Religion, Beer, and Zombies

subtitled : Wheat, Wombs, & The Walking Dead

being a small discussion on Samurian spirits, Samurian spirits, and Samurian spirituality.

In the gnoll Vitus's homeland, Samuria, one of the most important foodstuffs is (or, rather, was ) beer *. Beer was a hugely popular beverage - for one thing it was generally safer to drink than the water. The barley was left to dry, baked into loaves of bread, and the baked barley loaves broken into pieces and mixed with more dried grain in a large jug of boiled water - then left to ferment. Varieties included dark beer, pale beer, red beer, three fold beer, beer with a head, without a head, and beer with too many heads (either a reference to the Hydra of legend, or to the visual side effects of overdrinking the stuff). **

Naturally, all of this was the sole preserve of the female gender. Beer, like bread, is alive, and needs to be nurtured as it swells with life. To a Samurian (whether human, gnoll, or otherwise), the idea of a male barkeep, brewer, or baker is as idiotic a concept as a man giving birth (altho some really odd things lurched out of the Aurastorms on occasion, and there were always rumours of the Girdle of Gender Reassignment).

Equally logically, beer was sacred. As a gift from the gods, it was a measure of the fertility of the fields, the industry of the people, and an all-important guard against the threat of famine and ill-health. Amongst the many duties of the priesthood included the protection of the consumer against being short-measured, and it was a rare medicine indeed that didn't include a generous helping of beer (standards of pharmacy being what they were, even if the medicine didn't work at least the patient died happy).

Which brings us onto the topics of death and dying (quite possibly of liver failure)

Whilst details varied across the continent, a common feature of most Samurian funeral practises required the body to be as complete as possible, and burial with the tools of his or her trade. Thus Vitus, a gnoll who would quite happily turn Earth inside out if it meant he could gestate a new Aura in the remains, would stare at you aghast if you suggested mutilating a corpse, grave-robbing, or failing to bury a soldier with his sword, or a trader without trade goods.

After death, the souls of the deceased would be judged by the god Nergal, before being despatched to whatever variation on the Afterlife was indicated.

Unless, of course, the deceased was guilty of some unspeakable crime, such as betrayal of clan, murder of host or guest, or short-measuring a customer on beer. In which case Nergal may well grant the priests leave to inflict the most dire of punishments on the criminal in question - undeath. Their soul suspended forever between this world and the next, agonisingly aware, as their body remained a rotting automaton on the world behind them. The authorities of the smaller city of Mordis made quite a profit from this - taking condemned criminals from across Samuria, piling them into the silver mines, working them to death, and then working them some more. Zombies make great mine workers - they don't need food, they don't need air, they don't need light - the vast bulk of precious metal in circulation came out of the Zombie Mines of Mordis.

Samurian legends did not distinguish between many forms of the undead - after all a skeleton equals a zombie plus time. The free-willed dead were, as far as most people knew, purely the stuff of legend (The first high-level undead Vitus met was the vampire lord Baron Strahd von Zarovich, and promptly wished he hadn't).

At least, they were legendary up to the point a certain unnamed Dark Prince, Lord of Hell, successfully carried out the theological equivalent of a drive-by shooting on Nergal, and took over control of the Samurian Afterlife.

Suddenly, on top of all their other problems (and even after the Demon in question was defeated and cast out ) the people of Samuria had packs of feral zombies and skeletal soldiers to deal with. Fortunately, practicality and gnollish ingenuity came to their aid. Quite quickly it became almost de riguer to dismember dead comrades - after all, what's a little corpse abuse between friends, if it prevented said friends come back and attempting to devour your entrails? Also, it prompted the invention of the following.

The Undead-Hunter's Portable Beer Thrower. ( here www.deviantart.com/deviation/6… )

As wielded in this picture by professional ruin-explorer Reshewan the Gnoll***, underslung from a slug-silver arquebus and dark-lantern arrangement. The philosophers of Samuria have mused at length on the observation that silver, quite possibly mined by undead, is also highly effective at destroying their wild kin.

The invention followed quite logically from the use of beer as a sacrament on Samuria. Where other worlds might get by with Holy Water, or Sacramental Wine, the people of Aura had to use Beer. Depending of how sacred the beer was, the beer-thrower's effect on the lurching dead could be highly effective. A fresh first batch of Pharoah's Pale Ale, blessed and stamped by one of the higher priests, could, when sprayed on a zombie horde, be best likened to napalm and magnesium.

You may also note the goggles - as well as protecting the user from sudden sand-storms, proved invaluable at preventing eye infections caused by fine particulate Debris of Zombie. ****


* Nothing at all like Earth, then - despite such articles as this one detailing the religious history of beer on this planet - www.fostersgroup.com/enjoy/bee…

** Whilst wine WAS known to the people of Samuria, it was only ever an import from the the mysterious land of Vind, on the far side of the Pharos Sea, and a monopoly fiercely guarded by the Ratkin traders. Attempts had been made to produce the stuff locally, but the vineyards had a strange habit of breaking out in spontaneous combustion, by an odd co-incidence on the same day Ratkin traders arrived for nearby markets.

*** character copyright myrystyr

**** and, incidentally, gives Reshewan an entirely accidental resemblance to the well-known hyena character Preyfar. Sorry about that, wherever you are