Tanisevania and dead things

After a very interesting, amusing, and slightly angsty session last night, I have some more *gasp* character development to write down. Many thanks to my wonderful girlfriend for asking me questions to make me flesh this out.

Tanisevania has some very odd views on death. She obviously sees it as a necessary part of the natural cycle, as a Druid, but is uncomfortable with it because she believes she killed her mother by being born. These two things combine to create interesting beliefs in terms of corpses. She hates the undead, like all Druids, seeing them as a desecration of nature itself. But she also sees disrespect or defilement of a corpse as something completely horrible and wrong. To her, when a body dies, it becomes a part of nature again, it belongs to nature. So it is something sacred, as nature is sacred. Plants or animals that have been killed and made into other things, like food or clothes, are a different story. She understands that these are necessary parts of how the world functions, and they die to create something new that will sustain more life, so she accepts that and sees sacredness in that process. But a body, that of a person, plant, or animal that does not die for such a purpose, re-enters the cycle by naturally decomposing to create nutrients in the soil to help grow more plants, and so on. This applies to any body, even those of enemies, because the body left behind is no longer attached to the spirit that did her or her friends harm. As for rocks and other things that don't "grow" like plants, animals, and people do, she respects them greatly, but understands that that's different too. After all, if she were to take offense at the desecration of, say, the ground, she'd have to get angry anytime a person walked anywhere. She sees earth, and the other elements, as basic forms of nature for sustaining life, but not something that has the power to break down and create life anew that bodies have. This would also, then, tie into her sexuality. She is obviously awed by the things that bodies can do, even in death, so maybe that is part of her motivation for having as many lovers as possible - its like a form of worship to her, acknowledging the power of the body as a part of nature.

So with all that in mind, here's a model for future behavior. If any party members were to joke around by, say, making a dead person, animal, or plant "dance," or chop off body parts or anything like that, she will take GREAT offense. The level of offense is obviously going to be different in each circumstance, but in the cases that someone who knows how she feels does something like that anyway, she will be quite upset. Any such pranks involving processed body parts (Gods, that sounds wrong), like foodstuffs or clothes, won't bother her. And pranks involving elements, like rocks or something, won't either.

In case anyone is wondering, this was brought about by some in-game stuff. Grim, who Tanisevania's been teaching both sexually and about life and nature, was making jokes by using the corpse of one of our fallen enemies as a puppet. She was horrified, and explained to him why she thought that was wrong. Later that night, we fought and defeated some demons who stumbled onto our camp, and after she went to sleep he chopped off one of their heads to take back to town with us. Vesa, our human bard, and Kaleena, our Kender rogue, decided to take the head during the night and play a trick on one of the NPC's with it. So in the morning, there was much chaos, and Tanisevania found out what Grim had done. She was furious, and to try and make it better, he told her he only took it to take to town so we could show the townspeople that we protected them ,and use that leverage to get free rooms in exchange for that protection. The fact that he planned to use a body part as currency made the situation even worse. She stormed off, and he went on ahead to go on with his plan anyway, half the party in tow. Her half of the party set out later, missing what happened when Grim reached the town. However, when both halves met up again, Vesa apologized to Tanisevania for her part in it (which she hadn't occurred to be mad at him for, since she was so angry with Grim), and told her what happened while they were apart: Grim did indeed take the head into the inn and plopped it down on the counter in front of the manager, who was mortified, demanding rooms in exchange for us having "saved them the trouble" of defeating these demons. Imari, another NPC, had to calm the man down and paid for our rooms in full. Because of this, the townspeople are very uncomfortable with us.

Tanisevania sees Grim's actions, both in taking the head and in still carrying out his plans, as a complete disregard of her feelings and total disrespect not only to nature, which he asked her to teach him about, but to her as well. She is very hurt by this, since he's her best humanoid friend. When she sees him, she's going to tell him this, and all lessons (both of the natural and sexual kind) are over until he proves he will start listening to her. I know out-of-character that he had Imari help him set up something pretty involving flowers and a new kimono as an apology, which she doesn't know about yet. But it is not going to be enough, and she will tell him so when he shows her. If she finds out Imari helped, though, she will thank her. She will also try to take the kimono anyway and give it to the local temple to sell for charity. Also this night, she'll use magic to talk to the local animals or plants and ask if the disease that haunts Iskendurun's forests has touched Ni-Shan yet. If that doesn't work, she'll seek out a local Druid. Then she'll spend her night in Conalla's bed, instead of Grim's.

Soooo yeah. That's that. Sorry for the verboseness and the extra planning, but hopefully it was an interesting read, if anyone actually reads this.