Lost Memory
The practice of collective Lost Memory is a ritual observed by the fey whenever one of their kings or queens dies. In the White Tomb there are spaces for six resting royal rulers and the oldest is consigned to the Pool of Lost Memories at the heart of the tomb, to make room for the new burial at the beginning of the funeral ceremony. But this is only the start of the ritual of Lost Memory, which plays a more significant part in the wider culture of all the fey peoples. Over the following ten days, fey throughout the land engage in a process of the active destruction of some symbolic and real momentos not from the reign of the ruler who has just perished but from the reign of the ruler six steps into the past who has just sunk into the Pool of Lost Memories. This is part of a conscious effort to transform memory into history and it is associated with an induced collective amnesia, formalised and mediated through psychotropic and magical ceremonies throughout the realm.
Why? The explanation for the purpose of this strange active forgetting lies in the immortality of the fey. Their biological aging may be halted but their brains and minds do not have the capacity to hold all their experiences. Even for mortals, this is true within limited life spans and is handled there via a continual unconscious process of haphazard forgetting. The fey do not forget without intent and their memory is eidactic, so for their own mental health they have evolved the cultural traditions of Lost Memory to consciously perform the same functions that happen naturally in mortal species.
To be clear, the ceremonies of Lost Memory are not an attempt to live without history. Elsewhere in the Discontinuum, for example in The World Of The Long Sleep during the Great Forgetting, such philosophies have dominated thought. Lost Memory, by contrast, seeks only to transform memory into history in a systematic and sympathetic manner, so that individuals do not suffer continual perfect recall and the relative amnesia of history can act as an analgesic for the fey, just as it always does for mortals.
History
The current formal ceremonies are an elaborate collective codification of private and individual practices which were the precursor to this ritual and which themselves date all the way back to the Age of the Dawn of the Fey.
In its current form, the association of Lost Memory with the death of kings and queens began in the Age of Lost Memory, following the death of the king Ogidigbo Arthoom.
Observance
The rituals of Lost Memory take place following the funeral of a fey king or queen, and specifically only after their resting place has been cleansed by the sinking of the former occupant into the Pool of Lost Memories. Ceremonies are organised throughout the realm and can take place at any time up to ten days after the funeral.
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