Death (move)

The move Death was introduced on 30 August 2020 19:17 UTC and recorded to the Canon on 26 September 2020 01:02 UTC.

Text

Death was recorded to the Canon with the following text:

Move 10: Death

Different species and societies believe a lot of things about what happens when the sentient creatures of this world die, but this is the real deal. The truth of this matter is knowable by those who command the power of magic, and most societies have gleaned at least some of it, and so you will see some commonalities around funerary customs because of it.

Living beings have souls. Beings we would recognise as intelligent *definitely* have souls, and lot of beings we might not see as intelligent have souls, too, actually, and this move doesn't draw a crisp line, it only says the line is out there and it's pretty inclusive.

Terminology for this move will be English, with culture-specific terms as something for later moves. ""Soul"" refers to that spiritual essence of a being that persists after death. It is capable of thinking, feeling, and wanting things independent of a living body, and it has some limited ability to communicate and impact the world independent of a living body, especially when interacting with certain magical beings or if it had magical power itself in life.

I am concerned about what happens to the souls of the dead immediately after they die. They become what I will call a ghost. The ghost remains in this world. Remaining in this world causes it pain. It longs at a deep level to leave. It can only leave through special places which it can perceive like glowing cracks in the world. I'll call them ""rifts."" The nature of the rift and what if anything lies beyond it is outside the scope of this move. The ghost doesn't know, it just knows it longs to pass through. It sees the rift as somehow beautiful and holy, and living beings that can perceive rifts also feel a sense of sanctity around them. Many have deduced something of their relationship to the dead.

The dead may long to pass over, and they feel pain by remaining in the world, but if they have powerful attachments to the world for some reason that they struggle to let go of, they can linger for quite a while. Nothing is forcing them to leave. Therefore, this world is haunted, especially by the recently dead.

The rifts have fixed locations which form places that even the unsensed can feel as sacred or powerful somehow. It is common for religions to place their holy places there. It is also not uncommon for this to become a form of religious extortion, because a religion can control all the places in the area where the dead can cross over and control the access of the dead to those places. A temple can be enchanted to prevent a ghost from entering without some part of their corpse, and a temple funeral can be key to peacefully passing over - it can also imprison a ghost in the temple until it passes over.

Knowledge and control of the rifts let a society both serve and manage the dead, and the living. A person and their family could be punished by killing them and not permitting the rituals that give their ghost access to the sacred places of their people to cross over. The ghost could try leaving the territory controlled by the religion to find a free rift, but they probably believed in life that they had to cross over in a temple to be saved. If the society is enlightened enough to leave some rifts for animal souls to cross over, then the criminals could use them, too, but they might be too attached to their living beliefs to accept that humiliation...

Trivia

• Death was the twelfth move in the Greater Game. It was numbered "Move 10" as it was introduced after "Move 9" (actually the tenth move) and accidentally skipped over "Move 9 ¾" (actually the eleventh move).
• This move was introduced by Trafalgar and managed by Sabiki during Round 2.
• The author stated that this move is "not concerned with what cultures believe about death or do about death."

• The game manager then stated that "nothing goes" "after the first sentence of the 6th paragraph". Regardless, the move was approved without modification, with the simple note that it "could be worded better".
• The game manager also speculated the following about how cultures could treat death: "Maybe an empire of some kind that controls a visible chunk of the population, meanwhile other cultures might have very different ways of treating those rifts, or even perceiving them at all. All we know is that they knida know that the places around the rifts are special, but different cultures can absolutely give different interpretations of that feeling. Some may even call it unnerving, giving the opposite result and calling those places unholy."

• The following question was asked but left unanswered by this move: "do the rifts act as a portal to yet another “world” (the world of the dead)?"
• AndyGr noted that this move is built on a premise "that religions tend to act in their own interests rather than for their adherents' good." However, RavShimon dismissed a possibility "where religions are entirely benign" as "fiction beyond the level of believability".