Old Gods/Legends/Cremation

Roleplay from Soren Navaar

Message sent to Everyone in the Old Gods

You want to know why the followers of the Old Gods cremate their dead? Scholar, that is a tale as old as the Gods themselves! Honor for battle? No. No. There is a much simpler reason for that... That is to rest. Have you ever thought about the Children? Beasts that roam the earth, some of the clever ones taking forms familiar to mankind? They roam the world, eat our people out of house and home, eat our people when we try to defend what is ours, what we have taken in bounty from the land. Sometimes, they seek the flesh of the recently deceased and dig up the corpses of the fallen, only to add to their hordes. The undead, the deceased dragged back to the land of the living as they undo the works of man and drive us towards the treacherous depths of the Crystal Maiden herself! Do we just burn the dead to keep the monsters from digging them up, and the undead from rising? Bah! That is too simple an explanation with no understanding. We do what we do because it is one of the few ways to stand against the Ice Queen herself! What do I mean? I mean, we must escape a fate worse than death. The Ice Queen is a cruel mistress at times, and those she finds displeasure with are often marks upon the fate that she weaves. When she finds those marks, she undoes the owner's threads, plucking the mark from the embrace of the Dark Mistress and giving it over to the Wolf Lord to be twisted into a new child. The soul of the fallen must then watch as their works are undone. We burn the dead, because to twist a human into one of the Children, the original being must act as a base. The easiest transformation is to raise the dead to fight once more. However, with the body burned, there is often little remaining, and the Wolf Lord will not find it so easy to twist a soul into a beast. Though grain can take many forms, you would find it hard to turn it into goat meat without a lot of power. It is not a pleasant fate, you are correct. However, should you impress the Ice Queen, her gifts can be... everlasting on the land.

Soren Navaar (Count of Seven Rivers)