So first thing's first, there's the revival ability. They have a Scroll of Revivify. The scroll says that anyone who has the spell on their class'sspell list can cast it. Otherwise, it is unintelligible. It's available to Clerics, Paladins and the Celestial Warlocks. We have none of those. We do, however, have a Divine Soul Sorcerer. Divine Soul Sorcerers have access to the Cleric class's spell list. Unfortunately, having access to the spell list and it being your class's spell list are two different things, so RAW she can't use it. This is something we've all realized at the same time, just as the scroll becomes needed. That said, I feel like her being a Divine Soul adds a gray area that gives her an opportunity to cast it regardless.

One idea is to simply state that the spell is treated as if it were a higher level than she could normally cast, meaning she'd have to roll a spell-casting ability check against a DC of 13.

The other idea is to take a page out of the Mercer handbook and do group checks that are RP-focused. In fact, the Resurrection Challenge optional rules can be found in the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting book, and I could simply disregard its Revivify restriction to add the narrative components.

Second thing, then, is what does death and revival mean for these characters? To be honest, when it comes to the ranger I don't have anything beyond what kind of emotional impact it may have upon them after revival. For the barbarian, however, there's an opportunity for a focused one-shot afterlife. The barbarian is a zealot, but has not yet really confronted the divine inspiration behind their zealotry. Working with the player, there is a god behind her, but the two are not yet synced. The god is an amalgam of many different inspirations from both fantasy and mythology, but the important aspect right now is that the god is Lord of the Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt is annual, but selects such varied hunting grounds that people even forget it exists until it's returned.

I would like to do an after-life one-shot with this player, who also stated that they were curious to see what I would do with that concept. Right now, I'm considering that there is a valhalla-inspired banquet hall of hunters feasting before the Wild Hunt, that she quite literally crashes. Throw in a disappointed god ("I assumed that if you failed at being a worthy hunter, you would at least have made worthwhile prey"), against which she can rage against, demand the right to prove herself. I'll insert some sort of challenge she can conceivably overcome as her part in the revival ritual. I've had the idea of a quest she could complete that would allow her the right to lead the Wild Hunt for one night, as one of the more powerful ways in which the party could end the threat of a massed hobgoblin army. That quest could be bestowed right here, a quest that she must be brought back to fulfill.

The third thing is their replacement characters, which each of them have already started building on the eventuality that their character is not revived. The zealot barbarian's player is making a paladin of conquest, which is ripe for potential in my campaign's overall narrative. The Big Bad is a cult looking to tear a hole through the Elemental Planes through which a powerful Archdevil could march through. The villains would be a twisted, fiendish reflection of the paladin's own belief system. She could easily be one of the surviving prisoners, eager to seek vengeance for her capture and mistreatment.

The gloom stalker ranger's player is making a warforged character that was once a soldier but became a painter. Someone who sees art as bring order to chaos, whose painting style is to start with splatter-paint and build upon it a magnificent fresco. In speaking with the player, we've together conceived of a decent background and tie-in. This backwoods region of the world was once home to an advanced gnome civilization, long-buried and long-forgotten. Swordpunk kind of advanced, in that they had inventive and imaginative applications of the same technologies already prevalent in this world. Easy to say that they created the warforged, and in their fall this one went dormant.

The party was going to find out that the cabin was owned by a long line of murderers. They'd already dealt with the heirs to the family traditions before arriving, and at this point there's no one left of that family alive. But nevertheless, they will come across their ritualistic altar and uncover what they'd been doing for over a century. This would be an easy fit for the warforged, I think. The murders were originally of a religious intent, but what if some ancestor of theirs had come across this dormant warforged? What if the family had uncovered some dark rituals that they believed could one day awaken the warforged, and bind it to their will?

The idea has merit to me, as I could simply state that though they were an evil family that is better dead, they weren't wrong. The death of the ranger in such proximity was the final death required to begin the awakening. Better still, as the warforged will be taking a level in hexblade warlock, an interesting spin on the hexblade patron could be the whispering of the murdered souls that were unwittingly bound to the warforged. That the last of these murdered souls is the ranger character means that the player could still pursue unfinished business while they're at it. Does the warforged accept these souls, and integrate them until there's no longer a distinction between himself and them? Or does he work to resolve each of their troubles and release them?

My stance as the DM is that the player's decisions and actions are entirely up to them, I don't want to even influence it in any way. Their story is what they do and how they react. I am already getting my story by building the world around them. But to be honest, I rather hope that they revive the zealot barbarian and accept the warforged replacement.