D&D 5E (2014) Bury corpses

[Mercule]

Cannibalism.

Only the halflings.

 

[alienux]

Now that you mention it, I figure it must be like the "bring out your dead" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where they just bring a cart around to collect the bodies and haul them off somewhere else.

 

[discosoc]

I noticed that a lot of villages in D&D don't actually have a graveyard.

Where did you get this idea?

Anyway, there are two possibilities here. The first is that villages *do* have graveyards, but they aren't specifically stated unless it's important to the adventure. Sort of like how outhouses, cobblers, or thatchers are rarely mentioned, yet essentially every village would have them.

The other possibility is that the village is simply not large enough to warrant a centralized graveyard. Families would bury their dead on their own property.

 

[Caliban]

I've always assumed the bodies just got up and walked away eventually. You don't actually need a necromancer to create undead, they just formalize the process and make it more efficient.

Graveyards cost money, only wealthy people use them. Poor people just move the corpse off to the side and wait for the supernatural to take its course.

Responding to myself.

I actually think this could be an interesting quirk for a campaign, or for a region where a god of the dead holds sway - the dead aren't buried because when the god calls them to the afterlife, the dead have to literally get up and walk to a certain location to be transported there. So you see wandering undead along the side of the road or through the forest, but they don't attack unless they are disturbed.

Necromancer's can blaspheme by taking control of the wandering undead, or by creating undead from the god's worshipers before they have risen on their own - disrupting the "natural" order of unlife. Or they can work within the bounds of the religion by petitioning specific undead to help them with a task that would have been important to them in their living days (defending the village, attacking an enemy of their nation, etc). If the undead agree, then the spells work on them as normal, without drawing the ire of the god or their cleric's and paladins.

 

[smbakeresq]

Guys, no reason to debate this. The simple reason is; DMs don't like Necromancy in the hands of PCs. It creates huge numbers of bodies that insulate the PC against plot developments. You can't threaten a wizard that can just use a few of his class features and a loophole in a spell to turn a Death Tyrant into a subservient slave for an entire month and then just sick his floating skull of death lasers onto an unsuspecting dragon. You can't threaten a master Necromancer with a zombie plague when he can just say "No, you're going to put Terry the Tiefling down and do MY bidding now." And above all else, it's just a tremendous pain having to keep track of an army of zombies, whether the player or the DM is doing it, it's just a pain. So, most DMs don't bother broadcasting graveyards because they either A. hold no relevance to the story, or B. are trying to disencentive the party Necromancer from looking for an army to sack the town.

What? You are missing out. Having a Necromancer just SCREAMS out plot devices:

1. All the commoners get freaked out so refuse to deal with the PC's.
2. Relatives of the dead look poorly upon such things, including Uncle Wizard, Aunt Paladin, and their old friend Mr. Arch Cleric.
3. The local real necromancer gets upset because PC are stealing his stock and business.
4. The rest of the non-human undeads tribe just cant believe the PC cheated their tribe mates out of their honored dead status and seek to rectify same.
5. The stench of the undead ensures the PC can never surprise any creatures, especially those with scent as a trait.
6. Better get used to sleeping outside as no establishment wants your minions in there.
7. The PC Necromancer and PC Paladin cant possibly get along unless one of the converts alignment to others.
8. Evil non-necromancers certainly want the PC undead minions for themselves so will constantly harass the PCs.
9. The Necromancer cabal wants to know any secrets the PC necromancer has, so will of course constantly send their minions to capture the PC's
10. Any undead uprising or horde is met with Good Churches strike teams with the Right of Annulment, authorizing them to eliminate the threat by any means necessary.
10a. If the first strike team doesn't succeed then the situation escalates with better strike teams until Aculard or Constantine show up.

 

[jmucchiello]

I had a scenario where the town had a furnace for the dead but the town cleric had died and after a year, the hallow spell ran out. The town was attacked by burning wraiths and a boss burning spectre.

Sent from my SM-G386T using EN World mobile app

 

[Draegn]

I have always had the dead buried in the church yard of the church they worshiped at. With the wealthier being buried either inside the crypts and vaults and the poorer being further out on church property.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Skeletons and zombies only attack nearby foes.

Skeletons and zombies are the most likely thing to rise from a corpse. It might be a necromancer, but occasionally it just happens because you've concentrated negative energy (ie - buried a bunch of things in the same place).

Ghouls are probably the next most common undead. They just want to eat corpses.

It's a really bad idea to put the graveyard anywhere near the village. In fact it's probably a bad idea to even have a graveyard.

So you either burn the bodies or bury them all isolated from one another.

 

[MNblockhead]

As others have written, you can assume it is outside of the main village. Depends on the culture.

However, it is certainly plausible that in some cultures there are not going to be graveyards. If cremation is practiced, the funerary urns may be kept by the decedents of the deceased in their homes.

Or, perhaps, the corpses are placed in "towers of silence" for carrion birds to eat.

Maybe there is an area in the woods where wooden platforms are built and the corpses are left to be eaten by wild animals and rot and decay.

There are lots of interesting ways people have dealt with corpses through out human history. In a world with magic and fantastical creatures, I would think that there could be many more interesting ways.

 

[77IM]

The corpses, despite their obvious importance, are buried in an appendix.