I’m thinking about Emmrich and his obvious compassion for the dead, and I’m wondering about how the Mourn Watch are trained. We know not all Mortalitasi share his empathy (see the mage in “The Dread Wolf Take You” from Tevinter Nights), so maybe the Mourn Watch undergo something that helps instill this reverence and respect for spirits and the departed.
It got me thinking: what if the Mourn Watch mages work with the dying before they work with the dead?
Perhaps as apprentices they complete a year of service as death doulas, to give them perspective on how death affects not only those dying but also their loved ones. They hold hands at bedsides, comfort parents and children and siblings and spouses, and give potions to help ease their patients across the Veil without pain, if that is their wish.
They then prepare their remains for mummification, treating these mortal shells with the same care they did before their soul departed. They lovingly wash their skin, anoint them with oils and resins, and wrap them in strips of linen with their precious earthly belongings tucked between the layers.
Then, now knowing the departed on a more intimate level than many who knew them in life, they begin to search the Fade for a being who will best embody the things they held important, imparting their legacy to live on through a benevolent spirit who can then experience the waking world through their form.
They don’t bind these spirits. They don’t need to, because they have come to know and understand the departed so thoroughly that they can then seek out one who will come willingly into their body.
Maybe this is why some Nevarran mages callously bind wisps to stir their wine, but Emmrich can see a wailing corpse and recognize the pain of lost love in its cries, or give a curious wandering soul the perfect postmortem position as his librarian.
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is RIP to the rest of the Mortalitasi but the Mourn Watch is different.
