Rime Burial Customs
Aside from Cohort members, almost everyone who dies in Rime is buried outside it. Common people are carried out by specially appointed death carters.
To prevent anyone from faking death to escape the wards, gate guards drive a blade through their bodies before allowing them to pass. The corpses are then cremated, as burial is nearly impossible during the frozen months and it can also help avoid the spread of diseases.
To avoid the ignominy of the corpse being stabbed, some syndicate leaders, especially from the Flare and its allies, choose to cremate their bodies in the city and have only the ashes carried out. This is technically illegal, as the Cohort demands to inspect each death, but since they rarely take action even in clear cases of murder, and since ashes are definitely not smuggling out a living person, they tend not to strictly enforce it.
Despite Cohort indifference to murder cases, bodies of victims of the syndicates are often dumped in the river to conceal evidence.
Only Cohort leaders are buried in Rime itself, interred in a mausoleum near the center of the city.
A common belief in Rime is that if you die within the city wards, your soul can become trapped in them as part of the lights. There are several variations on this belief depending on the background of the person and their inherited superstitions or faiths.
A small number of people, especially Seachosen immigrants, believe specifically that if the dead person's body is not moved outside the wards shortly after their death, their soul will become trapped inside the lights.
Frostfolk, who in communities outside the fatalistic isolationist clans of the high Iron Peaks tend to believe in vengeful spirits with unfinished business, believe victims of unfair deaths are the ones who are held by the wards. Since Rime in and of itself is an unfair place, some say that is everyone who dies there.
The Cohort specifically encourage the belief of trapped souls as a way of maintaining power even after their deaths. As the only members of the city usually buried inside its wards, they crafted an elaborate mausoleum and spread the belief that their spirits hover over Rime, watching the actions of its people.
Some people claim that the Cohort started the superstition of trapped souls for this very reason, others that they are simply capitalizing on its existence. A few of the bold ones say that the reason Cohort officials have no qualms about being buried in the city is that they have no souls to become trapped.
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