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oligopsony) wrote2018-12-29 09:51 pm
oligopsony) wrote2018-12-29 09:51 pm
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the Charnel Sages: Ghouls of Abolished Aeon
Per Lovecraft and the SRD, ghouls are intelligent, vaguely canine featherless bipeds that feast upon the rotting flesh of the dead, absorbing their memories in the process. Although no more inclined to malice than other mortals, ghouls are ritually unclean and cannot participate in naming rituals.
As obligate carnivores, ghouls can (and do) form a minority part of agricultural civilizations, and there are scattered clans of herding and hunting ghouls (most prominently the "Gnoll" nation/movement/tribes,) but no large society consists primarily of ghouls.
(Content notice: racism, cannibalism, various other unpleasant things.)
Psychophagy and Necromimesis
There is no soul separate from the body. The vital organs of formerly-living beings, therefore, contain the remants of what distinguished the living body from the mindless matter the corpse, through rot, is currently transitioning to. (It is thus almost universally believed that the recently dead are "dreaming," in the sense that they can have morally relevant experiences, even if they are no longer organized in a way that makes up an active person.) Propositional beliefs can be found in the liver, episodic memories in the kidneys, passions and personality in the heart, particular attachments in the genitals and uterus, and so on. Some gourmands can claim to find aspects of the personality in other parts such as the lungs, brain, ground-up bones, and so on.
The diet of almost all ghouls is almost all unintelligent animals, and while the rush of memories and feelings as they eat their repast is real, they need not take it too seriously. (It is popularly believed, even among ghouls themselves, that subsisting on exactly one kind of animal will drive the ghoul in the direction of thinking and acting like this animal, but it's unclear that this has a noticeable effect without shamanic practices to back it up.) Eating the remains of other intelligent creatures is almost always taken seriously - if out of respect for the dead, if nothing else. If it is not done with respect, it is typically done as a deliberate insult, which is its own kind of seriousness. But some forms of eating the dead are more serious than others.
The least serious kind is simply to observe a certain amount of ritual and decorum, in accordance with local custom and the permissions of the relatives of the departed, and to cooperate with family and when necessary the secular authorities in providing consultation on factual matters of importance when they can be ascertained, or in performing rituals of closure and expiation. Commonest and kindest, if not always performed with complete sincerity, is the simple ritual of a ghoul's assuring the family of the deceased's love for them. Cruelest, but for that reason in the employ of so many princes, are the ghouls of whom it is said: "speak now, criminal, or I shall feed you to my retainers, and they shall speak for you."
More serious is the following: go without eating for a long time, nearly to the point of starvation. Ensure the body is fermented at just the right level (certain organs "peak" at different times so you will want to store some of them in jars of different moisture and temperature.) Eat all of the vital organs; you may also want to literally ferment the blood, and/or flay the skin and perform ecstatic dances. Meditate, of the kind that requires a lot of practice to do right and can't be practiced right without the other stuff.
A ghoul in the throes of necromimesis, for most purposes, just is the person conjured up in this way. It is as though, having died, they wake up in the ghoul's body, while the ghoul's mind and personality slumber in wait. The soul of the living ghoul typically reasserts itself - but there are cases where the transformation appears almost permanent.
Very skilled meditators can, after reasserting themeslves, emerge with the soul of the eaten "stored" inside them for later use and consultation. In game terms such ghouls may be media or trabadours.
the Unclean
Here are a few facts about ghouls: as noted, they are ritually unclean.
Also, they can't suffer from diseases, although they can carry them, and typically do, as their diet consists entirely of rotting meat.
Also, sometimes non-ghoul children start turning into ghouls around adolescence. Sometimes this is conceived of as their having a special calling to perform the various kinds of work that only ghouls can, but most often it is ascribed to ambient ritual pollution, and sometimes to ghouls' cradlerobbing and leaving changeling children. (The SRD entry takes this last as canonical, but my instinct would be to say that the others are more likely.)
Also, ghouls are just fucking creepy.
The cruelty of the outside world towards ghouls is always at least in the background, but it flares up in paroxysms of rage. Most often, ghouls are preventing from holding state offices, handling money (stamped with the image of state or god), or living outside of certain charnel grounds outside the city limits. They must maintain their own water supplies. Commerce and politics are closed to them; all sages consult them, but they are rarely allowed to lecture to students. Their crimes are punished by special tribunals that err on the side of extremity, lest popular anger at the lastest rumor decide it is insufficient.
Warm relations also exist, especially at the individual level. Families know the ghoul who helps bring the final words of their relatives. Those scholarly communities see the local ghouls as essential partners, preservers of knowledge who are often scholarly themselves, and form the kinds of deep friendships that intellectuals often do. The same unscrupulous prince who, for reasons of state, may need to whip up anger against the ghouls tomorrow must retain the genuine loyalty of his grisly interrogation team. Other members of the very poor, sometimes the most likely to hate ghouls as the one group they can feel superior to, are also not unlikely to find themselves cleaning the sewers and performing other ritually unclean activities alongside ghouls, and to form friendships with them there. But these individual bonds are often the first to be abandoned in episodes of collective violence. The day after, these unfaithful friends look in shock at what they were capable of, or protect their conscience by saying that their ghoul friend was an exception as one of the good ones.
the Bog Archives and Ice Archives
The mammothfolk of the south, when their teeth and tusks have dissolved, have long held the practice of going either to the bogs or the utter ice to die and be preserved. For a very long time, this was the province of the mammothfolk only, and any ghoul whose historical curiosity brought him to these massive burial grounds would be treated with as much harshness as these normally gentle giants could imagine. This has changed in the last hundred years, for when an existential threat threatened all of civilization, five ghoul heroes were permitted to access the gelid graveyard of the honored and to eat five of their greatest heroes, who went on, in their new bodies, to save the day. Now the Bog Archives allow any who wish to make themselves useful to the future to enter, and the Ice Archives allow truly great heroes to retire there, regardless of whether they are mammothfolk or not. And ghouls may petition for the need to consume the dead, and take up their mantle. But at least at the Ice Archives, they must petition from outside and be brought their new souls, for they are still unclean, and cannot pollute that holy place, heroes and bearers to heroes they may be.
Hey Dawg,
The ghouls have archives of their own. Inasmuch as there is a continents-wide ghoulish culture, it is in the conviction that a dead ghoul should be eaten by a practiced necromimic - who in turn must die in safekeeping for cannibalism - that the dead may never be lost. Such a practiced necromimic aborbs not only the memories of the dead individually, but - if their meal was also a practiced necromimic - all that they carried with them.
To bear so many minds and memories would drive anyone mad. Nevertheless, it is necessary. Every ghoulish community has someone designated responsible for it, and each of them must be safely waylaid to an even higher-level cannibal to eat them. These specialists are too far gone to effectively perform the roles of any one person in them on their own, instead, specialist hypnotists must bring these souls out of them.
As obligate carnivores, ghouls can (and do) form a minority part of agricultural civilizations, and there are scattered clans of herding and hunting ghouls (most prominently the "Gnoll" nation/movement/tribes,) but no large society consists primarily of ghouls.
(Content notice: racism, cannibalism, various other unpleasant things.)
Psychophagy and Necromimesis
There is no soul separate from the body. The vital organs of formerly-living beings, therefore, contain the remants of what distinguished the living body from the mindless matter the corpse, through rot, is currently transitioning to. (It is thus almost universally believed that the recently dead are "dreaming," in the sense that they can have morally relevant experiences, even if they are no longer organized in a way that makes up an active person.) Propositional beliefs can be found in the liver, episodic memories in the kidneys, passions and personality in the heart, particular attachments in the genitals and uterus, and so on. Some gourmands can claim to find aspects of the personality in other parts such as the lungs, brain, ground-up bones, and so on.
The diet of almost all ghouls is almost all unintelligent animals, and while the rush of memories and feelings as they eat their repast is real, they need not take it too seriously. (It is popularly believed, even among ghouls themselves, that subsisting on exactly one kind of animal will drive the ghoul in the direction of thinking and acting like this animal, but it's unclear that this has a noticeable effect without shamanic practices to back it up.) Eating the remains of other intelligent creatures is almost always taken seriously - if out of respect for the dead, if nothing else. If it is not done with respect, it is typically done as a deliberate insult, which is its own kind of seriousness. But some forms of eating the dead are more serious than others.
The least serious kind is simply to observe a certain amount of ritual and decorum, in accordance with local custom and the permissions of the relatives of the departed, and to cooperate with family and when necessary the secular authorities in providing consultation on factual matters of importance when they can be ascertained, or in performing rituals of closure and expiation. Commonest and kindest, if not always performed with complete sincerity, is the simple ritual of a ghoul's assuring the family of the deceased's love for them. Cruelest, but for that reason in the employ of so many princes, are the ghouls of whom it is said: "speak now, criminal, or I shall feed you to my retainers, and they shall speak for you."
More serious is the following: go without eating for a long time, nearly to the point of starvation. Ensure the body is fermented at just the right level (certain organs "peak" at different times so you will want to store some of them in jars of different moisture and temperature.) Eat all of the vital organs; you may also want to literally ferment the blood, and/or flay the skin and perform ecstatic dances. Meditate, of the kind that requires a lot of practice to do right and can't be practiced right without the other stuff.
A ghoul in the throes of necromimesis, for most purposes, just is the person conjured up in this way. It is as though, having died, they wake up in the ghoul's body, while the ghoul's mind and personality slumber in wait. The soul of the living ghoul typically reasserts itself - but there are cases where the transformation appears almost permanent.
Very skilled meditators can, after reasserting themeslves, emerge with the soul of the eaten "stored" inside them for later use and consultation. In game terms such ghouls may be media or trabadours.
the Unclean
Here are a few facts about ghouls: as noted, they are ritually unclean.
Also, they can't suffer from diseases, although they can carry them, and typically do, as their diet consists entirely of rotting meat.
Also, sometimes non-ghoul children start turning into ghouls around adolescence. Sometimes this is conceived of as their having a special calling to perform the various kinds of work that only ghouls can, but most often it is ascribed to ambient ritual pollution, and sometimes to ghouls' cradlerobbing and leaving changeling children. (The SRD entry takes this last as canonical, but my instinct would be to say that the others are more likely.)
Also, ghouls are just fucking creepy.
The cruelty of the outside world towards ghouls is always at least in the background, but it flares up in paroxysms of rage. Most often, ghouls are preventing from holding state offices, handling money (stamped with the image of state or god), or living outside of certain charnel grounds outside the city limits. They must maintain their own water supplies. Commerce and politics are closed to them; all sages consult them, but they are rarely allowed to lecture to students. Their crimes are punished by special tribunals that err on the side of extremity, lest popular anger at the lastest rumor decide it is insufficient.
Warm relations also exist, especially at the individual level. Families know the ghoul who helps bring the final words of their relatives. Those scholarly communities see the local ghouls as essential partners, preservers of knowledge who are often scholarly themselves, and form the kinds of deep friendships that intellectuals often do. The same unscrupulous prince who, for reasons of state, may need to whip up anger against the ghouls tomorrow must retain the genuine loyalty of his grisly interrogation team. Other members of the very poor, sometimes the most likely to hate ghouls as the one group they can feel superior to, are also not unlikely to find themselves cleaning the sewers and performing other ritually unclean activities alongside ghouls, and to form friendships with them there. But these individual bonds are often the first to be abandoned in episodes of collective violence. The day after, these unfaithful friends look in shock at what they were capable of, or protect their conscience by saying that their ghoul friend was an exception as one of the good ones.
the Bog Archives and Ice Archives
The mammothfolk of the south, when their teeth and tusks have dissolved, have long held the practice of going either to the bogs or the utter ice to die and be preserved. For a very long time, this was the province of the mammothfolk only, and any ghoul whose historical curiosity brought him to these massive burial grounds would be treated with as much harshness as these normally gentle giants could imagine. This has changed in the last hundred years, for when an existential threat threatened all of civilization, five ghoul heroes were permitted to access the gelid graveyard of the honored and to eat five of their greatest heroes, who went on, in their new bodies, to save the day. Now the Bog Archives allow any who wish to make themselves useful to the future to enter, and the Ice Archives allow truly great heroes to retire there, regardless of whether they are mammothfolk or not. And ghouls may petition for the need to consume the dead, and take up their mantle. But at least at the Ice Archives, they must petition from outside and be brought their new souls, for they are still unclean, and cannot pollute that holy place, heroes and bearers to heroes they may be.
Hey Dawg,
The ghouls have archives of their own. Inasmuch as there is a continents-wide ghoulish culture, it is in the conviction that a dead ghoul should be eaten by a practiced necromimic - who in turn must die in safekeeping for cannibalism - that the dead may never be lost. Such a practiced necromimic aborbs not only the memories of the dead individually, but - if their meal was also a practiced necromimic - all that they carried with them.
To bear so many minds and memories would drive anyone mad. Nevertheless, it is necessary. Every ghoulish community has someone designated responsible for it, and each of them must be safely waylaid to an even higher-level cannibal to eat them. These specialists are too far gone to effectively perform the roles of any one person in them on their own, instead, specialist hypnotists must bring these souls out of them.
no subject
Does this also mean that living human minds are more decentralised than in our universe? If an Abolished Aeon human loses their uterus or one of their kidneys or something, does that fuck them up mentally? Even if not, does it disqualify them from necromimesis?