Okay, I have absolutely no idea what caused this.
We were in the middle of a DM event. We think the DM (CrazyNut) crashed. My character was walking along with the group in the Wyldwater Mouth. Suddenly a Ymphan Sabertooth Tiger jumped out of the shadows. It one shotted my character.
Literally. It appeared. I died. In the blink of an eye. No time to react or anything. Yet.... I didn't die!
My corpse plopped down next to my character, all my things dropped as normal, and I was naked as I would have been in the Fugue Plane.
At first I thought I was lagging really badly. But when I whirled the camera around (Tiger was no longer after my character) everyone else was fighting the Tiger. Then I thought that CrazyNut had DM Raised my character instantaneously the moment I hit the ground.
So basically, my character was "dead" but never went to the Fugue Plane. I tried to contact a DM but had no luck. So I looted my stuff, left my corpse, and we all waited for awhile... CrazyNut never came back. It was late so everyone started to split. I left along with everyone else.
Maybe the EfU Gods took pity on me, seeing as how that would have been my characters third crappy no-hope-to-escape death in just over twenty four hours. If that wasn't it, then I have no idea how or why it happened. I couldn't even replicate it if a DM asked me. It was totally bizarre.
RwG, Capricious, Putrid_Plum, among others can verify what took place.
If this happens to you, do not log off. Alert a DM immediately. When you log back in, you're likely to have nothing left in your inventory and are still 'dead'.
This happens when you take damage while dying; the additional damage cancels the script that sends you to the fugue, but you're still flagged as dead. (hence why you lose your inventory after a relog/crash)
To summarize, not merciful so much as prolonged agony.
Only way to get this fixed is to contact a dm immediately to send you to the fugue plane. Before picking up your things.
Ugh. I'm sorry that happened. I hadn't crashed, I was just tired for the night. I saw the tiger up ahead and gave your scout an IC warning that something was amiss... seems the tiger wasn't going to have any of that.