Dark Elf Burial Rites?

[Pregocleric]

Hey guys, sketching out my army fluff and have encountered a bit of a problem. I'm thinking of having my Dreadlord or Sorcerous given an unnaturally long life (presumably through dark magic) and that seems fine enough. But when trying to give this a bit of character I've hit a bit of a bump in the road. I'd love to have them parade their coffin through the streets of their city as a kind of "Screw you I'm still alive!" to their downtrodden subjects and greedy heirs. Problem is do Druchii have coffins? Do they even bother with funeral ceremonies at all, or is Naggaroth simply too rife with death for anyone to notice? Is this too Vampire Countsish to work with Delves? Am I unawaredly stealing someone else's idea?

[Cat-the-odd]

Hi,

I've no real source other my imagination, so I'd put it to that theme:

Lowclass dead guys don't bother anyone. Blood on the streets, dead bodies in the darker back-alleys should be imaginable.
Better quarters get cleaned, though, so anonymous mass graves or at least a pile fed to the coldones.
Now we get to the interesting part: Higher-class people.
The more money, the more funeral rites will be held. Coffins, cryptas, family graves, shrines of really great ancestors, all that will be there. Inside the private houses/dungeons of each family clan, of course.

So your idea of the parade is really nice and there are Druchii prolonging their lifes through whatever pact. Even some sort of necromancy abilities should be present, but that's probably just too dirty work. I recall the 3 Druchii schooling Nagash the first dark sorcery, especially with the life energy of some sacrifice victim.

So - write ahead!

CAT

[Phierlihy]

This is the weirdest post here I've ever seen.

And to answer your question...sure. If you want them to. It's just a story. It's meaningless fluffy goodness that doesn't count for anything. If you want them to have coffins that they drag through the streets, they do. Now if you want them to have a better armour save on the battle field, that's a whole different topic...

[Tethlis]

This is the weirdest post here I've ever seen.

And to answer your question...sure. If you want them to. It's just a story. It's meaningless fluffy goodness that doesn't count for anything. If you want them to have coffins that they drag through the streets, they do. Now if you want them to have a better armour save on the battle field, that's a whole different topic...

Well, I don't know about all that. The lore exists, and while there's obviously the freedom to explore it and follow your own imagination, the fun of this game for many people is the rich background that accompanies each race. I imagine there is some published material on how Dark Elves handle death ceremonies/funerary rites. I imagine that some member who is well versed in the Black Library novels, or has a background in WH roleplaying, can elaborate a bit. Both of those sources are great for finding out more information about the day-to-day lives of different races in the Warhammer universe.

One thing I'm curious about is where Dark Elves stand on filial piety and ancestral reverence. It's easy to imagine a great house of Naggaroth sporting extensive crypts, mausoleums and similar structures for housing their dead. After all, the Dark Elves are Elves, and therefore are a proud race with regard for their culture and ancestral memory. On the flip side, Dark Elves frequently assassinate parents, siblings, and other relatives, or adopt promising proteges, and have plenty of "illegitimate" children, which easily confuses the issue about how much respect they pay to their departed forebears. I could easily see a Noble stepping up to assume the role of matriarch/patriarch of his house, and deciding to skip the funeral of his predecessor just to "save on the expense".

Still, Dark Elves are given to ceremony, and displays of wealth seem like they would be common, and the individual power and social status of different noble houses is an important concept, so I imagine they devote significant resources to honoring their dead. Even someone assassinated for political motives or for revenge is probably paid a due amount of ceremony, depending on the nature of their departure. Someone assassinated for advancement would probably still receive some mark of recognition, while a traitor, coward or failure of Druchii society would probably be mutilated and/or publicly displayed and/or fed to slaves/creatures and/or buried in an anonymous grave.

[Malus99]

"Those, they are tombs, the temple has always interred the faithful despite the Witch King's edict of cremation." from the Malus Darkblade Novel 'Warpsword' and it is said in one of the other novels that Druchii had been cremated in order with the dictates of the temple of khaine for generations. I think the fluff in the novels says that internment was the custom in Nagarythe and was for a short time in Naggaroth, but after Malekith gave power to the temple of Khaine and made it the state religion over the more common worship of Slaanesh in those days the Temple banned burials and enforced cremation, which seems somewhat contradictory as one novel says the temple enforced cremation and the other says Malekith enforced cremation and the temple secretly flouted this, but it does make sense that after Malekith brought the temple to power he declared cremation to be the norm (whether the temple suggested this or merely supported this I do not know) and the temple secretly carried on with its own burial rites for whatever reason whilst still enforcing the edict of cremation to everyone else.

One thing I'm curious about is where Dark Elves stand on filial piety and ancestral reverence. It's easy to imagine a great house of Naggaroth sporting extensive crypts, mausoleums and similar structures for housing their dead. After all, the Dark Elves are Elves, and therefore are a proud race with regard for their culture and ancestral memory

In 'Reaper of Souls' Malus visits the 'houses of the dead' where the ancient dead of lost Nagarythe and those who died in Naggaroth before the conversion to Cremation were interred, each family had its own crypt which was as large, expensive and opulent as the family could afford and designed in whatever style they chose, possibly built simply to ape the glory of what they had lost in Nagarythe, and that families, both powerful ones and those merely a shadow of their former glory, would send a member of the family to honour the dead and leave offerings at the crypts to this day. So whilst the ancient dead were interred and respects are still paid by some families to the ancient dead, nowadays Druchii are cremated.

Whether that is actually Canon or just Dan Abnett and Mike Lee's take on it I don't know but I think it is the best source we have on the topic.

[Drainial]

This is the weirdest post here I've ever seen.

And to answer your question...sure. If you want them to. It's just a story. It's meaningless fluffy goodness that doesn't count for anything. If you want them to have coffins that they drag through the streets, they do. Now if you want them to have a better armour save on the battle field, that's a whole different topic...

Perhaps this thread would be better off in Druchii history but in the future might I suggest that if you come accross a topic that you clearly have no interest in answering you simply ignore it rather than mocking the poster. We call this strange custom civility.

In that spirit I will get back on topic myself. Malus99 has cited all the sources I can think of, the Darkblade novels are not considered to be cannon but so far as I am concerned where there is no other source we might as well use them to flesh out our understanding of the Warhammer world. If we accept that cremation is the norm your lady/lord could have an empty bier paraded through the streets and then burnt on a pyre, or if you wished to be a little more horrific the bier could be carried to the pyre with a sacrifice bound to it, perhaps taking the life of a slave every year so that their immortality is preserved.