League for Proper Disposal of the Dead

[Lincoln Hills]

All the recent gab about necromancy, graveyards and negative energy puts me in mind of a neat idea that I feel other GMs might want to drop into their campaigns.

In my campaign, it was called 'The Gray Order.' Wherever plague, or war, or famine or other mass-deaths occurred hooded gray figures would begin to appear. They'd walk through the charnel fields digging mass graves, delivering those merely near death to temples for healing, and performing memorials. The Gray Order were not a religion - most were clerics, but they came from most alignments. Their whole raison d'etre was to prevent the rise of undead - and dedicating your time to that purpose was the only real requirement for entry. Under whatever name, this Keep Them Dead Brotherhood can provide all sorts of neat campaign hooks. They can be a red herring when the PCs first encounter them - who are these ghouls? are they behind the famine/flood/etc.? - and they can later provide other adventure seeds. Middlemen for messages from beyond. Finders of heirlooms/treasure maps/a corpse bearing the Royal Birthmark. Not to mention the likelihood that local necromancers will start trying to pick them off, requiring the hiring of professionals in the art of violence.

[Dream Daemon]

Phenomenal idea. Good of you to share.

[Lathiira]

Now that you've had this idea, time to develop it. How do they know where to go? Do they all have some way to tell the dead from the dying (e.g. deathwatch)? Do they know special rituals (e.g. gentle repose, rest eternal)? This begs for more work :)

[Fraust]

I like the idea described above, though I'm not really that for the mysterious organization that always seem to appear when needed bit. For me they would need to be much more human, and make the occasional mistake. A good plot to try out would be what happens when someone poses as them to acquire what has now become a very hard to acquire resource. Or better yet, when a few members of this group decide to turn traitor for whatever reason, and begin using their knowledge of necromancy and superior access to corpses to build up an army of undead.

[nosig]

or a seldom talked about rogue element in the organization that wants to ensure that people STAY DEAD.

Ever had a raise dead? you're on their hit list.

plan to be raise dead? how come these guys keep loosing your body? what do you mean we can't find it! we need it before the week is up to raise him!

he-he! lots of story line here...

[yellowdingo]

Mass Graves are more likely than funeral Pyres. Firewood is expensive.

[Lincoln Hills]

Lathiira: I agree that the idea needs specifics. I know the specifics I gave it for my campaign, but this is the sort of thing every GM would want to fine-tune for his/her own purposes. Yes?

Fraust: Maybe I made them sound more cryptic than they are. In my campaign it was a loose confederation, sometimes of beings that would ordinarily have been mortal enemies. A more organized, supernatural version is just as valid. Maybe they're angels. Maybe they're Denizens of Leng. Whatever's best for your game.

Fraust & nosig: Excellent ideas to attach. You see why I thought it was worth sharing.

[Kegluneq]

Don't the various faiths and temples of most settings already do this? Proper disposal of the dead is always about ensuring they are not readily accessible to the unscrupulous ... as well as ensuring they don't pose a threat to the living on their own.

[Lincoln Hills]

Kegluneq wrote:

Don't the various faiths and temples of most settings already do this? Proper disposal of the dead is always about ensuring they are not readily accessible to the unscrupulous ... as well as ensuring they don't pose a threat to the living on their own.

I'm sure the temples attend to the corpses of their congregations - that's part of what you pay tithes for. I invented the Order to account for mass-death situations. You know, the kind that PCs tend either to show up to investigate, or to cause themselves. Situations in which either the identities of the dead are uncertain, or the sheer number overwhelms the local temples. Between you and me, one of the inspirations for the Order was the botched cleanup after Hurricane Katrina.

[EWHM]

Most worlds honestly don't have enough societies like this---in our world there are hordes of private organizations like this, many of them transnational. Humans seem to manufacture them at a pretty good clip, no reason why elves, dwarves, et al can't as well.

A good rule of thumb is that such groups usually maintain their original focus for about a lifetime after the death of their founder. Rarely do they maintain the founder's purposes longer than that.

[Lincoln Hills]

Makes you wonder what the Pathfinders (the in-game org) started out as. Probably a drunken bragging contest. ;)