#// once your body is entombed in the necropolis it belongs to the mourn watch

[thanatologie]

@extravagantliar - question, in the space of donations to the mourn watch and other high ranking officials in the grand necropolis, we know there is obviously ethics around it, but is there any moral quandary with the use of others, or is it more of giving things new purpose and life?

so this is something i've been thinking about a lot, actually, with regard to manfred especially.  mostly because manfred's body, is, essentially, a cobbled-together skeleton from spare parts; like we know his ribs were a gift (the question is from where and who), and he picked his own skull from donations (again, where and who did it come from and i could write reams about manfred's skull in particular because it shares very similar - but not exact! - features to emmrich's skull bc i've spent so much time looking at both, yes, manfred picked a skull that would leave he and emmrich favoring one another if he had flesh i said what i said).  and we know his arms came from a charnel pit, which i imagine in reference to the mourn watch and the necropolis in general is exactly what it says it is on the tin:  just a pit full of piles of bones with no quote-unquote owner; a bones-r-us of dismembered body parts, basically.

we also don't know where the rest of his body came from, like…his fingers and toes, or his legs and pelvis.  his spine.  my assumption is - i'm writing a huge long post about manfred that's taking me way too long bc i've gotta scrape together all the dialogue, that's not exactly about this but includes it - that his whole body is made of various bits and bobs from here and there because of the idea that the corpse used to house a spirit colors the undead's actions and personality.  or, in other words, a whole corpse will cause a spirit to exhibit traits of the deceased (audric is a good example of this - technically that's not the audric that was alive, but there's enough of him in there that essentially it's audric, you get me?), manfred is mostly just manfred, because there's no one particular remnant pulling his personality in any direction.  there may be echoes, but essentially manfred is his own little dude.

like…essentially reduce, reuse, recycle is what they're doing anyway.  emmrich more than once laments the fact that the rest of thedas burns their dead (that bit about all those fine mansions burned to ash, and how he got green around the gills witnessing a funeral outside of nevarra), because raising the dead for various jobs - construction, cooking, etc - is normal in the necropolis especially.  there are rules to it, sure, and i'm sure the nobility are safe from clearing sand out of the shrouded halls (probably much to emmrich's disgruntlement lbr, mans really said the only good noble is a dead one), but like…that's what the average person can expect for their body after death.  it's what mourn watch members can expect after death, too, they're pledged to eternal vigil.

and then you get into the wibbly wobbly bits about the body needing to be whole (mummification and preserving organs) because if you're missing things in the quote-unquote real world you'll be missing them in the afterlife - it's partially why the hand of glory is such a no-no, you're harming the soul as well as the body to make one.  but, you know, sometimes there are things like mass graves, and sometimes bodies can't be identified or put back together, and the necropolis is so big, and so old, there are probably loads of bodies that have gotten scattered and can't be identified and put back together, or the skull can't be found for a corpse whisperer to have a chat with, and i imagine that's where the charnel pits come from.  like there are probably rules about what you can build from those spare parts (no 180 ft bone constructs to violently take over nevarra, for example), but also i imagine they're most frequently used for repairing skeleton workers and guards when they're damaged or for slapping together new ones as needed.

which is a really long-winded way to say yes, i think there are rules concerning where you can source the bones/parts from (charnel pits - okay, scattered bones you find somewhere outside - probably okay, bodies that have been donated to necropolis operations - okay, gifts - okay, filching from someone's tomb while they're lying in state - not okay), and what you can make out of them (manfred - okay, johanna's monstrosity - not okay), but also that there's a practical…there's no way to identify these bodies and the parts are just here in a big pile so you might as well make use of them kind of thing.  like they revere the dead and spirits, sure, but it's not all whimsical idealistic twaddle, there's a practicality in making use of that which can't be reclaimed with a name or a story.

eta: also! let's not forget they keep intruders' bodies and put them to work so...make of that what you will.