, she said. And remember everything right.’
    Death studiously did nothing to indicate his feelings either way.
    ‘Might meet a few friends on the way, eh?’ said the soldier. P OSSIBLY .
    Ichlos set out. On the whole, he thought, it could have been worse.
    The next who dies is Vorbis, the single-minded, pitiless, utterly unshakable Omnian Exquisitor. When he sees the desert, his certainties drain away. Though he has taken for granted that there would indeed be a Judgement according to the rules of his religion (and that he would do very well in it), all he can feel is the echo of his own thoughts, and when he looks inside himself all he can see is the horror of what he has done, and the terror of emptiness and solitude.
    The last to die is the compassionate monk Brutha. He too follows Death to the black sand under the starry sky.
    ‘Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?’ said Brutha.
    W HO KNOWS?
    ‘And what is at the end of the desert?’
    J UDGEMENT .
    Brutha considered this.
    ‘ Which end?’
    Death grinned and stepped aside.
    It’s only natural to want to know what lies at the far end of the desert. But this, as Tiffany told the hiver in A Hatful of Sky , is something no words can describe, which is why you have to cross the desert to find out. But before you can even begin, there is something