: I like the Wyrd reclaiming the essence thing, but maybe
: they are simply escaping to another place. We know
: they are human so their death isn't related to
: Forrest's other dimension. Maybe they are given their
: power through the spirit of an extradimensional
: creature?
Well, they do scream in agony or rage as they disappear, and two different flavors (plus GURPS) refer to them dooming themselves by trading their souls for knowledge and power, so it seems reasonable that they're not leaving of their own will. Apparently, at the point of death, or when they're too weak to resist, whatever demons/aliens/Freemasons they were bargaining with swoop in and carry them off to a horrible fate.
Why do they have body part sequences? Originally, I suppose, a grenade or lightning bolt would kill them so quickly and messily that they simply died before they could be carted off to Hell. This seems to be more or less what happens with Fetch. If you hit them with a blade, then they don't actually die, but their skin coverings are torn up enough that Wyrd notices something's off and snatches them up to experience Bad Things. If you bomb them, on the other hand, they simply die on the spot and dissipate or evaporate or whatever, leaving human skin fragments scattered about. Wyrd doesn't have time to grab them; hence, no rising "ghost."
I imagine that Warlock gibbing got taken out because Locks tend to die mostly by hard deaths--dueling with each other or getting smacked by Trow or other explosive units--so no one would ever get to see the cool fadeout death unless they scrapped the body parts and made the hard death a fadeout too.
--SiliconDream
