Grave / Tomb Robbing

[glarkhag]

In a lot of the Sartar campaign material there are burial mounds and tombs with grave goods in them. This seems to imply that if you defeat the owner the loot is fair game. Is that the general view on Grave Robbing (that adventurers can plunder it without retribution) or does Heortling culture consider this dishonourable?

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, glarkhag said:

This seems to imply that if you defeat the owner the loot is fair game. Is that the general view on Grave Robbing (that adventurers can plunder it without retribution) or does Heortling culture consider this dishonourable?

Desecrating/robbing the tombs of your ancestors would certainly be dishonorable and leave you subject to the curses of your ancestors and your kin.

Robbing those of your rival/enemy tribe might be fair game, but could well start a clan/tribal feud (their ancestors will complain, and that clan/tribe will strike back at you if they can ascertain you did it). 

Robbing those of some ancient, long-gone people might be fair game, but could also trigger curses against you and your clan/tribe by the spirits of the dead. My thought here is that it is a bit of a gamble. In Orlanthi lands, it might well prove to be that they were your ancestor after all, and now you have to appease them; or they were your foe's ancestors and you've now triggered a feud.

 

[mfbrandi]

19 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

it might well prove to be that they were your ancestor after all, and now you have to appease them; or they were your foe's ancestors and you've now triggered a feud.

Which is what we want, right? The characters fear such complications, but the players would feel cheated if there was no “mummy’s curse.”

[glarkhag]

10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Which is what we want, right? The characters fear such complications, but the players would feel cheated if there was no “mummy’s curse.”

If you were getting life changing riches... Not sure I'd trade that for a few hundred lunars. 

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, glarkhag said:

If you were getting life changing riches … Not sure I’d trade that for a few hundred lunars. 

Well, it is certainly a matter of taste, so take anything I say with as much salt as you require, but …

1. IRL: no “mummy’s curse” — but we are not looking for reasons to be tomb raiders;
2. Game with victory conditions (1st to 100,000L wins): you do a risk vs. reward calculation;
3. Open-ended adventure game: just go for it!

Games with “levelling up” (or any kind of slippery slope or greasy pole one is expected to scrabble up) will likely fall between (2) and (3), and if there is high character “investment” (emotionally or in time/effort to create a new “playing piece”), I guess that pushes us toward (2).

Doubtless there are many more dimensions and ways of looking at it, and doubtless there are games and campaign set-ups where even a small amount of cash is “life changing” (or prevents an adverse life change) — you need a few clacks for that scrap of mouldy bread, to pay off the loan shark for another week, or to make rent. (Electric Bastionland or Trophy Gold? OG Traveller.)

But perhaps no incentive for high-risk play is needed. What kind of game are we playing? Live fast, die young, and leave a zombie-nibbled corpse? Risk the wrath of the ancestors to get one’s hands on a magic sword only to find it has rusted right through and disintegrates on first touch? Or perhaps a game of optimal crop rotation and quibbling tax efficiency, as it can sometimes seem.

Edited December 6, 2023 by mfbrandi
apostrophe

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, glarkhag said:

If you were getting life changing riches... Not sure I'd trade that for a few hundred lunars. 

A couple hundred Lunars is 2-3 years worth of coin - perhaps that is enough to change your life?

[svensson]

In the strictest terms, yes, grave robbing is dishonorable and can lead to some very ugly consequences.

In some cases, such as the Dragon of the Thunder Hills scenario of the GM's Pack, the ghost of the deceased may give permission for the living to make use of their grave goods. IMG, there is a 1000% chance that such a claim will be confirmed by the local clan's priestly caste if they suspect even a little bit that a PC showing up wearing an ancient panoply possibly owned by one of their ancestors.

Something else to consider: the Dragonkill of ca. ST 1000 is a great big red line between 'the ancients' and 'today' in Sartar. The Orlanthi who lived during the EWF bear little or no relation to the Heortlings who re-colonized Dragon Pass centuries later. While the spirits of the deceased will certainly be angry if you loot their tombs, those spirits will most likely [but not definitely] not be related to the clan living nearby. Archeologically speaking, the Dragonkill is that great big ugly black line of soot and ash layer between, say, Minoan civilization and Hellenic Greek civilization left when Santorini blew up.

Last thing: most Orlanthi don't leave extensive tombs. The funerary rites of Orlanthi require cremation, so there isn't much of a tomb to speak of and most often the possessions of the deceased are divided among their descendants or else 'go to the Winds' with the dead. I don't have my Earth Mothers book handy, but IIRC it's not uncommon for Earth women to be cremated and their bones buried in an urn, so not much grave goods there either. Certain great priestesses may be entombed with goods, but those tombs would be nearby an Earth temple and would be protected by patrols of Babeester Gor women -- NOT the people you want to piss off, ya know?

Edited December 6, 2023 by svensson

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, svensson said:

Something else to consider: the Dragonkill of ca. ST 1000 is a great big red line between 'the ancients' and 'today' in Sartar. The Orlanthi who lived during the EWF bear little or no relation to the Heortlings who re-colonized Dragon Pass centuries later.

Well, the people who died in the Dragonkill without descendants are no worry, but those whose children left Dragon Pass before the Dragonkill — maybe generations before — may well be ancestors of modern Gloranthan wannabe graverobbers. The old saw about everyone in Europe being a descendant of Charlemagne. We are not looking for a planet/lozenge-wide MRCA, we just need a non-ridiculous chance of finding an ancestor across a fairly limited area. Maybe 600 years is not long enough, but how old are the oldest tombs in Dragon Pass worth robbing? Their inhabitants may be “our” ancestors, no?

I also worry about whether an “ancestor” has to be an ancestor in the strict sense. My uncle is not my father — as far as I know! — so does that make it OK for me to rob his grave as far as this one rule goes? My uncle and I have common ancestors: is that enough to put his tomb off limits? Don’t get me wrong — I am not looking for reasons to say tomb raiding is morally OK: the more inclusive the thou shalt not disturb the ancestors’ resting places rule, the better. Then we get to enjoy all the bad-faith excuses PCs offer … ’cos they are going to do it, anyway.

[Malin]

And the fact that this discussion is prompted at all is the reason why I bloody love Glorantha!

[svensson]

19 hours ago, jajagappa said:

A couple hundred Lunars is 2-3 years worth of coin - perhaps that is enough to change your life?

Assuming that you don't buy adventurer gear with it [enchantments, high speed/low drag armor, etc.] and put that 200L into steading improvements, more livestock, better living conditions for your people etc., 200L could be what we call a 'foundational fortune' nowadays.

Heroes and adventurers get stories told about them, but the real backbone of a clan are the prosperous steadholders who are the economy. It's the steadings that pay most of the taxes, sacrifice the most POW, and so on and having the cash to make sure the roof is in good repair before Dark Season, or getting a chimney, or even a separate barn can start a family down the road to real prosperity.

Edited December 7, 2023 by svensson

[Joerg]

Orlanth's ethics have no problem with stealing from "not-us", whether alive or dead. Ernalda or rather her mom Asrelia may see this a bit differently (once something has been given over to the Earth, it belongs to the Earth, and if it has been given in holding towards the afterlife of the deceased, Asrelia might be contractually obliged to pursue thieves).

My question here is what do the people who bury their dead with ostentatious grave goods expect the deceased to do with the equipment? The Greek obolos for Charon served to allow the deceased to pay the ferryman.

The warrior who is cremated or subsequently buried alongside his favourite items doesn't have the physical body to wield or wear any of these items. The items sacrificed this way do follow the deceased into his afterlives (five souls and a spirit - which one gets to carry the stuff? Or does everything go to the afterlife of the deceased's main cult?

Are there reusable grave gifts, used in the burial rites but retrieved before "sealing" the tomb? Are there clay figurines of items representing the real thing in the afterlife? Are there Fresco-covered death houses depicting everyday life like the Etruscan tombs, suggesting that the painted stuff becomes available to the dead?

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Are there Fresco-covered death houses depicting everyday life like the Etruscan tombs, suggesting that the painted stuff becomes available to the dead?

In the Esrolian necropoli, definitely!

On Ancestor Day in Esrolia, we know the Dead walk the Sacred Road(s) into the cities to see their descendants. Undoubtedly they start at their tomb/grave/etc, and want to see that their grave goods are still there, and that there are new offerings from their kin (maybe even repainted stuff). 

Do they return to their gravesite on Ancestor's Day elsewhere? Might just be an urnfield, or an unmarked grave, in which case maybe or maybe not. Perhaps they do arrive and go to join whatever sacred worship service is occurring, and then fade away again? 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The items sacrificed this way do follow the deceased into his afterlives

I'd guess the "spirit" or "form" of the object so that a Queen walking the Paths of the Dead in the Underworld (and in the afterlife) would be recognized as such. The actual objects (possibly with the exception of the coin for passage with Ferryman) do not.

 

 

[glarkhag]

10 hours ago, jajagappa said:

A couple hundred Lunars is 2-3 years worth of coin - perhaps that is enough to change your life?

It is true, but it also pays for less than 4 weeks evening classes or a single dose of POT 10 venom antidote (damn those pharma companies!!). But let's not turn this into an economics discussion, because that, I believe, would be a thankless task 😭

[svensson]

58 minutes ago, glarkhag said:

It is true, but it also pays for less than 4 weeks evening classes or a single dose of POT 10 venom antidote (damn those pharma companies!!). But let's not turn this into an economics discussion, because that, I believe, would be a thankless task 😭

True. We get that going and pretty soon we'll be haggling over cows 😁

[Darius West]

It is worth pointing out that none of the tribes and clans presently alive are related to the EWF clans.  All the EWF clans were annihilated, so their tombs are fair game.  

Also, my mummy says cursing is bad.

[soltakss]

On 12/5/2023 at 2:00 PM, glarkhag said:

In a lot of the Sartar campaign material there are burial mounds and tombs with grave goods in them. This seems to imply that if you defeat the owner the loot is fair game. Is that the general view on Grave Robbing (that adventurers can plunder it without retribution) or does Heortling culture consider this dishonourable?

Grave Robbing happens a lot.

Humakti wouldn't like it, as they like to honour the fallen. Similarly, Ty Kora Tek won't like it, as you are disturbing graves, and graves are sacred to the cult.

Orlanthi might see it as a desecration but probably won't care much.

I suppose the question might be "What happens to the deceased person and their grave goods after death?" If the grave goods go with the deceased to the afterlife on burial then it is OK if they are then taken, as the deceased still has them in the afterlife. However, if the grave goods remain with the body, then removing them also removes them from the deceased's spirit in the afterlife, potentially robbing them of those items. That would be really bad for the spirit and anyone who the spirit can contact.