Culture: Death

In the culture of Butter Bay, even more so since the Freeze began, death is held in great reverence. The Libram’s account of the death of Voland at the hands of Bishal and his subsequent resurrection has ingrained itself into the collective consciousness of society, and instilled a deep respect.

Namelessness

The most obvious sign of this reverence is in the rite of passage known as Namelessness. Namelessness is a coming of age ritual that all inhabitants of the Bay go through; it is absolutely mandatory. If, somehow, one was to not do it, they would forever be considered a child. When you go through your Namelessness you are re-enacting the death and resurrection of Voland, claiming your place in the world as one of his children. The process begins at the festival of Sorrows. All children who have turned twelve in the year since the previous Sorrows are deemed ready to go through their Namelessness. A parent or other family member, or occasionally a Keeper, will use their own saege knife to cut off the child’s hair in a ritual performed in front of the whole community.

After the ritual is completed, the children, now called nameless, are considered to be dead. The role of the community in the Namelessness is simply to not interact with the nameless in any way. The nameless must fend for themselves, preparing their own food, dressing themselves, repairing clothing, and anything else that might arise. Though the nameless are not officially supposed to speak at all, they sometimes speak with and interact with one another; the rest of the community does not enforce the no-speaking rule because they are not allowed to acknowledge the nameless. It is also common for the nameless to help one another with food, clothing, and protection; this is also accepted because the community is not allowed to acknowledged them, but some view the practice as a positive as it helps instil the nameless with a sense of community.

When Nighsend, the new year’s festival, arrives, another ritual is performed; the nameless are each presented with a saege of their own, to carry and guard the rest of their lives. Once this ritual is completed, the nameless become adults, and are considered alive again. When the nameless regain their life, they are allowed an opportunity to alter their given name if they so wish. As adults now, they are expected to contribute to society just like everyone else by farming, or fishing, or mining, or even joining the militia.

Dying

When people die in the Frozen Over setting, things work somewhat differently than normal. Upon dying, the person immediately returns as a ghast, a sort of undead spectre of themselves. Ghasts are able to continue to exist in the world for a time if they so choose, but it takes a focused effort to hold onto the land of the living. Over time, the person’s ghast slowly slips away and crosses over to the afterlife. A ghast can choose to let go and cross over of their own accord at any time.

What this means in game terms, specifically in 4th Edition D&D, is fairly simple. After dying, either by way of three failed death-saving throws or by dropping below their negative bloodied value, the character immediately regains 1 hit point and consequently regains consciousness. However, they are no longer a living creature, rather they are undead. A ghast character functions as normal with two exceptions: first, the character gains the following racial feature:

Slipping Away: While you are bloodied, you can move through blocking terrain, obstacles, and enemies as if they were difficult terrain; you must still end your movement in an unoccupied square. In addition, you gain insubstantial while you are below 0 hit points.

Second, you have a pool of ten “ghast points”. Each time you fall unconscious, fail a death-saving throw, or take an extended rest you lose one ghast point. You can also expend a ghast point to gain a +2 bonus to one attack roll. However, when you no longer have any ghast points, you immediately cross over. There is no way to regain lost ghast points.

When you return as a ghast, your dead body remains on the ground, meaning there are effectively two of you, one corpse, and one ghast. The corpse is naked, and all your clothing and equipment is on your ghast body.

Resurrection

Death is taken seriously in the society 0f the Bay. It is to be respected and revered, and not to be counteracted. Returning the dead to life is actually illegal in all but the Uruk nation, and even there it is not looked kindly upon. Part of the reason for this attitude is that resurrection generally doesn’t work, at least not in the way you would expect. The ritual to return life to the dead is relatively simple, but it doesn’t return the body to its original condition. At first glance it will appear to have worked perfectly, but as the days go by it will become apparent that though the persons mind and spirit have been returned to the body, the body is still slowly rotting away as if it were dead.

Eventually the flesh will fall away completely and the still-conscious and fully active person will be nothing but a skeletal being known as an esquel. The length of this process varies depending on the temperature, and therefore the time of year; in the summer it will take only a month, while in the winter it can take up to six months. Ressurected individuals who are obviously decomposing or have become esquels are not accepted in society and the citizens of the Bay are liable to hunt them down and destroy them if they are discovered. An esquel takes a -10 penalty to Diplomacy, and Streetwise checks, but gains a +10 bonus to Intimidate checks; while still rotting the penalty and bonus are only 5.

There is a way to resurrect a deceased individual without them becoming an esquel; it involves creating a substance called the Blood of Voland. If the Blood of Voland is used in the ritual to raise the dead, they are returned to their original state, fully alive with no lasting effects. An esquel can also consume the Blood of Voland and their flesh will slowly regrow, with similar timespans as the process of rotting took. The catch, however, is that the recipe for creating the Blood of Voland is long lost, and the ingredients are exotic and difficult to find. If your adventurers are determined to return a lost companion, the quest to do so should be a large undertaking all on its own and will lead them into distant and uncivilized lands far from Butter Bay.

Undeath

Various types of undead creatures exist; ghasts and esquels have already been discussed above. The other major types of undead are liches, and thralls. Liches are effectively esquels who have enacted additional rituals to preserve themselves, binding their spirit to a phylactery. If their body is destroyed, but the phylactery is still intact they will slowly regenerate. No-one knows how long it takes to regenerate, but estimates are usually quite lengthy, in the range of decades or even a century. Thralls, unlike the other types of undead, are no longer people, but are instead mindless beasts; their bodies were simply reanimated rather than resurrected. Like esquels, they begin covered in flesh, but eventually are little more than animated skeletons; fleshy thralls are sometimes called zombies. A thrall is usually bound to the will of whoever created it, but if they die or their body is destroyed the thrall simply crumbles. It is possible to create thralls that will survive past their master’s destruction, but they are more difficult to keep control of, and nearly impossible to control in large numbers.

Friday: The Uruk Race