D&D General How long does a body take to decompose in a bag of holding? (Asking for a friend...)

[Celebrim]

And that's fine... if your fictional fantasy world operates by real-world biology. If, however, there's less germ theory and more humours and spontaneous generation and such, things could get interesting.

Well, my fictional world doesn't have real world biology, and it does in fact have humours and spontaneous generation, but the thing about physics based on the pre-scientific world view is that the pre-scientific explanation of the world is that for most observations the pre-scientific explanations of geocentricism and spontaneous generation and so forth explained the observations, otherwise they wouldn't have been believed. So for most purposes, the two concepts will produce identical results. In this case, I don't think the lack of real world biology much changes the expectations of what is in the bag, except that we could add to it spontaneous generation of flies and other decay spreading vectors if we as DM were in the mood to add that.

 

[Umbran]

So for most purposes, the two concepts will produce identical results.

Except, of course, that the fantasy world has monsters.

"I left a side of beef, a fresh ham, and 17 pounds of raw cod in my bag of holding for two weeks."
"So? Why do you need me to case cure spells on you?"
"Apparently, when stuff gets nasty enough, you get an otyugh, and when you open the bag, it is really annoyed..."

 

[MGibster]

But how did that bacteria get into the bag to begin with, since it doesn't survive well when oxygen is present?

Caitlyn Dougty explains what happens to a corpse in a sealed casket. It's not pretty. This video is not particularly graphic. No gross images and the descriptions aren't too bad.

 

[Celebrim]

Except, of course, that the fantasy world has monsters.

"I left a side of beef, a fresh ham, and 17 pounds of raw cod in my bag of holding for two weeks."
"So? Why do you need me to case cure spells on you?"
"Apparently, when stuff gets nasty enough, you get an otyugh, and when you open the bag, it is really annoyed..."

Reads like one of those comics in Dragon back in the early 80's.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

@TaranTheWanderer I believe you legally need to extend the subject of this post to:

How long does a body take to decompose in a bag of holding? (Asking for a friend.)​

Done!