You died. Or you almost died. The difference is academic, because either way you saw into the next world and got a revelation that sickened you even while you were dead: the Underworld is not a place of rest or a place of punishment, but a place of imprisonment and tyranny. This was not the afterlife, because that suggests everyone would go here when they died; this was a place where ghosts sank when nothing was left to hold them to the world, or when something with cold gray hands gripped them tight and pulled them under. Across it all, divided by the numerous rivers of the dead, were the domains of the Kerberoi, equal parts overseers and watchdogs who establish and enforce strange laws with ruthless authority.
Even as you were processing this, you were approached by… well. Even now you're not entirely clear what they are. They're called geists, and they used to be ghosts before something happened to make them more… symbolic. Whoever the geist "Bullet Tooth" was in life certainly found themselves at the wrong end of a gun, but anything beyond that is a mystery, save that now it has full-metal jackets for gums and breath like sulfur. That's where the Pact comes into play. The geist has an agenda that it can only accomplish with access to the living world, not least of which is to figure out who they used to be. If you let it in, if you become something a bit different and a bit more than the two of you individually, you can both make it back in one piece. Upside, you even get powers reflecting your new relationship to death, and you are extremely hard to kill. The catch is this: the dead are suffering at the hands of the living and other spirits, and there are living beings tormented by ghosts alongside them. Beneath all of this is the Underworld, a place of misery and loss and waste, gradually drawing everything into its choking depths.
You don't have to fix everything, but you have to try. No pressure.
As for you personally, there's certainly a question of how this has changed you personally. A near-death experience, or just a death experience, will change anybody; the Bound are no exception. The Abiding were gonna make something of themselves before they were plunged into the Underworld, a story cut short; with a second chance, they will make sure they have a legacy that matters. The Bereaved lost the most important person in their world, maybe the same time they died or maybe long before; with the afterlife, there's a chance to be reunited again, and they're seizing it with both hands. The Hungry missed their stuff more than anything when they slipped briefly into the great beyond, or even the idea of having stuff was what sent them hurtling back to the land of the living; whether it was fortune or prestige or even some great scientific breakthrough, it's still theirs and they're not letting go. The Kindly only realized in death that they were absolute shitheads with too much to make up for; when they come back, they're practically a different person, desperate to right wrongs they caused and do the same for others, living and dead. The Vengeful are pissed, they are absolutely fucking furious, because in life and in death they were wronged, and in this new life they have the means and opportunity to get justice, get revenge, get blood, and they will get it.
It is by the pact that you are Bound but it is your responsibility towards the living and dead that makes you a sin-eater; there are others who reject this responsibility who are at best misguided and at worst huge pieces of shit who you wouldn't so much as spit on. Furies are servants of justice, not simply revenge; killing a murderer might avenge one death, but improving the community that produced that murderer so nobody ever feels driven to make that choice prevents countless more. They strive to understand a situation as quickly and fully as possible, determine the correct way to fix it, and feel secure in their necessity while wishing the world didn't need them. Mourners seek out the works that are lost with death, erosion, and simple time. The poems of Miyamoto Musashi, or the music of an artist who died before they could ever be heard, and all the stories that would be lost forever are their treasures, their greatest labors of conservation and distribution. They find forgotten souls and make them remembered again, and keep the tapes running long after they would've run out. Necropolitans believe that the first step to changing death is to bring joy to the living and dead alike; they build run hotlines, pour libations, keep people from withdrawing out of the world, throw banger fucking parties, and more besides. They're by far the most open of the myriad sin-eater organizations, believing that barriers keep people out more than they keep people safe, and despite the party animal reputation, safety and compassion are priority one. Pilgrims find the afterlife to be more fascinating than horrifying, and believe that the suffering in the world and Underworld alike are excellent teachers. It's about the removal of attachment, about leaving reality no purchase when it reaches out to harm you; no small number of Pilgrim krewes are Buddhist or Buddhist-adjacent, and the ones that aren't tend to model their rites after modern psychotherapy; the point is to be challenged and then surpass those challenges so you can move on and be at peace. Undertakers deal most openly with funerary rites, because their goal is nothing less than to eliminate the fear of death and reconcile the dead and living together. It's about diving into the Underworld to see what mythologies and movements utterly failed to change its dark heart and which ones had promise, because to make death less fearsome they have to find a way to change the most terrifying part of all.
The head of a Los Angeles krewe will have far more work on their plate than the "simple" tasks of their faith and work. The city's ghosts are constantly simmering with old grudges and wants, the Underworld's agents are always conspiring to drag down as many dead souls they can reach, selfish Bound are fucking with the dead for stupid reasons, and actual goddamned necromancers keep showing up and slaving ghosts to their bidding, and all of that shit needs to be dealt with when you figure out how and when to even do it.
