Need Help - Elven Funeral Ceremony

[shady]

Another obscure musical cue to use is an excerpt from Faure's Requiem. The movement is the Agnus Dei and the particular bit is at the end of the track I believe, where the voices crescendo to a halt and a sorrowful french horn finishes off the movement. It's quite moving and my players enjoyed it.

Another one that springs to mind is Song to Athene, which was played at Princess Diana's funeral.

 

[jerichothebard]

I like the idea of combining the funeral pyre with the funeral boat. Send the boat out onto a misty lake, then it lights itself on fire and burns down to the water line. Seems very final to me. I don't think elves should bury their dead, personally. It seems so... primitive.

 

[shady]

I like the idea of combining the funeral pyre with the funeral boat. Send the boat out onto a misty lake, then it lights itself on fire and burns down to the water line. Seems very final to me. I don't think elves should bury their dead, personally. It seems so... primitive.

It's going to depend on their religion ... if as in LotR the elven religion includes the idea of a paradise across the sea then it's likely that boats or barges (down rivers to the sea) will be involved. If it's a lake, perhaps the lake is venerated, and a benign spirit of the lake is part of the local religion.

If it's a nature religion, then placing the dead in the hollow of a tree, to "become one with the tree", or similarly burial in the roots of the tree, might work. But in that case the trees become gravestones, and the forests graveyards ... the trees would carry the names of the elves buried in them, and might become the focii of ancestor worship - whatever, it's a great opportunity to flesh out the role and background of elves in your world.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

Thanks everyone for all of the ideas. I was and still am pro-fertilizer and went with that method of dealing with the remains. I was planning on the sapling idea, but wasn't sure if others thought elves would bury their dead. Thanks for the affirmation. They held a beautiful ceremony, beginning with a procession to the Spirit Grove/Grove of Ancestors. Every Elf who knew Nym told sang or recited his life from birth to death, ending with his sister, since she was there just before his death. The Druids of the village bore the body forward under a white cloth past all of the Elves in their white cloth raiments, except Shea, who wore a raiment in accordance with his worship of Corellan, with holy symbol displayed.

Nym's remains were brought forward by the Druids into the sacred grove and he was placed in a shallow depression in the earth. The Heirophant of the order came forward and presided over the placement of a sapling grown from the village's Tree of Life over the grave. The tree is watered and magic is used to root it to the body and begin to grow. It is named Nym's Tree.

At that point, every Elf present steps forward one at a time before leaving and places something at the foot of the tree that was special to Nym. Some of these will be removed by the Druids at sunset the next day. The Elves sing Nym's spirit into unity with the earth as the tokens are placed. They include a chess piece, hair ribbons (placed by Aria and woven around the sapling), his favorite food, his favorite flowers and sprigs of plants important to him, the quill pen he used to write in his spell books (placed by his teacher) and finally Shea placed his holy symbol of Corellan Larethian in on the sapling. The last of the elves move away as dawn breaks, signalling a new day and the beginning of the next phase of mourning (more of a remembrance of the sanctity of Nym's life and any elven life), which will last a year. His brother and sister and parents are given tokens with Nym's hair woven with plants to wear in remembrance. The family comes together and goes spends a full day in silence at home, then that night, there is a feast with the extended family.

For music, I thought the Grieg didn't sound exotic enough to be elven, so I used a Celtic piece called "The Three Graces." It was a moving experience. Nym/Shea's player told me I must have had too much time to plan this (as he removed his glasses and wiped his eyes). Beautiful. Thanks everyone!!!

DM

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Friend and Foe: the Elves and Bugbears of Tellene (PDF preview here) has hit stores this week, and it's got lots of good info on elves, including full details on funerary practices. Here are the very basics:

High Elves: cremation
Gray Elves: burial, crypts; preserved through arcane mummification techniques
Wild Elves: laid out in the forest
Wood Elves: burial, forest