ZEITGEIST Risuri Funerary Practices?

[efreund]

In Risur, what is considered the proper/traditional way to pay final respects to a dead body?

I don't see any mention of graveyards or crypts, so I'm guessing it's not burials. Do they cremate? Ritualistically feed the body to some sacred animal?

I'm looking to include a funeral (for an NPC), and while I'm conformable making up a lot of details (I'm going to include a New Orleans ‐style funeral parade!), I kinda want to get the key "what do we do to the body at the end" part right.

Any thoughts?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i mean, the official setting guide only offhandedly mentions graveyards in danor and drakr. i doubt they're the only two countries with graveyards.

my guess would be primarily burials and/or cremation.

 

[RangerWickett]

Risur is a sort of mishmash of Britain and Brazil. Honestly burials are probably normal, though some communities might do funeral pyres.

 

[efreund]

Hrm, okay. So where are the graveyards in Flint?

I'm focusing on someone who was of moderate wealth and moderate social connections, who is definitely a "Flinter". A small business owner in the Central District. (A tailor of men's business attire, to be precise somebody's gotta be making all those trenchcoats and tophats!))

Like, I'm assuming that if you are someone of low wealth or poor social connections, you get tossed in a mass grave. (I'd be curious where that mass grave is though, and if there's a gate to the Bleak Gate nearby.) On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you are rich, well-connected, or of noble blood, your body is probably transported back to your family's ancestral holdings elsewhere in Risur, and you're buried at the family plot.

But for the "firmly in the middle class Flinter"? Where do they get buried? Flint has undergone rapid expansion of late, so even if the traditional gravesite locations were once outside of town, they're now firmly within city limits.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm just saying, don't drink the water in Parity Lake.

 

[Tormyr]

There is a reason it's not called Purity Lake. So we have to contend with not just the industrial pollution but a higher than normal concentration of organic matter? I missed that in the gazetteer.

It kind of reminds me of Diamond Lake in Greyhawk at the time of the Age of Worms campaign. "Yeah, it used to be beautiful here, but after the industry took hold..."