Friday 3 December 2021

Death Stuff


Death GodsFunerary RitesAfterlives
The Big Dad. Didn't build heaven large enough, asks newcomers to help put together their own accommodations.Body cremated, ashes baked into bread and/or smoked with hashish, reoccurrences of kuru having led to the decline of traditional cannibalism.One hundred years hard labour in the heavenly workcamps, keeping the world alive for your progeny.
2Ghost Wolf. Scares the soul out of your body when you die, then chases it around trying to eat it. Stops for flattery, back scratches, howling contests.Classic stories about the deceased told again and again through the night, exaggerated until they become a mythic figure fit to join the gods.Become the quarry of the wild hunt. If you escape, you can become a hunter. If caught, reincarnation.
3Sheep Herd. Not really supposed to be looking after people, forgets they're sentient. Keeps ushering souls out of the right afterlives, onto 'greener pastures'.A night of bacchanal followed by a day of terrible hangovers, everyone encouraged to start fights, call names and otherwise purge.Sent back in time to haunt your own life and cause your own misfortunes. Very fun.
4Counter of Beans. Makes you account for every action in life. Happy to hear arguments. Line of souls runs out the door and 3000 years down the hall. Casting bones, measuring stars, ritual conversations. Careful reorchestration of planting calendars, holiday plans, personal cosmologies and horoscopes.Reincarnation as a new island. Take care of your ecology! Human life was a practice run, this is the one that counts.
5Remother. Warm, red cheeks, swollen belly full of crying, babyfaced souls. Sucks you up her vagina and turns you into ectoplasm (in a good way).Body nestled into a midden, covered in layers of the local grain and scraps from a feast in their honour. Dug up in a year to check if they made it to heaven Wander the earth  pondering the 700 heavenly riddles. If you solve three or four they'll let you be a deva.
6The Boneyman. Looks just like someone you know with a skull painted badly on their face. If you laugh at their antics they will take you to hell.After cursory mummification, the body is placed in an out of the way corner and ignored until everyone has genuinely forgotten its there. Buried properly once rediscovered.Come straight back to the time and place of your death, at one thousandth the size.


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