We’ve got three worlds to play in here, and I guess I sort of need to start laying out the groundwork for them. *cracks knuckles* Time to put some science in my fiction. ^_~ *grin*

Life
Okay, so Life is the easy bit to define. That’s reality (well, fantastical reality, but still). It’s the normal everyday world. No magic! None! BWHAHAHA! Erm, yeah, so technically I’m really stretching the definition of ‘urban fantasy’, but c’est la vie.

Veil
This would be the bit in-between Life and Death. Sort of like a no-man’s land between the dimensions (only they aren’t really dimensions). Things from the Veil can exists in both of the other planes, but have very very minimal influence over them without an anchor. The Veil critters are actually concentrated Veil-stuffs, so technically the whole darned thing is alive. (Although the bit that isn’t critters isn’t sentient or even really that aware.) So Life and Death are both actual places and the Veil is sort of a membrane that separates them.

Death
But Death isn’t the afterlife so much as a purgatory. Folks only hang around there until they ‘let go of living’ at which point they vamoose to points unknown. So it’s not Heaven, nor Hell, and thus I suppose I should root around and see what I can find about purgatorial destinations in the various religions. Want to keep it as non-religious as possible (which is amusing considering the implications of the basic concepts, but oh well ^_~;) Each person brings their world with them, to some extent, when they die. Thus it’s sort of a patchwork of times and places, each group (or individual) have their own little fiefdom. Since folks don’t stay permanently there, it’s not like you have everyone who ever died still hanging around…

[more rambling to follow]