Litany on the Stone

There are certain ways of bringing the dead back to life or simply causing them to walk the world again, with or without a body. Most of these are disrespectful, disruptive of natural flows and cycles, even evil. There are also events or circumstances that will cause the dead to stay in this world of their own accord, and sometimes to cause trouble.

This ritual is an old and simple one, commonly known, that prevents the dead from rising or being raised. It is most often performed by a community. It requires its practitioners to stand and recite (in any language) in the presence of a stone, and as much of the body as they will dispose of, for the better part of an hour. The stone is then used in the body’s disposal. Different cultures will arrange the stone and corpse in different ways: some bury them together, others bury the body below the stone, placing a large stone or many above the grave; others inter the body in a tomb of which the stone is a part, or even place the stone within the body. After a particularly traumatic death, the spirit may already have departed the body. In this case the ritual merely prevents the reanimation of the body.

The ritual must be led by at least one person who knows it, making a base check with base difficulty of d3, increased by one step for each doubling in the number of participants. During the ritual each participant automatically takes one point of fatigue, although those familiar with the ritual can freely take any amount of fatigue or strain they wish. The stone will guard the body for one year for each point of fatigue or strain’s worth of energy it absorbed. Removing the stone will remove all remaining years of protection, although the body will still be immune to meddling until the next anniversary of its death.