What's on your mind?

[Ahzoh]

A portion of Vrkhazhian Culture! This episode is on death!

The Vrkhazh believe that when you die that you are in an eternal rest; oblivion that is.
At least that is as it should be. However, sometimes a person was greatly wronged in life or their corpse becomes disturbed, causing the spirit to become restless and aggressive.
Restless and evil spirits reside in a realm that is called by the Vrkhazh as "The Formless World" because of its formless and chaotic nature. Creatures known as the "Formless Beings" (not really formless, but their forms are often incomprehensible and fear-inducing) also reside in the Formless World. The most feared and well-known is the Formless Being known as Sillhav (who is considered the top dog of them all) who guards the veil between the Formless World and the Formed World.

The Vrkhazh believe that scavenging birds such as ravens and crows (ravens and actual crows are often lumped together as being a kind of "crow") are guardians of the dead that ensure that the spirits are not restless.
The Vrkhazh believe that if a crow is not guarding a body (or a flock of crows, in the case of entire graveyards) then the body and raise up and become a Hollow Man (a Vrkhazhian equivalent to a zombie, "hollow" because it is without sentience).
Times of famine and disease are times where the risk of Hollow Men rising up are the highest.

Often family members will fashion a small statue of a crow to make the spirit of a deceased love one to attain peace by tricking it into believing it is guarded by a real one. Usually the statues are made of onyx with the eyes being studded with turquoise.
Embalming and painting the body is also important in allowing the deceased to attain peace. Organs cannot be removed from the body except for the intestines (which are removed by the embalmer and replaced with preservatives before returning it to the family). This important because the deceased cannot feel like they are not whole. This is the original sense of the meaning of a Hollow Man, who would be literally hollow.

There are four days during the year where the veil between the Formless World and Formed World are thin. These days are the peaks of the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox and the Autumn Equinox. Thus these periods are often marked with fear because Formless Beings and evil spirits can gain access to the Formed World to wreak havoc and cause suffering. Because Silhav is the Guardian of the Veil, he is the first one to appear.

Fighting Sillhav is fruitless because he is unaffected by most physicals objects, however the only one known to have been able to successfully defeat Sillhav is the first emperor of Vrkhazh, Arash-Hijunu.