Bard - College of Elegy

The few adventurers brave enough to venture into the depth of Yharn seldomly have time and leisure to sit down by the fire and listen to the songs of life, constantly overwhelmed by hostile wildlife at day and the swarming parade at night. Those who do find respite, however, are quickly entranced by the songs that sing out at dusk and dawn, hauntingly beautiful elegies for the deseased.

The College, or perhaps tradition of Elegy is a form of vernacular tradition practiced by Yharnic tribal shamans, enacting burial rites for the recently deseased, as the esteemed caste of “Songpriests”. The dense jungles of Yharn are unforgiving and survival calls for utilizing any and all resources that one can gather - including corpses, familiar and strange alike, recycled to serve a purpose with no waste. While Xbeltz’aloc forbids the manipulation of Souls to do one’s bidding, the Body that is left behind after the Soul’s passing is granted to his followers - it is thus the divine duty of songpriests to enact the final rites for the fallen, to cleanse their corpse of what remains of their Soul, so that the Body, purified, can be put to use one last time. Those perching comfortably in the spires and the studies might dismiss these practices as cruel and abhorrent, but morality is plaything of the priviledged; those fighting for their lives have no moment to care for it.

Through these vernacular traditions, songs and elegies, the songpriests serve another purpose - to chronicle and pass down stories and teaching of those who have passed, threading the history of a tribe together with their voice. Even though a fallen warrior’s Soul quickly returns to the leyline, and their Body soon reduced in form after the rites, a proof of their existence lives on through these elegies for generations to come.