Lunar burial practices

[Noita]

What happens to dead Lunars, especially those far from home?

Are they traditionally burnt or buried back in the Empire? Do they continue to follow these practices elsewhere?

[David Scott]

Cults of Prax says:

Quote

local preference always is given to burial functions. Rune Priests and Lords will have their bodies preserved until the full moon, but others will be taken care of right away. Both will have songs of creation sung during the rites, and have their souls commanded to the "Circles of the Moon, of Time, and of Being

I'd suspect a mixture of rites depending on cults. Getting a body back to the Empire is likely difficult, save for the very wealthy  even if preservation is available. Most will be buried locally or cremated using the Holy Fires available to some cultists.

[Joerg]

Who are you calling a Lunar?

Dara Happan Yelmites expect a funeral pyre. Shargashi bring their dead into an Enlosure, which I picture as some sort of bonehouse. Lodrili might expect a burial or a pyre, preferably back home. Other ethnic contingents will have different customs - provincial Orlanthi, Thunder Delta Slingers, Char-un, Carmanians...

Lunar cultists might have rites of their own, but I expect those to be variants of their homeland.

For my scenario I had an undead assault on Whitewall, and to protect those corpses the Lunars did not intend to send against the walls there was a Shargashi enclosure - "walled off" with green cloth, and hefty magical wards - to avoid the corpses to rise with all the other, unprotected ones.

I assumed that officers falling in a field controlled by the Lunars would be preserved as good as possible and then sent home for proper burial rites. There is possibly an entire specialized branch of the logisticians devoted to this. Luckily, the freight trains bringing food and equipment to the front tend to return with a much lighter load, so transport is easily secured.

If you are unlucky enough to fall where the enemy keeps the field, or hasn't been chased away decisively, impromptu burials or burnings will be the way to deal with the corpses, if the slain are lucky.

If they aren't... read Tacitus on what Germanicus found five years after the battle of the Teutoburg forest, and how he and his troops provided minimum dignity disposal of their mortal remains.

Given the irrational hate of the Dara Happans vs. Orlanthi, I would expect them as victors to go further in the defiling of the corpses of slain Orlanthi. Using them in necromantic attacks would be a start. But then, this might be in the small print of Lunar soldiers' contracts, too - service beyond death, within reasonable terms.

(In the Dragon Pass boardgame, whoever wants to ally Delecti or the Tusk Riders sends an army unit to be slaughtered. If sent to Delecti, this unit provides the first element of the Zombie chain. The Tusk Riders just torture them to death, and then probably feed them to their mounts.)

[Jon Hunter]

Who cares as long as they are dead.............

Sorry slipped into character.

[Jeff]

In most of Peloria, the remains of the dead are normally buried, placed in tombs, or burned depending on status and local tradition. The villagers of Peloria tend to bury their dead, while the urban Dara Happans cremate their dead. The ashes are scattered into the Oslira or placed in tombs, again depending on status and tradition. Shargash is widely worshiped as the god of the funeral pyre.