Is there any canon on memorial markers for the dead, since no one uses graves anymore?

Is there any canon on memorial markers for the dead, since no one uses graves anymore?

Is there any canon on memorial markers for the dead, since no one uses graves anymore? If not, anyone have suggestions?

13 thoughts on “Is there any canon on memorial markers for the dead, since no one uses graves anymore?”

  3. I can also imagine cobblestone streets where each stone has a name carved into it.

    (And then gangs mess with the family cobbles of other gangs…)

  4. The peak of fashion 150 years ago was memorial tattoos (that may or may not include your name; often a symbol, and your death date.) The idea was, as long as someone’s living flesh wore your memory, you endured in the city.

    Of course this led to abuse. Wealthy nobles traded food and shelter to the poor, but required them to get inked with ancestral symbols. Whispers experimented with binding ghosts to tattoos. There’s a story of a courtesan who required her customers to be marked with a small symbol, to carry her with them as she had carried them in her.

    Vengeance gangs professionally hunted for tattoos of the deceased (or the living) to erase them with branding irons and destroy the memory of a person. This was a terror tactic when used against a living person who made arrangements to “live on” in the ink and blood of dozens of people.

    Tattoo artists became geneologists and historians who could build picture structures and populate them with loved or venerated ancestor images. People sold their skin, and the skin of their children, to those desperate to be remembered. One experimental ink used a kind of moray venom that triggered a plague that ravaged the city, where only those wearing the eel ink were carriers.

    Eventually the Church led an effort to banish “the shadow from our flesh” to live pure and not be shackled to the ephemeral starvation of the withered dead.The issue split the newly-founded Inspectors and the Blue Coats; the Blue Coats hated the paperwork of trying to record the tattoos of those they captured, and the Investigators loved the wealth of information and easier identification of criminals.

    The tradition suffered a three-way split. Some carry it on to this day, and now it has the force of some antiquity behind it. They get tattooed with those they wish to live on, and get their own symbols tattooed on others to carry them when their own flesh gives out. This is a relatively small minority, often below the poverty line or in academia, with a smattering of aristocrats.

    The second split follows the guidance of the church in combination with the city government. They set up a fire lance, a bright torch, that never goes out. All the tattooes burned off in that fire will live in the fire forever. This was a way to get people to burn off a tat and not need to pass it on (like neutering a cat.) This was a painful but guilt-free way to break the cycle of ink.

    Of course, there are those now who must get tattooes and then burn them off in the lance, to make their flesh a bridge between the one they remember and eternity in brilliant flame.

    The third split preserves the art and craft of the time, but uses it for new purposes. They learned how to layer one tattoo over another, and teach them to interact, or to fold, so multiple dimensions can echo and offer various visuals in a tattoo. They use tattoos as magical component portable ritual pieces, preserved in a living body. They etch bones before stretching flesh over them, creating living prosthetics with scrimshaw magics in the center. And, of course, they learned to use ink to capture ghosts in living meat.

    The third split took the most absurd, esoteric, disturbing experiments of the time and developed them into an art form all their own, one that still decorates arms with ink sleeves and jawlines with trailing roses.

    And that is ONE answer to how memorials happen in Doskvol. =)

  7. “I have no interest in the dead professor Danwood, only what we may derive from them.” Dean Hellyers protested as they approached Bellweather Crematorium.

    “Thena, call me sentimental, but sometimes I like to appreciate those who have come before us without…” Yerial Danwood stopped to look warily over his shoulder and made sure no one could overhear them, then continued in hushed tones “…without, having to pit myself in a battle of wills, or lock them away in spirit bottles.”

    The two professors continued around the giant building, which was day and night surrounded by a standard fare of Bluecoats and city officials, occasionally peppered with a bronze masked Spirit Warden. When they reached the courtyard to the south they saw the giant edifices erected in the gardens that lie in the shadow of the great crematorium. Some of them were tastefully rendered statues proudly bearing noble family names: Strangford, Dalmore, Dunvil.

    Most however, were brutalist walls and obelisks, every inch of them inscribed with names. Some cut finely with a hammer and chisel by artisans, others scraped by ever dulling blades. Yerial wandered for sometime before stopping in front a short, squat block of stone that featured only a blank steel placard. “Here is where we remember all those who have not been named elsewhere in this park. Here is where I come and give thanks to a good man named Roric. Though he died a criminal, he did much for this city, and he will not be forgotten by his friends.”

    Thena Hellyers sighed to show her displeasure at being brought all this way for mere sentiment. “Fine, let’s all thank Roric. Now quick, before anyone notices us lingering, look under the plaque. Has our agent left us the coordinates for the Lancer’s next expedition?”

  13. Here’s a play on Andrew Shields tattoo idea.

    Certain Whispers in the city have the ability to process the blood of the recently dead into a tattoo ink using a simple ritual. In the living, the spirit essence is bound too tightly to the body, but in death, the essence can be tugged away with proper knowledge. The resulting product is stable and can be stored in sealed containers for years. Tattoos made with the ink imbue the recipient with a mild essence of the donor’s spirit, which generally has no effect on them. This provides a variety of immortality to the dead. The practice is most commonly followed by the wealthy and the underworld, while the middle-class have little interest.

    In some families, these inks are kept in their ancestral homes, in stylized glass-lined steel canisters sealed with wax. The Spirit Wardens frown on this practice, but if actions are taken to secure this blood before they can arrive and dispose of the body, there is little that can be done.

    Occasionally the recipient may have unexplained visions or dreams, strange feelings of deja vu and so on, that can be associated with the dead donor.

    Some individuals become addicted to these tattoos, and may seek out opportunities to get more and more art. It has been noted by the Physickers of Doskvol that these subjects sometimes succumb to a type of madness, which they have termed Legion Syndrome. In these cases they theorize that the great number of the donor’s varying mild spirit essences begin to overwhelm the subject’s own spirit, and engage in an ongoing battle for possession of the living body.

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