Only two afterlives have actually been confirmed in the Elder Scrolls games: Sovngarde for valiant Nords and Hircine's Hunting Grounds for werewolves (regardless of race). This seems to imply that there are many afterlives, depending on how you lived your life and what race you are. This causes my imagination to run wild.

Could those who die as a result of a dark brotherhood assassination have an afterlife in the Void, where they serve Sithis for eternity? After all, that would explain how, in Oblivion, you can summon Rufio's ghost, even though Rufio had no connections to the DB other than being one of their victims (spirit of Lucien Lachance in Skyrim, I can understand). Furthermore, Dark Brotherhood brethren often encourage the player to "send" your target "to the Void." Could that be the equivalent of Hadvar saying "I hope that dragon takes you all to Sovngarde!" Hmmmmmm.

And what about the Orcs? Sovngarde is only for Nords, so where do Orcs go? You see a lot of Orcs in Skyrim worship Malacath, leading one to think that Orcs to go Malacath's realm much the same way as werewolves go to Hircine's realm. The problem with that is that Malacath's realm - Ashpit - is supposed to only be dust and smoke, and mortals who have visited the plane have not written about any dead orcs.

Really sets your imaginative juices flowing.

i'm a believer that the sithis the db worships is really lorkhan, and that shor is hoarding heroes for some sort of awful fighting at the end of time, thus the void is really just a holding place for the greatest assassins. Just speculation tho

edit: thats kind of confusing, imagine the void as the equivalent of sovengarde for assassins

As far as the rest of them, well they get recycled in the dream sleeve and get to redo life until they get it right/better?

I said it before, and I'll say it again. Tis just a Sithis shaped hole. At least thats what the Brotherhood has been touting as of late to me.

Planes of Oblivion are real places, so we know that souls that are damned for all time deemed worthy to go there actually do. Hircine is just an example.

We thought that Sovngarde was a lucid dream dreamed by dead spirits on their way to be reborn, but Skyrim half rebuked that.

I'd assume that all Orcs following the code of Malacath would end up in his Pits.

The Dark Brotherhood thinks that they damn their victims' souls to Sithis, but I find that rather hard to belive, as Sithis is a state of non-existence (of course, we have Lachance, but my thoughts remain unshaken). Of course, this is assuming they aren't damned to Mephala because she's just [VEHK]ing with us.

Ashpit is more than just an endless cloud of ash. Prince Attrebus and Sul visit the Ashpit in Lord of Souls. The book described it a shadow of a garden that once was. For example, Attrebus mentions seeing a bird singing in a tree, but its voice was a doleful sound. It was trying to imitate what it used to be. There were also tree covered in lily-like vines, and the sky was filled with a number of moons.

Kinda affirms that Malacath is Trinimac imprisoned within Oblivion, if you ask me.

As for Orcs going there, who knows? One Orc at Largashbur will say "By the Ashpit, we can't go on like this!" during The Cursed Tribe, so they definitely know of the place.

Sounds... smelly.

And it makes you wonder, do they confuse his hair for trees? Do they drink his sweat instead of water?

Wow... just... just wow.

We had an old notion of The Dreamsleeve, essentially a soul recycling system integrated into The Mundus itself. The Dead entering into it's embrace would perceive the afterlife they though they deserved, i.e. the ultimate fate their culture or religion (or both in one, as often the case before such things as 'World Religions' emerge) has conditioned their puny brain to accept. Meanwhile the Sleeve would slowly un-zip their precious ego-form into its constituent parts before cleansing, re-integration, and complete metempsychosis of the soul into a new body.

Sovngard was long though to be just Nordic interpretation of the Sleever until Skyrim seemingly challenged old notions. Then again, Skyrim also said Sovngard was in Aetherius, which is highly dubious, seeing as this would render the Nordic end-of-life-goal nearly identical to that of their most hated of ancestral foes, The Altmeri.

In my own opinion, Sovngard is actually Shor's hero-filter, fitted snugly over the local Sleeve-intake.

I had that theory awhile ago that at death the identity is stripped from the soul with the former being sent to an afterlife and the latter being recycled for further use.