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Old 01-15-2019, 07:03 PM   #241
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Expectation of bodily resurrection at the final judgment, the belief that the body was an integral part of the self rather than just a receptacle the soul inhabits in life, the general disfavor of cremation in several Middle Eastern cultures going back to Ancient Egypt and transmitted west via Judaism and to a lesser extent Zoroastrianism, and the connection of cremation with pagan rites.
Zoroastrians associate fire with Mazda and thus cannot desecrate it by feeding a dead man to it. That is why they feed them to birds which is kind of yucky but when you think of it, more economical in effort once the fire tower is built.
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Old 01-15-2019, 07:12 PM   #242
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Well, it's a bit awkward to be pointedly nationalistic in Canada when you're living in the shadow of Big Daddy Down South. The Americans are so rich and so numerous that they can sometimes beat us in things they barely care about.

For example, Canada is utterly mad about hockey, but when the Canadian national team plays the American national team, it's quite possible the US wins, even though hockey is only the fifth or sixth most popular sport there.
Usually the one that is overshadowed is the one that takes the trouble to be most nationalistic. Irish have more of a chip on their shoulder although to be fair they do have more to be chippy on the shoulder about besides just being overshadowed.

But Canada has plenty of colorful stuff to be nationalistic about. Most people just don't pay attention.

If nothing else you can break a chalkboard over our head and yell,"Carrots!"
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Old 01-16-2019, 02:46 AM   #243
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...once the fire tower is built.
The tower of silence, I think.
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Old 01-16-2019, 12:59 PM   #244
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The tower of silence, I think.
Yes, my bad. I could have looked that up and should have known they would not have called it a fire tower if they considered cremation an insult to Mazda.
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Old 01-16-2019, 02:00 PM   #245
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Zoroastrians associate fire with Mazda and thus cannot desecrate it by feeding a dead man to it.
Just to be clear, by "to a lesser extent" I was referring to its significance as a source of influence on Christian Europe, not the level of negativity each of those two religions held toward cremation.
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Old 01-25-2019, 06:54 AM   #246
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European cultures that believe in vampires invented all sorts of methods to prevent reanimation... save the obvious cremation. So it's not that unrealistic.
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Expectation of bodily resurrection at the final judgment, the belief that the body was an integral part of the self rather than just a receptacle the soul inhabits in life, the general disfavor of cremation in several Middle Eastern cultures going back to Ancient Egypt and transmitted west via Judaism and to a lesser extent Zoroastrianism, and the connection of cremation with pagan rites.
There is also the small matter of the Romans, who were very much a cremating culture, and the Greeks who weren't adverse to it. Come to think of it, a lot of the Celts and Nordic cultures were also cremators - I suspect a lot of the pressure against cremation in medieval Europe was specifically to do with marginalising pagans rather than any specific theological objections in scripture.

Another interesting point to note for those of us that like RPG plot material is that the Romans - almost universally a cremating culture - followed on directly in many areas from Etruscans who where great buriers with extensive use of elaborate tombs and grave goods. For fantasy purposes, you might wonder what it was about the preceding culture that made the one that came after so eager to burn their dead to ashes...

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I remember one docu that had a camera crew in Eastern Europe find a body with a stake through it's heart because there were stories that it walked the night. The middle ages haven't ended in some places. In retrospect though I wonder if it wasn't a prank the villagers were playing on the gullible Hollywooders.
There are certainly weird burials that turn up from time to time - burying a corpse with a brick in its mouth was also quite common and archaeologists do find staked burials from time to time in all sorts of places.
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Old 01-25-2019, 07:04 AM   #247
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Another interesting point to note for those of us that like RPG plot material is that the Romans - almost universally a cremating culture - followed on directly in many areas from Etruscans who where great buriers with extensive use of elaborate tombs and grave goods. For fantasy purposes, you might wonder what it was about the preceding culture that made the one that came after so eager to burn their dead to ashes...
Yeah, for some reason, Etruscans get linked to vampires a lot.

Still haven't done any real research into the whys and wherefores of that.
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Old 01-25-2019, 08:37 AM   #248
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Yeah, for some reason, Etruscans get linked to vampires a lot.

Still haven't done any real research into the whys and wherefores of that.
As to the Romans, an interesting sub-note is that despite the Roman preference for cremation, the Corneli always buried their dead. With the exception of Sulla ... who presumably didn't want to end up like Marius.

What the deviation in favour of burials said about the Corneli may be anything or nothing.

Also, the I think the Pythagoreans preferred burial.
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Old 03-06-2019, 07:20 AM   #249
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A survivalist group that, after the collapse for which they've been preparing for, try to bring back order.

Now what brand of order varies, it could be a theocracy from a pre-collapse religion, martial law, or they could even be the good guys of the settings, diverse people from before the war who just happened to have prepared and try to bring back a flawed, but functional pre-collapse form of order because they want their luxuries back, and it could only happen if civilization came back. Whatever the case may be, they're proactive in bringing back their form of order out of ideolgical motivation rather than the self-obsessed nihilists who just fortify their home base and kill everyone on sight that survivalists are often portrayed as.

Most survivalists are normal people who prepare for the worst, and like most normal people, they have ideologies that guide their actions, and it's human nature to try to push our ideologies on others, peacefully through debate or violently through threats and violence. Why would survivalists be any different?
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Old 03-06-2019, 07:58 AM   #250
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A major stereotype of post apoc settings is that "the real enemy is man". Nearly everyone is a self destructive bundle of selfish idiocy.
How about one where most people are normal, scared and of varying degrees of competence, but otherwise normal?
I think most players would get a bit paranoid searching for the twit hiding their zombie bite, spy from Umbrella corp., secret monster, etc.
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