(Vignettes of 'the most important moment in your life', the rest of the players playing the cast.)
Last night, you took refuge in the local church. It was the 31st of December, 999. You knew the end would come.
It did not disappoint you. Through the stained glass windows you watched the fire rain from the skies.
But you have not been taken up into Heaven - and you cannot quite believe that this is Hell.
Potential factions (probably spoilers if this ever happens, if you care about these things):
The Scapegoaters: The reason that you are all in Purgatory rather than being taken up into Heaven is that someone is devil-touched; an apostate; someone is to blame. Someone in this room. If you find them and offer them up, you will be saved.
The Confessors: The reason that you are all in Purgatory rather than being taken up into Heaven is that you have not led blameless lives and you have insufficiently repented of your sins. You are being judged together; everyone in this room should act blamelessly, and confess their sins, and do their penance - and most importantly, forgive each other. Then you will all be saved. If you turn upon each other and yourselves, surely you will instead be damned...
The Skeptics: Fire has rained from the sky and turned the land around to lava - but these things just happen. You feel exactly the same as you did yesterday. That doesn't mean that there _isn't_ a God, or that the world won't eventually come to an end; but you don't think it did last night. That means what everyone _should_ be doing is working out how much food and water is available and if there's anything to plant in the churchyard this spring so you can eat next year, not this crazy introspection or finger-pointing they all seem to have going on.
The Penitents: The reason that you are all in Purgatory rather than being taken up into Heaven is that you need to serve your time in Purgatory, obviously. You've all done bad things, and you need to pay for them before you can enter the Kingdom of Heaven - and as you're all together, that probably means collectively, as a village. So you can all get a head start on it by prayer, contemplation, recitations, mortification of the flesh, and other generally holy activity - and shouldn't waste time thinking about mundane issues (which surely no longer apply) or introspective rambling (confession is no good without penance, we all know what we've done) or pointing the finger of blame...
The Ghosts: These make sense even to the Skeptics; someone just drowned a graveyard in lava, after all, so this place is going to be exceptionally hauntable. Having died, you know that this place does still obey some of the conventions of the physical world, which you are now removed from (you can't interact with physical objects any more, only with people, and you can't have _much_ affect on people, although you aren't intangible to them). But somehow you still seem to be stuck here. Maybe you are stuck here because these people still live. Maybe you should persuade them all to join you. At least then you won't have to worry about / become distracted by food and water and stubbing your toe, right? And you have this sneaking suspicion that might be what releases all of you from wherever this is. Although, it is a pity you can't count your rosary any more... and fasting doesn't have much meaning to you as a ghost...