Easterling Human Sacrifices

Once captured, the prisoners would be marched to the top of the main temple pyramid while drugged. A group of priests would hold down the captive and saw out their heart. The heart was burned and the body kicked down the stairs. The best parts of the body were reserved for the one who captured the prisoner for eating at a family banquet. The rest was stewed and fed to the masses. The masses, by the way, would watch these sacrifices occur as sometimes as many as several hundred were killed in a single day.   Other rituals involved tethering a sacrifice to the center of a circle and giving the poor person blunt weapons. A group of warriors then would “fight” the prisoner. After his inevitable defeat, the prisoner was cooked and eaten. His blood was used by the person who captured him to decorate idols of the gods. The skin was worn for 20 days. Children were sacrificed after being made to cry and having their tears collected. Women were beheaded while they danced. A warrior then wore their skin for a year. Others were drugged, thrown into a fire, then pulled out before death so their heart could be removed while still beating.

In flower wars, enemy troops were pulled out of their lines, bound and carried back for sacrifice.   The Aztec Human Sacrifices were normally used on prisoners of war, but could easily be turned to all others the state wants to get rid of. Criminals and rebel slaves would make fine sacrifices as well. The scale, like the gladiator games, was massive. An estimated 1.2 million were killed. In one “festival”, between 14,000 to 20,000 were killed non stop for 4 days. The result was a rack outside the capital that held 136,000 skulls on display.

Melee combat not only helped demonstrate personal courage and skill, but also made live capture easier. The more prisoners returned for sacrifice means higher social standing for the soldier.

I would imagine that in the Easterling context, the major slaughters would occur just before Easterlings want to go to war. The idea is that they would want to gain divine favor for the coming battles. This would have the benefit of also eliminating potential trouble makers before the soldiers left the home front exposed. I suspect that the major bloodlettings in these cases would involve the temple ritual as this lends itself more to the industrial scale "appropriate" for such occasions.   In more traditional executions of criminals and rebels, I suspect the bonfire approach would be preferred. Whenever there is a rebellion or enough convicts are available, I would imagine that a festival would be held. Possibly this would be done every month with whoever has been convicted since the last festival. ] The children of criminals and slaves killed in the above methods probably would be killed too. Women would be sacrificed in the dancing ritual. Children would be victims of the rituals involving the forced tears.   The ritualized fake combat sacrifices make sense after a flower war or defeated slave revolt. In this way, further humiliation of the defeated parties can occur in a way that also cements the glory of the victor. Ideally, this would then make the victim groups too scared to resist in the future.