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[ApolloCVermouth]

On a related note to funeral pyres; How about Norse funeral pyres? That is to say, when a dwarf dies, the dwarfs body and possessions all get burned at the same time.

If I were a dorf, I'm not sure I'd want to take my x<pig tail fiber socks>x with me to Valhalla.

[Starver]

If I were a dorf, I'm not sure I'd want to take my x<pig tain fiber socks>x with me to Valhalla.

Technically, they'd be ‼x<pig tain fiber socks>x‼, though... (And if the Valhalla Laundry sorts out the removal of all those deep-down flames, they're probably good at invisible mending, too.)

That's assuming that dwarves are norse-analogues, as opposed to the many other possibilities, though.

Of all the known Earthly rituals for dealing with the bodies of the dead, I'm tending towards the idea that dwarves already have the one most in fitting with their lifestyle on (and beneath the surface of) Dwarfworld.  Sealed within a sarcophagus (or, for the kinky among them, in a casket of a different material), often placed deep underground.  And what dwarf would not wish to be immortalised upon carved stone when this is not possible?

I could see the "body left for the scavengers" funereal rite being used by, perhaps, the Kobolds, the remaining bones then being either (more) scattered or placed in special areas or even containers.  Straight or casketed burial in earth might be considered more human (as farmers) or elf (as nurturers of the trees).  I can't currently ascribe sea-burial (e.g. weighted by rocks and left to drift into the depths off the edge of the local reef) to any fully sentient Dwarfworld race, nor am I sure that the various pyritic rites (straight cremation all the way through to the burning-longboat extreme) currently applies to any race.  (And magmamen corpses are surely be unburnable, ignoring the "turns to ash" result of killing one, which I see as "taking the living fire out them".)  Without lumping the goblins in with the kobolds, I can't currently imagine what they'd most like to have done with their remains, save for "being made into dwarven bolts"?

But every time I think about this, I think I think differently.

[NW_Kohaku]

I still think that necromancers or zombie uprisings should make cremations a more readily used form of burial. 

Why take the risk that your mother might be raised as part of the hoard of undead?  Keep her memory and your brains safe by putting her ashes in an urn by the mantle.

Even real-life cemeteries in centuries-old cities take the oldest bodies, and dump them out of the cemeteries to make room for new bodies.  They pretty much just unceremoniously dump them with the trash.  It's the current "let's have a giant mausoleum for everyone" method that is completely unrealistic. 

[Poindexterity]

wonderful idea.

[Starver]

I still think that necromancers or zombie uprisings should make cremations a more readily used form of burial.

...or maybe "Perhaps let's not bury Uncle Urist McDigger with his favourite pick...  And can we possible put some more soundproofing around Aunty Urist's tomb?"

Traditional Earth traditions[1] aimed towards the prevention of Undead issues generally rely upon additional measures such as head-severing, heart-staking, a general (yet reverent) dismembering and separation process, as well as some less severe-looking measures (of the kind that don't also guarantee that the assumed-deceased might not wake up from a more mundane undiagonosed deep slumber) such as burial at a crossroads, or with a range of culinary additives (from garlic to lemons...) being laid upon their person or within their mouth...

Given the "if it can grasp, it can rise" nature of the Dwarfworld dead, then dismemberment is probably not the answer, but "having really heavy rocks placed on top of the sarcophagus" sounds like a good tradition to me.  If it must involve heat, then filling the room with magma sounds good, and matches (especially for some people) the general consensus about dwarven psychology.

But, how about more work for the engravers...  Obviously slabs are there for the unburyable dead, but if there is knowledge to be gained in order to become a necromancer, then there might be a civil-knowledge of a sigil (pick any two or three symbols from the currently available pantheon and create "a circle combined with a square, overlaid with the wavey pattern of water", or "a symbol representing lust, within a triangle") that must be engraved upon a sarcophagus (any that has not already been isolated, so that it doesn't matter) to prevent the occupant from taking up a newly reanimated disposition...  And given we now have books, parchment/vellum/whatever's-appropriate scraps with the given symbol drawn upon could be a stop-gap measure for as-yet-unburied corpses (or those of enemies, yet to be more permanently disposed of), placed upon each body[-part] at risk...  With these items becoming more and more x<Worn>x as and when the local influence of a necromancer is actively felt, and the protection starts to do its job in deflecting the revivification effects.

Maybe this also makes work for the embroiderers of clothes, with an explicit job for the creation clothing bearing this symbol ending up with attire that gives a similarly temporary respite from 'conversion', post-mortem.  And/or useful for the living, insofar as an anti-vampiric deterrent (although not a perfect and permanent one, or certain symbols being specific to certain vampires, culture-wise).  But I fear that in my flight of fancy I've drifted far from the original subject of this thread, drifting well off into other practices and applications.


[1] Whoops, tautology there...

[Rage Machine]

i still want pyres, i think they would be fun and give me some variety. also for different religions there could be different preferred burial methods and pyres would be a fun method for a dorf that worshipped a fire god.