Each nation has its own way of doing it.

 

— mummify the deceased (of course, it is mainly noble persons that will be honored like this);

— lay them onto special narrow funeral towers where sacred birds fly together and peck flesh away from bodies;

— leave them in bone-forests since they beliebe that this way they “fertilize” the soil (“bones to bones, for bones to grow through”);

— drop bodies into lava or set fire to the bodies;

— bodies of criminals, of the accursed, etc. shall be dismembered, and the body parts shall be intentionally buried in different places; for instance, there are traditional “cemeteries for heads” where only heads will be buried.

The way of burial also depends on the location that belongs to a certain clan.

 

— bodies of noble Giltaries will be placed into special “obelisk” trees. When such trees reach a certain age, they become hollow inside. So, a body of the deceased person is placed into these cavities; then the cavities will be sealed with bark, wound around with lianas and puttied over with clay. The spirit of the buried Giltary is considered to grow into the tree trunk and will sprout in the tree. Such impregnated trees are used to produce props/poles that must be present in each house of the Giltaries and at first sight seem to bare no practical importance;

— ordinary Giltaries will be buried either in sacred groves in the ground, or on special funeral platforms that are placed in crowns of trees very high above the ground;

— bodies of Giltarian criminals are either thrown down into special pits laid out with stones, and then they will be filled up with stones too; or (if a criminal died not far away from the border of Giltarian lands) the body is carried out from the forest and left unburied.

 

— these ernalies arrange very magnificent and “beautiful” funerals with many ceremonies, reciting sacred hymns, etc.

— noble Saihens will be buried in sarcophagi, in family vaults (in old times the Saihens used to arrange sepulchers in caves; nowadays too cemeteries are often located outside settlements, in canyons);

— ordinary Saihens are buried in common cemeteries. Sometimes bodies will be burnt (this procedure is also accompanied with magnificent ritual “performances”: for instance, they can “fire” a spell that causes lightning), the ashes will be placed into urns and then buried.

— bodies of criminals and of poor people are thrown into waters downstream the quick mountain rivers outside settlements.

 

— nobles Faldorts are buried in huge family mausoleums in coffins with lids decorated with statuary images of the deceased (both in plain areas and in mountains, depending on local conditions);

— ordinary Faldorts are buried in the ground in cemeteries;

— criminals and poor ernalies are buried outside the populated land; to be more precise – outside the territory sanctified by Rahukar priests.

The most terrible and cruel way of burial in all the nations is considered throwing of the body outside the limits of an island – into the merrel. It is believed that when a body occurs there it will be irrevocably annihilated, and the soul has no chances to return back from the spectral world into the material one.

Many legends, popular beliefs and rituals are related to funerals and the deceased. Some of the beliefs apparently have no ground at all, while others are based on actual, although rare phenomena…