Rumang is the guardian of the road that the dead must travel to reach heaven in Yapese belief. After death the soul that would ascend is drawn by ritual incantation to a way-station, and from there it must offer stone money (rai) to Rumang and submit to his judgment before it is permitted to continue. Only those who satisfy him pass on into the clubhouse of the chief god Yanolop, who separates the good dead from the bad, such as those marked by disease. Rumang thus functions as a threshold judge and toll-keeper of the afterworld, a role that mirrors in the world of the dead the central place of stone money in Yapese life.