He lay in a trough of earth.

A pale, bruised young man. Couched on a bed of dry pine boughs and waxy cones. He had been stripped down to his breech­es and under­shirt, both wet with maroon stains. In his wan, slack face, one eye, slight­ly deflat­ed and leak­ing humors, had been turned askew by an entry wound adja­cent its orbit. He was dead.

Around him, beside a high pile of musty soil piled neath the pine canopy, stood three cut­ters in leathers and brown capes. Two wore down­turned expres­sions. One was teary-eyed, rubbed her red and drip­py nose, head bowed. Beside her, a swarthy man clutched a rosary to his chest. He let the paint­ed beads slip, count­ed, through clasped, dirty hands as he prayed through cracked lips.

The third stood behind the mourn­ing two. A burn­ing taper in hand, a spade at his feet. He was red of hair and bore a look of knit­ted impa­tience.

“Petro,” he said, address­ing the pray­ing man.

Petro shook his head, still mouthing rites. Anoth­er bead passed under his thumb. Beside him, the sniffly woman shot the red­head a mis­er­able frown.

“Why pray? He was a bloody Firl, like me.” *

Petro, fin­ished a com­pli­cat­ed sym­bol over his chest, bent to place the rosary upon the dead man’s bloody ster­num. “But he was human, com­padre. Aveth’s rites are for mankind.”

Beside him, the woman sniffed, nod­ded. The red­head­ed cut­ter scoffed. “But he would­n’t have cared!” He pulled an apolo­getic gri­mace. “Well, no offense, but we don’t believe in “grace,” or what­ev­er you South­ern­ers call it. In Par­adise. In the North, we just light ’em on fire and have a laugh over beers at all the shite they did, after­wards.”

“No offense tak­en.” The dark fel­low turned, smiled at him. “But I do mean for all of mankind. Mean­ing a funer­al is for the liv­ing, as much as the dead. To instill grace in us.”

“Fair enough.”

Petro nod­ded, turned to the corpse. “Step up, then, Cal­umn. We will say words in remem­brance, before send­ing him away.”

Cal­umn shrugged. He joined them, taper smok­ing, stood beside Petro. For a moment, they sim­ply stood. A chill, dry breeze rat­tled the pines, shook a rain of brown nee­dles from on high. They scat­tered over the pale man, lodged around the holy charm on his dark-stained chest.

“Ave­ta,” began Petro. “We com­mend to you a soul. Not because he knew you, but because he was a com­pan­ion along our vio­lent way. We will remem­ber him for his skill and his humor. Deliv­er him Par­adise, that he may know gen­tler times.” He pro­duced a pouch, took a pinch of grey salt from with­in, and tossed it on the dead man. Grains fell over his cheeks, over the wreck of his eye. Petro passed the pouch the the woman.

“Good­bye, ami­go,” she said, in bro­ken Firl­ish. “Go well. We will join you in the end,” she said, sniff­ing. Salt glit­tered as it fell. She passed away the pouch.

Cal­l­umn took it, hes­i­tant­ly. “Ay…” Petro nod­ded at him. 

“Okay,” said Cal­l­umn, straight­en­ing. He took a pinch of salt, looked at the corpse. “Sor­ry you’re dead, mate. Shit luck you got shot in the eye.” He frowned. “You were a bit of an ass; nev­er let me take point. And you hogged too much por­ridge. Also, I took your boots, hope you don’t mind.” At that, the South­ern­ers looked at him, blankly.

“Uh,” said the red­head. He scratched behind an ear. “But you were a good cut­ter, over­all, ‘n you taught me to whis­tle. And you saved us from that troll.” He nod­ded. “There real­ly ain’t many with courage like you.” At that, he let the pinch of salt scat­ter, looked to Petro.

“Now, it is time,” said the South­ern­er.

Cal­l­umn knelt, touched his taper to the bed of pine leav­ings. It flared fast, ate up nee­dles and cones with snap­ping, waxy inten­si­ty. Flame licked around the dead man’s limbs. The cut­ters watched, squint­ing for smoke, until the blaze thick­ened. They turned, capes flap­ping in the ashen wind.

As they did, Cal­l­umn spoke. “A right shame.” He looked ahead.

“I hope we’ll ever earn the for­tune to meet anoth­er like him.”

Obsequies

Ven­tur­ing is a dan­ger­ous job. Peo­ple die. 

A cut­ter will like­ly wit­ness the demise of sev­er­al com­rades over the course of their career. That is, if the cut­ter does not them­selves meet a hor­rid end.

By and by, they will grow famil­iar with the mea­ger com­fort of sparse funer­als. Brief obse­quies held for friends and new com­pan­ions alike.

The best end for which a cut­ter can hope is to rest upon a hasty pyre built by friends, or for repose with­in the cher­ry heart of a ven­tur­ing town cre­ma­to­ry; for their ash and bits of bone to be left in a qui­et wood, or scat­tered in a pump­kin patch. An unsen­ti­men­tal end. Nec­es­sar­i­ly so, for latent plague allows no cer­tain time to mourn over the cor­po­re­al leav­ings of the dead. **A civ­i­lized, san­i­tary end to a bru­tal and dirty life; one which oth­er­wise leaves its fall­en as grim, dead­ly reminders. As wrecks face down in duck­weed ditch­es, bloat­ing in raven-picked sun, or left, aban­doned on the cold, stained stone of a dun­geon hall.

Small favors to the dead are the per­formed not for them, but for the liv­ing; for few hor­rors unhinge a mind so effec­tive­ly as the thought of one’s com­pan­ion aban­doned in a black for­est, or sprawled in chilly tomb cor­ri­dor; a hor­rid lump from which to avert the eyes on every pass­ing delve in search of gold. No sane Lit­toran will find heart ven­tur­ing in a locale lit­tered with the aban­doned husks of those who came before, espe­cial­ly if they fear the added dan­ger of grue­some plague with­in those corpses. †

Thus, cut­ters, regard­less of faith or super­sti­tion, pre­fer to hold small, prop­er obse­quies for the casu­al­ties of their vio­lent trade, for there is no for­tune in for­sak­ing the dead. Indeed, many believe it espe­cial­ly for­tu­itous. They believe that a prop­er and safe dis­pos­al of for­mer com­rades bodes good for­tune in the hire and befriend­ing of those to come. Such is the queer mind­set of hard­ened cut­ters. Of jad­ed des­per­a­dos who have seen come and mis­er­ably go no end of briefly-held broth­ers and sis­ters in arms and in woe­ful ambi­tion.

The fol­low­ing is a mech­a­nism from the Incunab­u­li Playtest:

If in the event a char­ac­ter dies, the obse­quies, or lack there­of, under­tak­en for their corpse by sur­viv­ing par­ty mem­bers may pro­vide bonus start­ing XP for the cre­ation of the char­ac­ter replac­ing them:

• Cre­mate OR salt and bury the corpse: (+60 XP)
• Per­form Avethan funer­al rites. (Requires 1 faith point. +30 XP if new char­ac­ter has faith.)
• Imbibe in remem­brance. (Requires alco­hol. +1XP per drink con­sumed by par­ty)
• Bury the corpse with­out salt OR bur­ial at sea:  ( +40 XP, +1 Dis­tress)
• Dig a shal­low grave (+3 to Entrench­ing skill. +30XP, +2 Dis­tress)
• Pre­pare and aban­don the corpse. (+3 Dis­tress)
• Aban­don the corpse. (+4Distress)

Any of the above obse­quies which involve gray salt require 6 ounces of griso­date in order to per­form.

Any of the above which require bur­ial use the Entrench­ing skill to dic­tate time required to dig a grave (13 hours minus Entrench­ing lev­el.)

A char­ac­ter with skill in Cer­e­monies or Gravedig­ging increas­es the bonus XP pro­vid­ed by any of the above by 5XP per lev­el.

Bonus XP does not apply if the char­ac­ter replac­ing them has already sur­vived a ses­sion..

Note

Anoth­er XP bribery mechan­ic from the playtest. Check it out here.

The bonus XP val­ues will need to be tweaked depend­ing on your game. The playtest assumes a lot of val­ue per point, so 20 is a nice present. For D&D/retroclones, it real­ly helps ame­lio­rate the sucky catch-up time of start­ing at lev­el 1.

The dis­tress penal­ty will be up to you, as well, assum­ing you don’t use a accu­mu­lat­ing point sys­tem for woe and hor­ror. In our game, dis­tress does­n’t make you go mad and lose con­trol of your char­ac­ter (like some insan­i­ty sys­tems) but it does reduce the qual­i­ty of your sleep, and may attract meta­phys­i­cal hor­rors (night­mares) that affect both the dream and wak­ing-world.

This post was made pos­si­ble by Jacob Kent and fel­low Patrons.