Outsiders killed on the material plane: what happens to the body?


Rules Questions


When a devil, say, is killed on the material plane, does its body poof back to its home plane? Does its soul return to its home plane but its body stays here? Does it matter how they got to the material plane for these purposes?

Sovereign Court

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Summoned go poof, called/arrived via other methods (plane shift/etc) actually die and leave a body.


(Non-Native) Outsiders' bodies are effectively their souls manifest, so when they die they leave a body but their is no soul to "move on" into an afterlife :

Outsider

An outsider is at least partially composed of the essence (but not necessarily the material) of some plane other than the Material Plane ...
Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When an outsider is slain, no soul is set loose. Spells that restore souls to their bodies, such as raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection, don’t work on an outsider. It takes a different magical effect, such as limited wish, wish, miracle, or true resurrection to restore it to life. An outsider with the native subtype can be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected just as other living creatures can be.

To "reactivate" their souls/lives you have to use higher level Spells than normal on the body, (so they do not go poof). This is not to say that things always go this route, as for example Cassisians can occasionally form spontaneously from the spiritual remains of fallen Angel bodies, (it is unstated whether in turn this prevents resurrection of the original Creature).

Dark Archive

The bodies stays around to decompose. Since their body and soul is essentially same, that essentially means their quintessence bleeds to surrounding. Whether that quintessence returns to fuel their homeplane I don't really know


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Planar Adventures, p. 68 wrote:
Upon an outsider’s destruction — whether it be a petitioner naturally merging with a plane or the violent end of another planar native — its quintessence returns to its home plane. This transference of energies might be an immediate or a gradual process, depending on where the being’s existence ended. Beings of specific alignments destroyed away from their home planes have their energy released into the multiverse. While such energy gravitates toward the properly aligned plane, more often then not it becomes lost in the Maelstrom.

The quintessence doesn't occur in the free form on the Material Plane, it can stay there only temporarily, forming a body of an extarplanar outsider or infusing the body of a native outsider. After the outsider dies, its quintessence may stay on the Material Plane for a bit, but eventually it will gravitate towards other planes and vanish from the Material Plane. It's not specified how fast this process is. Possibly some magical or alchemical processes may keep it around for a longer time, providing mages and alchemists with valuable ingredients, for example the devil blood for infernal healing spell.


CorvusMask wrote:
The bodies stays around to decompose. Since their body and soul is essentially same, that essentially means their quintessence bleeds to surrounding. Whether that quintessence returns to fuel their homeplane I don't really know

I really like saying that their quintessence bleeds out.

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