Grieving

I looked over for this and coulden't find anything, kinda thought someone would of dicussed it by now.

How do the people of Negav generally deal with death?

Given that they don't have extesive space to deal with, I assume there woulden't be much in the way of cemeteries. So I would guess cremation would be the more cost effective and rational method?

Of course this is Felarya, so many of the deceased won't be coming back in body bags. In fact from the human perspective many people would just appear to vanish without a trace. So what would be the reasonable ammount of time that would go by before someone is announced dead? Some people won't believe that their loved ones are dead until they see proof, but many would eventually lose hope of seeing them ever again after some time.

Who would be assigned the job of delivering the news of death to the next of kin? I keep thinking Tomthumbs due to their cute and comforting nature, but then again many might mistake their arrival for good news and become even more upset that their hopes were raised. Though color coding tomthumb worker's clothes can easily fix that.

Yeah I remember asking a question like this way back around the time I first joined, and got no real answer. The only thing that's really dealt with this is the wall outside Negav that people write the names of their loved ones on.

There's probably only one place that would deal with stuff like that, and I doubt they'd have a graveyard. A catacomb like construction may just be built underneath for those who came back dead, or died without getting eaten. It would just go straight down into the ground though, since there's nowhere to bury bodies.

Ilceren wrote:

I'd guess it wouldn't be an official service, you know. I'd say that when an adventurer dies, not even the government would have to know (probably they don't care anyway). If someone of the party survives, then he/she would most likely convey the bad news. The adventurer would probably have said something about the expected time of departure, so if they haven't returned a long while after the expected time, people would just expect the worse.

The only cases I'd think that there would be a service to tell people the bad news would be when the dead person is a guard destined to an outside-city post or when the person dies inside the city. But the last case would probably just be for those that are more well-known or rich, since identification is hard if the person is not very known.

Also, Tomthumbs alone are a very bad idea. They don't leave their zone because they'll most likely be crushed under somebody's feet if they did, so better not talk about them going to a house to convey the news.

Well I only menctioned the Tomtumbs because it's already stated in the wiki that "There is a popular trend among humans to employ tomthumbs to deliver love messages to their sweethearts. For some reason, using a tomthumb messenger is considered particularly romantic."

The whole death message idea was just an inverse of that.

While the government might not care about any services, I would still think they would care about the legal documentation and the time it would take before someone is legally declared dead. You need to look good to other planets and worlds after all. It would be bad for business if someone quite important on another planet asked for death figures of their employees they've been sending over, only for the Negav governent to shrug their shoulders and say "Death figures? What death figures? We haven't been keeping track!"

Well if mere man can't keep track of the inflow of vistors, then something else should. The magiocrats have already created a forcefield around Negav along with many other identification devices (again, sourcing from wiki) so why not identification devices that takes names from people that enter the city (headhacking, everyone knows there own name) and then from that point on their life readings are recorded a computer program that gives simple binary based on input or output of their life signs which it will keep track off wherever they go, They are either alive, or they are dead, 1 or 0.
And if the magiocrafts were feeling particlary cheapskateish on installation day, they could just chuck together a computer simular to one from the 1950s that does nothing but puts data read outs on basic paper print out. (Today that's cheaper than a avarage handgun) If the data ever was to change as someone goes from alive to dead, their binary symbol will change and the machine prints the data out, then the confirmation of death can be sent out to any next of kin.
If anyone leaves the Felarya world plain, well that's noone's concern and the detection devices inform the computer to delete the name to save memory when they confirmed the person has indeed left through the nearest world exit


That would solve the 'wait till declare dead' problem as well

It just doesn't make to sense to me that the Magiocrats would put alot of money and effort into protecting Negav (secuirty is their highest priority) and yet not have any basic system to assure someone is dead or alive, or inform people that someone has died. Not saying they have to care enougth to do a full investigation into the cause or anything (which might be dangerous and would only do if they were promised a good cash return) but at least something should be there because if anything, this would be the number one thing people would get really insecure about enougth to complain and make trouble, alot of trouble

Sure you can track people, cities run a census all the time, and that'd be doubly important in Negav for reasons on multiple levels.

Indeed, and it woulden't have to be perfect. wanted Assassins and other shady people will always find creative ways to get off the grid if they didn't want their status of being living confimed. They could use spells that change any data taken from them, mind blocks, hypnotize themselves into forgetting their real name and believe in an alias instead and so on. So a census system woulden't wreck any established characters involved in underground organizations, or any future stories of that kind. But at least the Negav Government should be seen trying to to keep record, even if it's minimal

I always figured it would be interesting to have people who act as an unofficial grieving support group, their words tailored to suit the family based on species and whatnot. It would take a fair amount of wordplay to make death seem like an ok thing given that, chances are the deceased was in agony as their flesh was melted off their body.

At least they're not still alive?

He/she is now a part of something greater?

It is unfortunate that the afterlife seems not to be terribly pleasant, if other discussions are anything to go on.

Zephyr102 wrote:

He/she is now a part of something greater?

Heh.... I don't think this is the right choice of words......

Grave wrote:

Zephyr102 wrote:

He/she is now a part of something greater?

Heh.... I don't think this is the right choice of words......

It was meant to be ironic. Yeah, that would raise some anger.