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[sadandsingle]

I suppose this is a question that has been asked before, but not in my (admittedly brief) time here. I apologise if it's a subject that comes up entirely too often, but it's one that I've been curious about for quite some time now. It's also a delicate topic, I know, so feel free to reply privately if you feel uncomfortable talking about it. Or don't reply at all. That's fine, too.

[It's certainly a difficult subject for her to talk about at times. That's why this is in text, rather than voice or video. But getting to the point...]

Who among the Travellers is dead back home? Not in some nebulous future 'everyone dies eventually' sort of way, but something rather more immediate, in that you died just before coming here. What do you expect will happen when you leave Asgard? Do deceased Travellers simply return to being deceased? Is there some sort of afterlife in your world?

[She remembers all too well Owen and Suzie mentioning the darkness that's all that exists after death. It's something that's kept her up at night more than a few times.]

I don't ask this for the sake of any sort of theological debate, mind, but out of curiosity. I don't personally subscribe to any particular system of belief, but I respect those held by others. I just want to know what you think will happen.

Comments

[mortuimagistri]

Though I am not dead myself, I find myself wondering what this place does to the disruption of the lives of the dead with some frequency. If I may ask, what are your theories? I find mine are rather stale; what I have been taught of necromantic thaumaturgy made little room for Nordic theology.

[sadandsingle]

Is necromancy common in your world, then? We don't really have such things where I'm from, but the organisation I worked for did discover an artefact that would raise the dead briefly.

[Or not-so-briefly, in a couple of occasions.]

The first-hand accounts I've heard all involve, well, darkness, and not much else. But those I spoke to were terrified by the prospect of returning to it, so it's not quite as simple as it sounds - or it could just be an extreme existential crisis.

[mortuimagistri]

I would hesitate to call it common, but it is theoretically possible. The artifact that you found, could it only raise the dead briefly, or did you only locate it briefly?

An extreme existential crisis of the formerly deceased?

[sadandsingle]

So you've learnt about it, but never practised it? And- well, initially we thought it could only raise the dead for a maximum of five minutes, but someone managed to manipulate it to bond with a living person and drain them of their energy, presumably to make the effect permanent. They didn't succeed.

I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I can't think of any other way to describe it.

[mortuimagistri]

I've come across a few books on the subject in my work. None of it says anything about using human life as an energy source, though I suppose I should be less than surprised. Death thirsts ever for life, as the saying goes.

I have often thought that is the final cruelty of death, that it is so rarely dignified, especially when it is disturbed in some way. Regardless, I do not find the idea surprising.