The Mother's Embrace
"The earth used to be a sacred place. It would sustain us and house us. It would give us a place to rest our weary bodies at the end, when life is done. But not anymore.
Now there is no rest. Now the very earth is our nemesis, for it hides labyrinthine tunnels and a myriad of graves. And with it, a thousand new ways to die."
Long before the Unraveling, the Mother's Embrace was a boon granted to Ur by the Gravemother. As a Goddess of Repose and Community, the Mother of Graves had a clergy obsessed with the eradication of the Undead and the establishment of gargantuan community sepulchers.
These divine sepulchers would serve many functions to the community for which they were bonded. Many rituals for the living were held at the mouth of these great cave systems and tombs. In the Greater Temples of the Gravemother the space between the spirtual and physical was said to be so thin that on her holiest of days the spirits of the dead could hold communion with the living, using bodies made of sacred clay
With the shattering of the Dodecatheon, and the partial victory of the Titans the Gravemother was counted among the dead. With her death, her once great Boon was reversed into a terrible curse. This curse originally formed the first wild undead, the common Gravebound, but as time and tragedy unfolded the curse twisted into a new phylogeny of curses.
Now there is no rest. Now the very earth is our nemesis, for it hides labyrinthine tunnels and a myriad of graves. And with it, a thousand new ways to die."
Long before the Unraveling, the Mother's Embrace was a boon granted to Ur by the Gravemother. As a Goddess of Repose and Community, the Mother of Graves had a clergy obsessed with the eradication of the Undead and the establishment of gargantuan community sepulchers.
These divine sepulchers would serve many functions to the community for which they were bonded. Many rituals for the living were held at the mouth of these great cave systems and tombs. In the Greater Temples of the Gravemother the space between the spirtual and physical was said to be so thin that on her holiest of days the spirits of the dead could hold communion with the living, using bodies made of sacred clay
With the shattering of the Dodecatheon, and the partial victory of the Titans the Gravemother was counted among the dead. With her death, her once great Boon was reversed into a terrible curse. This curse originally formed the first wild undead, the common Gravebound, but as time and tragedy unfolded the curse twisted into a new phylogeny of curses.
Manifestation
Previously, under the watchful gaze of the Gravemother, the dead laid to rest in her churches would never run the risk of becoming undead. No matter how powerful the magic or curses bared at the dead resting there, they simply could not be roused to wake. Annointed with an oil derived from sacred earth minerals, these bodies would take centuries to decay.
Now that the boon has been reversed with the defeat of the Gravemother, any interred bodies, in any location around Ur, run the risk of rising as an undead creature. The process itself takes anywhere between a couple days to a couple weeks with almost no consistency but almost always do the undead begin to hunger for death and the wanton destruction of the living.
It is because of this, that no body in Ur is deliberately placed against the ground for fear of the earth swallowing it's humanity. Bodies are stored by hanging or elevating them from the floor by platforms. Instead of ritualistic burial, bodies of fallen humanoids are instead incinerated should their days of final rest come.
Now that the boon has been reversed with the defeat of the Gravemother, any interred bodies, in any location around Ur, run the risk of rising as an undead creature. The process itself takes anywhere between a couple days to a couple weeks with almost no consistency but almost always do the undead begin to hunger for death and the wanton destruction of the living.
It is because of this, that no body in Ur is deliberately placed against the ground for fear of the earth swallowing it's humanity. Bodies are stored by hanging or elevating them from the floor by platforms. Instead of ritualistic burial, bodies of fallen humanoids are instead incinerated should their days of final rest come.
Type
Metaphysical, Divine
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