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"Why do we burn the dead mum?"

The relevance of the title question should be answered shortly, as long as I don't ramble. This is more an exercise in world building and the consequences of past events that may have tore through your fantasy world rather like an ogre through a pie eating contest.

To the original question in answer for my world of Eld is fairly simple. Undead almost took over the world and nigh on destroyed it, leaving it in the post apocalyptic fantasy it is. One of the consequences that came of it was that across pretty much all societies (there's always those hold outs that won't change their traditions even in the face of such things) stopped burying or entombing their dead and what was once held sacred had to be changed. Burning bodies was simply the consequence of it and some thought rather paranoid after they believe the threat is gone (spoiler: It's not.). It keeps the threat at bay and makes it harder for the Liches to bring back massive armies to raise hell across the world again.

So, in this exercise, if anything like this has happened in your world and story's, does it have some fairly lasting consequences? True, it may not show up, but you know what it is even if the audience doesn't.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I do have rituals to prevent the undead... but undead are most often brought about by the “nature of magic” rather than conscious necromancy. The best practice is to find an area where the dead won’t rise. The classic test is killing a bunny and seeing if it’ll come back to life before it’s turned to bones. Safe cemetaries develop from this, and in general a deep burial will also help. Certain gem-quality minerals will also prevent the dead from rising. Burning is also common because of it, but most often it’s not necessary unless you’ve got a body in a particularly dangerous locale.

There’s an entire system to unlife.
 
Orc Knight Oh yes. Yes I do.

My WIP has a lot of competing methods of immortality/longevity , most of which are/were very flawed.

One major school of thought turned to necromancy that produced a lot of problems both practically and philosophically. Not as often, but occassionally there's the walking dead, aka manipulation of energy to keep non-functioning, non viable bodies up and about, aka 'zombies'. They, the 'should be dead', know that without the necromancer's energy being temporarily gifted to them, they'll die and stay dead... but they won't die until the necromancer allows it. And, even then, still run the risk of the necromancer capturing their energy/soul even if they do finally die. It's a state of servitude. Usually it's only magical people that can easily spot a zombie among the living, although there are some subtle clues like the appearance of massive scars from what should have been unsurvivable trauma, high pain tolerance ( if the necromancer is kind), strange diets/addiction, sensory confusion, etc. Necromancers can also capture the dying/ departed's energy/soul for their own personal power. And then, necromancers progressed to just ripping energy out of healthy people at random, not just the dying and recently dead. Necromancers started out as spirit mediums and energy healers...but when some realized they could give OR take energy, all bets were off.

In addition to worrying about being attacked by a necromancer bent on stealing your life/magical energies... these practices also produced a lot of ghosts... because necromancers usually didn't bother to try and completley absorb another person's conciousness(soul) the victim had enough energy to be a ghost, but didn't have adequete energy to cross over. Ghosts could then haunt places, people and objects. The ghosts are usually confused and violent when they materialized. Unmanipulated ghosts that elect to stay earth bound however are not easily susceptible to necromancy, because they are not weakened. Those type of ghosts are extremely, even dangerously powerful, and because there's no biology or vulenerabilities to manipulate, they're not easily manageable by anybody.

The primary method to deal with all this mess as a magical-person was to 1. Eradicate naughty necromancers and 2. try and cremate a body asap after confirmed death. And soon they didn't trust keeping ashes around because those could be manipulated by necromancers, too. So the cultural practice was to scatter ashes in secret locations, and not in locations of personal significance to the deceased. Older family lineages that still keep urns, keep them in magically fortified family shrines or outright military strongholds. It's especially difficult and sad because they practice ancestor-worship... but they are too afraid that they cannot protect them adequately without extreme precaution. The more powerful your lineage, the more likely you are to be targeted.

Necromancers usually didn't bother to mess with non-magical persons, so some populations still bury their dead although it is deeply discouraged by the magically-inclined. This led to magical persons raiding graves to burn the bodies, which didn't go over very well with mortal populations... so established graveyards were, at the height of the conflict, abandoned. People were buried in jealously guarded unmarked secret locations. This, in addition to other existing grievances, did not help magical-mortal public relations. Imagine, that if you didn't bury poor grandma in a good enough hiding spot, some witch posse might come along and dig her grave open and set her remains on fire for reasons you didn't fully appreciate or understand.

This led to the practice of delayed public mourning and public obituaries, as you didn't want to advertise there was a new burial to look for. This unwittingly protected towns from actual necromancers because it helped to make sure the bodily remains were past their prime usefulness for potential zombification.

Once relations improved over time (centuries) and mortals better understood "why" grandma was being torched in her grave, they changed their practices to cremation or at least agreed to stop hiding bodies like macabre buried treasure and started forming manageable graveyards again.

This also drastically changed preventative, emergency, hospice and palliative care. Was the good Dr. really a Dr., or a necromancer secretly coming into your home or tending to you on the battlefield? How could you know, really know for sure? This generated a whole industry of warding off necromancers.

Then again, maybe you desperately wanted the healing powers of a necromancer to save someone on the brink of death... so you'd go out of your way to track one down and offer them goods or loyalty for services rendered. Because some stayed as healers and mediums, and never turned to the dark side. But still... could you totally trust them?

I could go on and on. But, the impacts of what can happen to the dead radically shaped 2 major cultures (mortal and magical) on spiritual, social and even legal aspects over centuries.

And, while most evil necromancers were destroyed, some still exist. They aren't invincible, but very difficult to kill (decapitation only). And, if the necromancer dies, so dies the zombies they've created and sustained. And, because they'll use up every once of energy to stay alive, it means the ghosts cannot be made whole to crossover without serious intervention. The consequences are profound and changed spirituality, religious rites, professional occupations, etc.
 
Well, my world is still a WIP. But I've had ideas that somewhere in history there was a cult that would promise great power and immortality to its followers, etc... But the majority of the members, which were mostly lower class folk, outcasts, etc... , had to show their ultimate devotion to the cult by willingly turning themselves into liches/zombies.

So long story short somewhere during history there was an undead plague which forced people to change their funeral traditions. So for the longest time it was cremation to prevent the dead from walking again.

Now centuries later, there hasn't been an undead incident (at least severe enough) for people to continue to be careful anymore. So some cultures continued the cremation tradition while others returned to burials, however. Some cultures (modern ones) insist on using some type of wards or rituals to prevent the bodies from being used for necromancy. But sadly they can't prevent the 'soul' from being used or causing trouble.

Although some cultures also burn bodies for other reasons like helping the soul break free from its body. I have 1 culture that cannibalizes its dead to 'damage' the soul to prevent troublesome souls from causing too much trouble from beyond the grave. And as part to keep that person alive 'inside them'.
 
The relevance of the title question should be answered shortly, as long as I don't ramble. This is more an exercise in world building and the consequences of past events that may have tore through your fantasy world rather like an ogre through a pie eating contest.

To the original question in answer for my world of Eld is fairly simple. Undead almost took over the world and nigh on destroyed it, leaving it in the post apocalyptic fantasy it is. One of the consequences that came of it was that across pretty much all societies (there's always those hold outs that won't change their traditions even in the face of such things) stopped burying or entombing their dead and what was once held sacred had to be changed. Burning bodies was simply the consequence of it and some thought rather paranoid after they believe the threat is gone (spoiler: It's not.). It keeps the threat at bay and makes it harder for the Liches to bring back massive armies to raise hell across the world again.

So, in this exercise, if anything like this has happened in your world and story's, does it have some fairly lasting consequences? True, it may not show up, but you know what it is even if the audience doesn't.

Not sure if this is a thread about death related traditions or traditions created by crisis or traditions generally, but i have a few things to share.

In the world of the story i'm developing, a certain group of people think that the soul absorbs into nature after death. This affects how many people want their bodies disposed of. Some might want to be dumped into the sea so their soul's final destination is the ocean. Some would prefer to be thrown to predators to live on in them. Still others want to be buried in the forest to live on with the trees. The very specific plans they make before death govern how best they can send signs to the living after death. These people look to nature for messages from their dead relatives. Someone who was eaten by vultures would be expected to send signs in the birds to help and guide their living relatives.

The worst fate from this point of view would be to decay locked in a tomb. Their spirit would be forever bound to it, and not allowed to gradually return to the cycle of nature.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
Why do we burn the dead mum?

Or

Why do we burn the dead, mum?

I’m laughing about the title. Do you only burn dead mothers in your world? Or do the fathers get burned too?
 
At least you're laughing. Lot's of people get burned. Fire spells turn out to be rather common for that.

I am now also burned due to my less then adequate grammar and punctuation skills.
 

Chekaman

Scribe
In one of my worlds, Undead only rise (or try to, those who are either cremated or firmly buried underground can't) once a year, so the authorities are ready for them. In another, it is very hard indeed to raise the dead and very few people can do it.
 
No undeads in my setting, but sometimes the people of Bnathia (pronounced nathea) burn their dead to release "bad spirit" from a person's body. The practice has evolved to literally pouring spirit wines (and wheat oil, the Bnathians are known for their wine spirits) over dead criminals and burning them as a sort of post-death cultural execution.
 
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