Church Ceremonies

Funerals:
Many of the townspeople came from places where burring their dead is the common practice. The dead are not buried in Verdan, they are brought to the Temple and delivered to God through the cave. The body is stripped and placed upon a slab of stone near the mouth of the cave and left there. The priests and the family of the deceased all leave the chamber and have a ceremony in the main area of the temple to celebrate the fallen's life. This includes eulogies and remembrances by anyone who wants to say something. Within an hour, the body will disappear as the person ascends. If someone is buried, the church will rarely accept this. It is seen as an affront to God.

What the people of the town do not know is that the bodies are not being taken to heaven or anything of the sort. In actuality, the Necrotera send a warrior to the mouth of the cave to collect the body when they smell that there is a body in the chamber. The Necrotera have previously sent visions to the human priests to tell them to leave the bodies naked in that chamber and leave the room. After the first time that they tried acting on that vision and the body disappeared, they decided that this is what God wants.

Forgiveness Quests:
When someone does wrong in the eyes of the church they are given ways that they can give back to the community which they have harmed. In extreme cases it is decided by the priests that the offender cannot be forgiven by the community. in these cases the offender is sent to the back room of the temple and is sent into the cave to ask God for forgiveness. No one has ever returned from this quest. The Priests say that this is because God has accepted their apology and taken them to a better place. If someone was ever to return from the quest, they would be seen as a failure. The only possible explanation would be that God rejected them and sent them back.

Vision Searches:
One of the biggest benefits of building the temple against the mountain is that the priests spend most of their time near the area where most of the visions occur. Because of this focus on visions from God, there are times where the priests actively try to receive visions. To do this, they meditate near the cave at the back of the temple. The priests are convinced that by emptying their minds and being near the mountain they are more likely to get visions.