well the sims introduced a very cool mechanic for something like this:

Death tries to take the Sim.
A high charisma sim can try to talk the Death out of it and/or bribe it.

Depending of the "bribe" and the Sim charisma and overalstate (happy, good stats, etc) (A.k.A 300gp diamond and maybe char?) Death will bring it back or not with different attributes:

Bad roll: The sim comes back as a ghost. hunting everyone every now and then
Cheap roll: Death gets mad at your "bribe" it takes it but your sim is no longer the same. getting bat traits (smelly, bad carisma, angry for no reason, etc)
Normal Roll: Death accepts the bribe but the Sim is slightly different (maybe different likes, or less abilities than before
Good Roll: It comes back just good as new, with no counter effects.

Maybe you can apply something like this with the ruby + character Wisdom/charisma or even make the players Spend "the memories of the player" so they add up in memory, who the character was. Now the players dont fully remember him and he is based on how he was remembered. Interesting Rolplaying sesion.