Gravediggers
Gravediggers return the vessels of the dead to the realm from which they passed, so that they may be reborn. A burial is not merely disposal or farewell. What is lowered into the earth awaits another life.
Keepers of Hidden Knowledge
Gravediggers hold an important, scholar-like place in the realm. Their burial work gives them access to hidden knowledge through what they can observe of death, vessels, souls, and the influence of the moon-gods.
Their knowledge is not omniscience. Like other souls, they know only what they can perceive and understand. Their status as a formal order, an inherited calling, or a loosely connected profession is not yet decided.
The Answering Souls
Under some lunar conditions, some souls become conscious enough to answer.
This phenomenon is part of the Gravediggers’ study of the moons. Which souls answer, how they are addressed, what they remember, and whether their answers can be trusted remain open questions. Ordinary sleeping souls and the dead are not assumed to be the same condition; the boundary involved in these encounters still needs definition.
Names of the Moons
The nine moon-gods take successive turns guarding Mother. Gravediggers derive each moon’s mortal name from an observed consequence of that god’s nature in their work, rather than from arbitrary ominous imagery.
The observation must come before the name. Each future name should have a concrete reason a Gravedigger would use it: something witnessed, learned, or answered beneath that god’s light.
No individual moon or god has been named. The nine development slots are reserved in Calendar > Moon Register.
Burial and Rebirth
What Gravediggers bury are vessels awaiting another life, given back to the realm from which they passed so that they may be reborn.
It is not yet established whether rebirth restores the same vessel, creates another, preserves memory, or follows a predictable schedule. The effects of a destroyed moon-god on burial and rebirth also remain undecided.
Continuous nourishment of gods by souls is established in Service. Burial as a distinct act that directly feeds Mother is only an unanswered possibility, not established lore.
Limits of Their Knowledge
Whether any Gravedigger suspects or knows Mother’s hidden nature has not been decided. Their access to hidden knowledge does not automatically grant access to every author-level truth.
Related
- Calendar
- Soul
- Mother
- The Living Heavens
- Wonderer — uniquely forged without a past life, unlike the realm’s other souls