DUNGEON DEGENERATES LORE 4

The official Imperial religion of the Würstreich is “Purity in Death” or “Reinheit im Tod” or Puritanism for short & is enforced by the Holy Order. They view that life is sin-ridden & impure & that purity is only attainable through death. Therefore this religion is not concerned with improving people’s lot in life while they are alive but rather preparing them for their entry into endless death. They don’t believe in life after death or before birth, just that a person only has a chance for peace when they die if they have been blessed by the Puritans.

Death, being the constant companion of life, ensorcelled the early Valhal tribes of what would eventually become the Würstreich & they both feared & worshiped it. The early founders of the Würstreich worked to create a structure that would give form to what would survive & dominate the harsh lands & their uncivilized people. 

After exploring the ruins of the Celestials, these tribal spiritualists had their basic beliefs about death confirmed. This validation of these beliefs by the overtly advanced Celestials cemented the shamans beliefs about no afterlife, no spiritual existence & that these energies of death could be controlled. The proto-Puritans were driven further into their death cult. 

The death obsessed shamans & witch doctors of what would eventually become the Holy Order saw that the stored energy of living beings was released in death & that that energy could be harvested & directed. Early practitioners would arrange the bones of the dead in special patterns to direct their ebbing power correctly as they made their way from the land of the living into eternal death. As time progressed, these bone placements became more & more complicated, like a language or program of death itself. This led to the creation of little Bone Shrines “Totenschrein” in each temple & eventually the Necropolis “Totenstadt” & the carrying of relics of death “Totenrelikt” by true believers. The Holy Order seeks to control the corpses & bones of the dead which stack endlessly in the corridors of the Necropolis.

While the Gütter have beliefs about their actions in life being rewarded in the afterlife in the land of the gods, the original founders of the Holy Order decided that this was a primitive view of life & death. The Holy Order & the Würstreich were most interested in controlling people’s lives under the Empire & their deaths under the Holy Order. Adherents can go the extra step & be purified in life so that their death is more acceptable to the Holy Order, but for most, the attempt at living pure is folly & not expected, this is why the Würstreich is so debauched.

The Gütter have decreased steadily as a threat to Imperial power as the Würstreich has increased in domination. The majority of real threats to the empire are internal at this point. The Gütter used to be a primary threat when the Würst were trying to distinguish themselves. 

The use of the dead has been pursued by all manner of groups in the Würstreich but the Holy Order is the only one that claims authority in this respect. Their primary rival in this field is the Necro Coven. The Necro Coven are a heretical group of Imperial peoples that have taken the Holy Order’s morbid core & furthered its research, directed by curiosity instead of power they are rumored to have been founded by the Necromancer themself. All magic users use death to some extent, because it is another source of energy in existence. The Holy Order sees this as heresy because it directly uses some of the power they want to control. The frontline of this pursuit of the control of death is the Corpseburners.