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I personally like the cultural idea that how you appear in death and what you're buried with resonates with your soul when you visit Pharasma (or whatever god of death you have in your game).
Kind of the Egyptian model or greek model or Norse model. Good reasons to bury the dead rather than burn them or cut them up etc. (Though the norse burnt their dead I think). People in a culture like this do almost anything to be buried right so they have a better chance at a decent afterlife.
Also, if enough people die in a short period of time, burying them might be all you've got (especially in untimbered areas where funeral pyres aren't available).
Graveyards also give folks a place to go to help reconcile their loss. They are places of reverence and rememberance. Again a cultural reason.
Those are some that I can think of at least.
Cheers
There are graveyards in fantasy worlds to help fund the various religious organizations. Not everyone is the adventuring type, so they have to find other ways to pay the bills.
If you ask me though, given all the various "make bodies completely disappear" style inhabitants of a fantasy world, one would think that such a thing would be more common than just left to villain domain trappings.
We don't have real undead or real magic that are publically proven on a mass level.
WE know that NOW... however tehe story of ghouls, zombies, ghosts, mummies... ie all our in game beasties took root in the REAL world we live in from a time (not that long ago) where the concept of walking dead haunted our population.
Even now it's not hard to find people who believe in Demons and Devils, Witches and the whole schmozzle of chicken spanking voodoo mummery.
So if we had all that on our plate and we still did burials then I fail to see why fantasy world people would be different.
dont forget the amount of wood it would take to cremate every dead body, trees would disappear quickly. you would need a cremators guild or something with wizards that do nothing but burn bodies all day. plus without zombies who would eat all the extra braaaiiins.
Bah.. if you use real world logic in game worlds... there are NO trees left. The dwarves cut them all down to melt Mithril.
Set up a clan or nation of blacksmiths... give them incredibly long lifetimes... it all falls apart ;)
Your evil necromancers dig up graves for bodies? Mine don't.
Almost every time I have created a necromancer trying to create an army of undead, he has had fresh bodies on hand that he killed himself. It is a natural side effect of being evil. The one exception is an adventure I am planning where a necromancer will animate a lot of armed and armored skeletons in a forgotten battlefield.
Only neutral necromancers or weak first-level necromancers would raid graveyards for bodies. Do you want to remove their supply of free necromantic materials and force them into more evil acts to get those supplies?
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Geb uses hordes of zombies to farm food for export. Which is kinda awesome and disturbing.
Depends on where you go with the flavor.
Is negative energy *really* antithetical to life? If so, how much?
If it's like, radioactively antithetical to life, zombies would wilt crops in their presence, curdle milk, possibly cause cattle to lose their calves, etc.
If it's only mostly antithetical to life, zombies would be clean and sterile, as no bacteria, fungi or insect life would be able to take root in their bodies, causing them to last surprisingly long times, as they would be incapable of rotting.
If it's not-even-a-little-bit antithetical to life, then you can have plague zombies with nasty bugs crawling over them, and contagion (a life *creating* spell!!) as a Necromancy / negative energy spell, and we've got the setting and mechanics in sympathy.
My head 'splodes at the thought of using negative energy to *create life,* but them's the rules, and we definitely have plague zombies, so, apparently, negative energy, which is flavor-wise described as 'antithetical to life,' can be used to create life and not at all mechanically antithetical to life.
I would assume that Gebbite farm-product is somehow sterilized either before export, and, most likely, in the countries that import it, 'just to be sure.' Since purify food & drink is a cantrip, I could see a pair of 1st level acolytes stationed at the border (one Urgathoan, from Geb, one Nethyn, from Nex) casting that cantrip on every shipment of grain, produce, etc. that crosses the border, and, despite very different faiths and nationalities, both united in their utter loathing for their mandated border purification duties... (One of those situations where they punch their time cards, say 'morning Fred, morning George' and, if anyone asks, are hated enemies, despite sharing a drink and playing cards together at night, since they're in the same boat, so to speak.)
Nobody wants to risk people eating Gebbite apples and then getting sick and turning into ghouls, after all. It's just bad for business!
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I am sure some people here are familiar with the Midnight Campaign setting by Fantasy flight games.
In this campaign world, the world is cut off from the astral plane, and any other “outer” and Inner plane.
This means that the spirits of the dead have nowhere to go, and they rise as the “fell”.
Undead.
The various races have practices for dealing with the dead.
The humans cremate their dead.
The dwarves stick their dead in stone sarcophaguses with huge stone slabes on top of the corpses, so they are stuck squashed and trapped.
The elves bury their dead in their forrest and magically bind the spirits of their dead to a tree, and stick the body in the ground under a tree, so it is decomposed, and absorbed by the forrest.
I think the orcs practice cannibalism, so they dispose of the bodies of their dead by eating them.
So that is how a world might handle things if the dead ( all of them) don’t stay put where they are buried, and return wanting to have their relatives for dinner.
Just because a castle won't help against the powerful minority doesn't mean you throw out the design, since it still helps protect you against 90% of the rest of the world.Actually, I would expect the design to be modified with countermeasures for such threats. Such as open castles going to closed forts with fighting positions to attack flying intruders from.
Wires. A few well placed wires will ruin a flyer's day. Ropes or chains will do in a pinch. Open topped walls are an unaffordable weakness - as is any 'landing' space like balconies or flat rooftops. I'd expect a lot of domed towers with firing positions that cover the sky as well as surroundings and walls with shuttered roofs (as well as stabby-holes for spears - maybe even spikes embedded in the roof to deter landing).
In addition, cremation is far more expensive. I do not believe you realize just how much heat and fuel it takes to perform a full cremation.Actually I do. It was significantly less money to cremate my mother after she had passed than to bury her. On a factor of 1/10th the cost of burial in a modestly priced casket, including the burial cost of her ashen remains.
While I see a lot of arguments against the concept I don't see too many taking a viewpoint of the evolution of an actual fantasy world. Most just reply that since it happens in our world it should happen there too, but there are two hugely important factors that don't apply in our world: We don't have real undead or real magic that are publically proven on a mass level.
Magic could easily (and I would assume far more cheaply than we can technologically) make a 'Cremation Cabinet" that could disintegrate a dead body put into it that would last entire ages without requiring fuel or expense past initial construction and that could have a limitation constructed in of only affecting unliving matter placed inside it.
I still think it would be something most societies would adopt. While you cannot stamp out all undead if you eliminate the vast maojority of usuable bodies you certainly curtail their ability to exist.
Yes cremation would be cheaper in a present day situation. We have crematoriums that create intense heat as our understanding of induction and thermodynamics allows us to do so. Also, with the earth so overcrowded land is at a premium.
In a fantasy world, at least your standard fantasy medieval world that is, land is not expensive or difficult to find. Civilization is a few cities and villages dotted amongst the landscape of a sea of wilderness.
And looking at the evolution of an actual fantasy world, as I did, your assuming the vast majority of people would have access to magic. Magic is probably easy to find in a metropolis, of which there is possibly 1-2 per continent. In a world with orcs, goblins, dragons, and other monstrous races that can lay waste to cities civilization will not and cannot grow past a certain point.
I guess if you want to play in a high magic setting where mages are everywhere it would be different but most people understand that a wizard takes years to learn his craft and that sorcerers are one in 10,000...if that common. And most wizards never go above 3rd level. Believe it or not people usually don't go looking for trouble. They prefer to stay where its safe. It's a survival mechanism.
Adventurers are rare. By my estimate there are probably less than 200 adventurers active at any time in a typical fantasy world like Toril. These people are the exceptional. People like our Lance Armstrong, Patton, heroes.
Maybe I'm off base. But that's how I see it. And even if wizard's were commonplace. Never underestimate the power of the almighty gold piece. People don't do anything for free. Ever. Nature of the human condition.
It seems to me that there is such a thing in the world as Forgotten Realms Glut. This is where roleplayers' experience with standard fantasy settings where every square inch of land on the map is crawling with orcs, skeletons and ghouls, and every single mountain cave houses a major dragon or lich, and every single hole in the ground opens into a dwarven hold or lets into the Underdark, has informed their notion that such things are supposed to be not only common, but granted.I tend towards the low-mid level games for just that reason. Its nice to run adventures where NOTHING supernatural happens, where town guards only NEED to be level 1 warriors to deal with the average likely threat and the dead rising from the grave is a very big deal indeed.
I prefer a similar campaign myself. I call it a "gritty" campaign, where there is a sense of muddy realism until something fantastic and supernatural suddenly happens. I remember once we did an almost standard murder mystery, where the supernatural elements were nearly secondary to the plot.
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Bear in mind that this is a fantasy world.
Doesn't matter how expensive it is to cremate a body in our world when green slime is free, and, once you've got a spellcaster on retainer (or own a church or wizard's academy), burning hands costs nothing extra in components to cast.
Depending on price, a bag of devouring isn't a terrible investment for a smallish city, for that matter (and probably safer in the long run than keeping a pit of green slime in the basement, 'cause one earth tremor cracking the cistern and allowing green slime to seep into the water supply is gonna *nuke* your chances at re-election...).
Then there's the Korvosan solution. Otyughs in the sewers!
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Reasonably, I'd see in Golarion, barring state religions with other ideas (as with Cheliax and Geb), most graveyards would probably be associated with temples of Pharasma. As both goddess and guardian of the dead, this would be the reasonable spot to keep them, both to keep the corpses from rising as undead and also to have a handy focus for Speak with Dead, especially in the follow scenario:
Q. Is there any reason your incorporeal spirit is wandering around doing mischief?
Q. Is there anything we can do to lay your spirit to rest so it goes for its proper judgement by Pharasma in the afterlife?
If you don't have the body, you've lost a potent tool to use against half the undead you run into.
Even in the case of graveyards operated by the clerics of other faiths, one would imagine clerics of Pharasma coming in to work as professional mourners, promising to use their prayers and supplications to speed the soul's passage through the Boneyard, expediting the paperwork and so on.
Then you'd have the graveyards run by clerics of Urgathoa where the point of having the bodies is to have them come back as undead, but you'd still not be using the all the bodies immediately because you only need so many undead and every body is a potential undead and you don't want to just fritter them all away on cheap skeletons and zombies if there are better uses.
Mostly, however, funerary rites are a matter of custom. You can have all sorts of customs and they all make a certain amount of sense if you look at them the right way.
If necromancers are raiding the graveyards, it's like having bank robbers robbing the banks--a problem, certainly, but there's an obvious solution, and that isn't getting rid of the graveyards and banks, it's getting rid of the necromancers and bank robbers. Better guards and protections are a good idea too. Curses on ancient tombs work wonderfully well to discourage potential necromancers.
Grave goods? The belief is that you get to take the spiritual counterparts with you to the afterlife, and I see no reason why Pharasma would object to that so long as the god at your final destination is cool with it too.
I would imagine for much the same reason we had them back in the olden days when monsters, vampires, zombies, etc. were viewed as a real threat. Beliefs, culture, means, etc.
-Rich people get burried in a consecrated graveyard with a defined border that prevents them from being raised. Priests who know where the spells area ends put up stone walls to say "do not burry people beyond this point"
-Poor people see the rich people being burried in a sectioned off, well defined area but can't afford the consecrate. They imitate the form without following the function.
-As to why have a funeral at all, in D&D your soul exists , and usually hangs out near the material plane for a while, so keeping someone's body preserved, at least until they move on a little further away, is the same as looking after someone in a coma.
In a fantasy world there are social, psycholgical and religious issues shaping why they inter their dead.
Kevin also pointed out, certain faiths like Pharasma are tasked with protecting, guarding and consecrating graveyards.
I have had whole adventures set in epic haunted graveyards. Graveyards are very special places that are required for a realistic gaming world. Many events may unfold in a graveyard based upon millions of facts within the realm.
WHY ARE THERE GRAVEYARDS IN A FANTASY WORLD?
Ask a Haitian. They had real life zombies and still continued to bury their dead. Sure, their zombies weren't actually dead but everyone thought they were.
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Your evil necromancers dig up graves for bodies? Mine don't.
The one exception is an adventure I am planning where a necromancer will animate a lot of armed and armored skeletons in a forgotten battlefield.
That's what I was going to say. Necromancers can get bodies from battle fields a lot easier than graveyards. Whether forgotten or fresh, a battlefield is an ideal place to find bodies- and weapons and armor. A retreating force cannot rescue every corpse and not every victorious force treats their dead enemies with honor.
Your evil necromancers dig up graves for bodies?
Well, everybody has to start somewhere.
Your evil necromancers dig up graves for bodies?Well, everybody has to start somewhere.
Mine always start in butcher's shops. No one gets too upset when Bobby the aspiring necromancer animates the bones of a dead pig and uses Ghost sound to make the pig swear vengeance and his murderers to scare the new guy as a prank.
Actually, there is a very sound reason: Hallow.
I think that other than sociological reasons, the most practical reason is that it would be easier to protect your dead if they are all buried within radius of this spell.
I'd go farther and say that in a 3.x-compatible society, graveyards and mausoleums are circular with a clear indicator of their center, and with an equally clear delimitation at 40 feet from that center...
'findel