Reapers
All reapers are greeted with a reaper when they become one. How they become one is open and a bit vague, but all souls are to be greeted by a reaper. It’s so rare that ones who haven't make other reapers uneasy because they should have had a reaper.
All reapers have basic powers of teleporting to and from charges, basic glamor of themselves and their tome which reveals the name of who their charge. Each reaper's way of knowing they have a charge is different, but the longer they wait to go to their charge the more intense the reaction is.
Reapers are invisible while collecting a soul to mortals. The only ones that can see them outright are those with the Sight (Mediums/Psychics/Witches), at a place of death where the veil of the worlds is thin, or a ritual. Mortals cannot hurt a reaper unless they have that ability.
Reapers are only injured or killed by supernatural means. Meaning a soul can hurt them but a mortal can’t unless they have a magickal ritual or item. (For example, after a ritual could hurt or kill a reaper but only after that.) The only exception is during a death scene the veil between life and death is thin so a mortal with the Sight could see a reaper and injure them. But only when the veil is thin.
There are billions of cultures and afterlives. Just because the orb floats up does not mean it goes to heaven. It can go to its religion’s afterlife, or it can be going back into rotation to go back into the world as a new person or it can go to an undefined afterlife.
All reapers have set charges. This means if your reaper gets souls that have no defined destination, then that’s what you get. Or they get only those who were killed a certain way. Or only get ones for a certain religion. Or ones that only feel a certain way at death. There’s an endless set of reasons, the only thing is your reaper was picked for a reason to be a reaper, and so are their charges on why that reaper is crossing them.
No new reaper is supposed to go alone on their first set of charges due to safety and training. Formerly alive reapers do not need to eat or drink. It is noted that eating is a psychological need at most. Same as being able to get drunk or sick. If your reaper is still living though, they still need to fulfill their needs like food and drink.
Souls 101
Souls are energy in an odd state. It’s not like heat or electricity. It does have the capacity to do work but instead of causing motion or creating light, it does things like illicit passion and imagination in things it ensouls.
This energy can be mixed and matched. Here’s a bad metaphor: if you were to take water from a thousand different sources and put it in the jar and shake it all up and then draw some out, it’s still water. It’s new in that it’s completely unlike what all went into it, but still came from those places.
Closest scientific thing is that out like plasma, ionized has with no overall electrical charge. But this reacts on emotions and thoughts in ways no one on earth can yet measure or quantify.
Souls can be destroyed. If it was a soul that wasn’t supposed to be destroyed they explode into a large cloud of glitter and glitter goo. It is completely against the rules and punishments can be done if a reaper destroys a soul. Especially repeatedly.
No mortal is to be taken before their time. Meaning each charge must die when they were supposed to, reapers cannot take the soul before then or they face severe consequences.
Souls come in two forms. A light orb or an echo of their living body. Reapers either just send the light orb out or they collect the echo of the soul and interact with them.
The In Between
In Between, or simply 'between', is the place between the mortal world and the afterlife. It is a sort of pocket dimension made for one purpose. It changes to fit the situation and the charge that the reaper is helping cross. Sometimes, Between doesn't show until the reaper or soul are ready to go to the afterlife. Sometimes it provides a place of quiet reprieve before crossing, especially in very traumatic deaths.
Most Betweens are strange, almost dreamlike liminal places. It is not uncommon to take a stroll through a silent forest, drive down a back highway in the middle of nowhere, or sit in the lobby of a nondescript motel at 3 in the morning.
The Between is a place only for Soul and Reaper. It cannot be acted upon by any outside forces, nor entered.
Shortly after a soul departs the Between, it starts to collapse in on itself. A reaper must leave as quickly as possible to avoid being unmade by the collapse of a Between.