The Morgue & Permadeath
This system is off by default. It permanently retires characters. Turn it on only if your server wants that, and read this page first.
Permadeath is not a mechanic players can trigger. It is an admin-approved, one-off event, and it comes with a full forensic investigation attached.
🔐 How a final kill happens
1. An admin approves it
/emsadmin → Permadeath
An admin grants approval for one killer against one character. The grant expires after 24 hours if unused.
By default the victim is not told a kill has been approved against them.
2. The killer downs them
Normal gameplay. The victim goes into last stand or dies.
3. The killer finishes it
A Final Kill option appears on the body, available for 10 minutes after they went down.
The killer:
- holds to confirm for 3 seconds,
- picks the cause of death from a list,
- poses the body: on its back, face down, on its side, curled up, or slumped sitting.
4. The victim leaves
The victim sees a farewell screen for 8 seconds, then goes back to character select.
The character is marked dead, never deleted. Admins can restore it, and it can be archived manually later. Automatic deletion after N days is available but off by default.
🪦 The body stays
This is where it gets interesting. The corpse remains in the world and decomposes over real hours.
| Stage | Starts after | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh | immediately | A normal body |
| Early decomposition | 30 minutes | Pale skin, blood staining |
| Flies | 2 hours | A swarm of flies and a smell that carries 25 m |
| Skeleton | 6 hours | Bare bones |
- Visible from 80 m.
- Up to 10 bodies in the world at once, the oldest goes to the morgue when a new one appears.
- A body nobody collects goes to the morgue as unidentified after 72 hours.
The smell is the point. A body dumped in an alley and forgotten becomes a thing other players stumble across, days later.
🔎 The investigation
Examine the body
Medics (and police, if enabled) can examine a body for 5 seconds. This tells them what they can see: visible injuries, apparent condition, how long it has been there.
Take a DNA swab
Use a dna_swab on the body for 6 seconds. You get a dna_sample.
Bag and transport it
Body bag it, then carry it or drive it to a morgue.
Identify it
Run the dna_sample through DNA Analysis at a hospital laboratory (12 seconds, $350). The body now has a name.
Perform an autopsy
At a Morgue Table, with the Autopsy permission (rank 3+). Takes 20 seconds.
The autopsy finds the real cause of death.
If the killer claimed the victim drowned, but the autopsy finds three gunshot wounds to the chest, the report says so. The script does not take the killer's word for anything.
Issue a death certificate
With the Certify Deaths permission (rank 3+), for an identified body. A proper legal document, saved and issuable as a paper item.
📱 Morgue Cases
EMS Tablet → Morgue
Every body in the system, with its state:
- unidentified or named,
- where it was found,
- whether DNA has been run,
- whether an autopsy has been done,
- whether a certificate has been issued.
🔐 Permissions
| Action | Default rank |
|---|---|
| Examine bodies, collect DNA | 1 |
| Perform autopsies | 3 |
| Issue death certificates | 3 |
Police can examine bodies and take DNA too (forensics.policeCanUse).
🎭 Why it is built this way
The whole point is that a permadeath is a story with evidence, not a delete button.
- Somebody has to find the body.
- Somebody has to identify it.
- Somebody has to work out what actually happened.
- And the paperwork can contradict the murderer.
⚙️ Settings
Everything is in shared/config/permadeath.lua:
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
enabled | false |
| Approval lifetime | 24 hours |
| Kill window after going down | 10 minutes |
| Confirm hold | 3 seconds |
| Farewell screen | 8 seconds |
| After the kill | Back to character select (falls back to kick) |
| Notify the victim | false |
| Decomposition stages | 0 / 30 min / 2 h / 6 h |
| Bodies in the world | 10 |
| Unclaimed bodies to morgue | 72 hours |
| Archive dead characters | false |
Nine causes of death and five body poses are configurable.