Bonus Chapter: Explanation on why the Rehkin Clans dominate the Death Realm
Normally, you'd expect the Death Realm and all its worlds to be a mix of empires from different races – a human empire here, a Rehkin empire there, perhaps even a dragon empire every now and then.
However, there are a few very simple reasons why the Rehkin almost always dominate the entire Realm - making up the majority of its affluent denizens.
Going down the list, here are the reasons why each race, in turn, is inferior to the Rehkin in the Death Realm.
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The Drakin with 2 Horns and above stop aging, and those with 3 Horns and above have the ability to retain their souls in their bones, meaning that they can't really be killed.
2-Horns, 3-Horns, and every dragon stronger than that basically is basically missing from the Death Realm. With such few numbers in the Death Realm, they don't really have any empires. (Though, the powerful Drakin in the Death Realm are often influential individuals in whatever nation they land in.)
The only powerful dragons here are those who chose to die of their own accord… and that's not really enough to make draconic empires common. 1 Horned dragons are few enough and weak enough that they're just as well off as the average human – which means their afterlives are miserable.
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The Felkin are absent from the Death Realm for similar reasons as the Drakin. As a race, they all have the ability to be reborn from their own ashes upon dying – regardless of how or how often they die.
The only Felkin in the Death Realm are those who consciously chose to not reincarnate. However, due to the Felkin being less powerful than the Drakin, they're usually not as influential as them.
The average phoenix usually lands herself in a comfortable middle-class to upper-middle-class life style, since they usually have a lot of ways of making money.
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The Sylkin? Why don't they make empires? They're rather strange beings who are born from Laws anyway, so they are technically present in every empire. In fact, most well-to-do empires in the Death Realm will have a few Sylkin present to help stabilize the nation.
However, the Sylkin generally keep themselves to being enforcers of the law and keepers of order, so they rarely go out and make their own countries or try to set themselves up as the rulers (though there are a few exceptions.)
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The Yiirkin are an extremely disorganized and independent race. They rarely even stay in one place for very long, so asking if they make countries and monopolize territory is a stupid question; they stay away from nations and politics like one would the plague… for the most part.
Plus, with the Yiirkin's racial ability to traverse planes and dimensions, it doesn't even matter that much if they DO die. They can just waltz out of the Death Realm and pretend like they didn't just get stabbed in the face.
As a general rule, Yiirkin are easy-going and comfort-loving. Asking them to stick around in a harsh and war-torn place like the Death Realm is a tall order, though a few do visit from time to time for kicks and giggles.
(A/N: Yiirkin's attitude makes them feel a lot like hobbits to me.)
Anyway, the point is that they are the ONLY race to have absolutely no countries headed by them in all the Death Realm.
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As for the Maykin? …Yeah… Nobody's even sure if they exist, so just forget about them.
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Finally, this leaves the humans / Arkin and the Rehkin – the only two races that either don't have immortality or some way to leave the Death Realm. Thus, these are the races who occupy the most space in the Death Realm
You see, unlike the Arkin, who are basically vagabonds, the Rehkin all come from long bloodlines held together by loyalty and powerful Spirit magic. Their ability to stick so close to each other makes them one of the most powerful groups of people in the Death Realm since their clans only get stronger as more and more of their descendants die and join them in the afterlife.
Humans, on the other hand, tend to favor much smaller clans – usually 2 parents and a few children – sometimes extended family too, though those relationships tend to be more tentative.
Beyond that, all of these humans' relationships seem to be based on convenience. This makes their alliances in the afterlife flimsy and small in the Death Realm.
When a line of descendants from the human realm all die and meet in the afterlife, they tend to splinter off from each other and integrate as best as they can with the surrounding nations rather than stubbornly stick together.
The Rehkin, on the other hand, only get absurdly more powerful as time goes on – especially in the Death Realm. To them, abandoning your clan is unthinkable. Their strong, almost chainlike spiritual bonds with each other also make leaving even more impossible.
With more and more descendants dying and meeting in the Afterlife, these existing clans just get bigger and bigger.
The only reason human empires even exist in the Death Realm (as few as they are) is because of the Arkin. The Arkin / high humans are often powerful enough to offset these despairing numerical disadvantages.
For the most part, though, the Arkin are few enough and independent from each other enough for them to just use their skills and abilities to secure themselves a position of honor among one of the Rehkin clans – giving a small space for his or her own children to live in peace.
Haalfrin's Arkin army of half a million is, by far, a huge anomaly. If they wanted, they COULD engage in bloody war with the surrounding Rehkin clans and secure enough territory to make a nation… but they've all been too busy helping Haalfrin out with his war here instead.
Plus, the Arkin don't want to bother with warring against the Rehkin for now, since wars in the Death Realm involve a lot of captured prisoners and hidden prisons deep underground. If they get captured by the Rehkin because they got greedy, then they'd be unable to respond to Haalfrin and help with his war.
For all these reasons, the Rehkin clans are rich and powerful, while the humans are generally lower-class citizens. The Arkin are poor losers, while the Rehkin are rich elites.
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Side Note:
There is a reason why wars in the Death Realm are almost completely made up of one side trying to imprison the other and not… you know… KILLING them… The reason is very simple.
Even if you hack a Dead person apart, their bodies will gradually come back anyway. That's why, if you want to take care of an enemy army, you have to capture and imprison them instead of killing them; that's the only way to take them out of the battle.)
This is also why most of the politics in the Death Realm have to do with exchanging prisoners.