Quote Originally Posted by sengmeng View Post
So my players are heading to my new homebrew setting, tentatively called the Haunted Seas. The main hook is that there is a barrier to teleportation and even detection covering the planet, and this barrier also interferes with souls moving on to the afterlife. It turns out that that's bad. So the party is starting at 13th level, and is being teleported in to fix it, with the understanding that the other side of the barrier is unknown, and punching through it is a one-time thing, so there's no help coming. But, I don't know what to put in the setting to reflect the trapped souls, either storywise or mechanically. Just a vague idea of "ghosts everywhere" and there's a lot of ocean, hence the name. Any suggestions?
When I saw "fix the afterlife" I wondered if this was a Forgotten Realms question.

Regarding your setting, others have asked a lot of the questions that need to be answered.

I'd ask how long the barrier has been up -- a year, a generation, a century, an "age of the world"? Is this something still new and shocking to the people, or have they learned to live with it? How long have the effects been building up?