Funeral for a Priestess of Ehlonna

[Yenrack]

Anyone got any ideas for how to conduct a funeral for a priestess of Ehlonna?

As I've mentioned elsewhere (and I've been meaning on getting around to putting some of this down in the story section), I'm running a Tomb of Abysthor (Necromancer Games) campaign based around the woodland village of Corustaith, which is in Greyhawk's Gnarley Woods.

After a few rough encounters early in the Tombs, my players seemed slightly undermotivated to revist them ("Why are we poking around that place where we keep getting our butts handed to us by endless, gore-soaked skeletons?"). I decided to use a scenario from Dungeon #95 that revolves around intrigue regarding a woodsy witch, a gnoll wizard guarding a shrine of Yeenoghu, and a band of gnolls under the influence of an evil-human priest (Orcus, of course, in my campaign).

In our last session the gnolls and the Orcus priest attacked the human village. The party and townsfolk fought them off, but not before the priest and a very big gnoll murdered the priestess of Elonna in a particularly brutal way (hey, I saw The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and got my hands on a copy of the Book of Vile Darkness at the same time; the gnolls are drug-addled, too).

Well, I've got plans to have the funeral rites interrupted by the cultist of Orcus, who have more vile things planned for this priestess (the outrage of the murder and body-snatching should get my players back down into the Tombs). First, however, I want to put together a credible and intersting picture of what those rites would be. Any suggestions?

 

[Gilladian]

First you need to decide how the body is to be disposed of: buried, burnt, left out for the elements, mummified?

I could Ehlonna wanting her priestess to be washed, wrapped in bandages with herbs and other pleasing but not overly lavish items (perfume, beads made of flower petals, carved tokens of respect, etc...) and then placed in a holy cave or sealed in a mound, or even put on an open platform at the top of a tree.

So you could have several days of preparation, in which her followers prayed over the body, laid it out, had a final viewing or even a wake, a final ceremony in which the body is carried to its resting place, a procession back to the village, and a time of silence/mourning/special activity.

Dress these ideas up with things you know about the locals, and you've got a simple funeral. Of course, you also have to decide at what point the bad guys are going to interrupt. Once the body has been properly given to the goddess, it may not be acceptable to them for their purposes.

Gilladian