First of all, fire’s no good! Total destruction’s no good. So, fie to your fire! Get it out of your head. This island’s got a powerful mean memory. It remembers a corpse. Reduce one of these shambling cadavers down to fragments and vapors, and the island just remembers it back into being. \n\nThat said, there are other methods. Trial and error, as my father, gods damn his soul, used to say. I was a sexton by trade, back in the Old World. If anyone’s going to figure out how to make a dead body behave, it’s going to be me. I’m assembling this manual, such as it is, from what I and others have tried and continue to try. Lots of trials. Lots of bloody errors. You just keep hammering a nail till it submits. Father said that too. Anyway, here we go.

Concerning Fire

The Malleus Mortuis: Hammer of the Dead

By and large, these are worth piss all. Say your prayers, do your motions, light the incense, do the whole bloody mummers play production. The shambling corpses will just commence their shambling. \n\nWe’ve tried the prayers and rituals from East to West and up and down, to Europe, to Africa, to Asia, and back again. Believe me, this island gets all manner of visitor, and they’ve lent us their ways, and none of it seems to work, where ambling corpses are concerned. \n\nNow there’s apocryphal talk of some powerful conjurers working some fancy invocations that keep the Lost sleeping for a spell. But I haven’t seen so with my own eyes. Not yet anyway.

Concerning Burial Rites

The Lost don’t exactly hold still. We’ve lost a few fingers here and there. According to the old customs, we’ve stuffed their maws with coins and garlic. We’ve tried holy water. We’ve tried pouring incense into the eyes, ears, and nose. \n\nNo effect. \n\nStitching the mouth sometimes holds it shut for a spell. Sometimes.

Concerning Stuffing the Corpse’s Mouth

Last night, in accordance with some custom or another, we tried burying a shambler at a crossroads. It didn’t take. \n\nA colleague in this gruesome trade claims to have placed mirrors around a burial site, to ward off would-be shamblers from rising. He says it worked a treat. The man’s only vices are drinking and lying, so take that at its grimy worth.

Concerning Crossroads and Mirrors

We did it all proper and tidy, just as the old skald told us. The unruly corpse went in a sturdy coffin of oak, sealed shut with iron nails taken from a shield bloodied in battle. Then I hammered three more nails to the foot of the coffin. As I hammered with my left hand, no easy task, I repeated these words:   \n\nBlessed Realm and Blessed Host, \n\nNail the draugr to the post. \n\nThrice I strike with holy crook, \n\nOne for Wod, one for Thor, and one for Lok. \n\n\n\n\nIt didn’t take. Thing burst out of the coffin like a ravenous wolf pup eating its way out of the womb. \n\nCome to think of it, maybe the coffin was supposed to be made of yew. Anyway, we did it pretty much almost exactly as the skald told us.

Concerning Iron Nails

We made sure no moonlight or shadows touched the grave. Didn’t work. \nWe pounded stakes through the heart of the corpse. Didn’t work. \nWe placed a hymn book in the coffin with the corpse. Didn’t work. \n\nYou see the pattern forming, don’t you? We placed rose thorns and silver dust over the grave loam. We walked black goats and roosters over the graves. We tried it with white goats and roosters. None of it worked.   \n\nMutilating the cadaver, cutting off hands and feet and gouging out eyes… that works a bit. Slows them down in the ground. Sometimes the island remembers their bits back, sometimes it don’t. No reasoning with this island. This method definitely buys more time than outright destroying the Lost, but it’s grisly work and ain’t easy.

Concerning Funerary Sundries

An old, desperate bit of grave lore. Bury the body either upside-down or on its belly, so as it won’t know which way is up. Stupid, isn’t it? Just stupid enough to sometimes work.\n\nIt’s a coin toss chance, but sometimes, the buggers never get their way to the surface. Sometimes I wonder if they’re down there now, still trying to get topside, digging themselves straight to Hell.\n\nFlaw in this method is that time can dull your paranoia, and sometime later, a cadaver bursts out of the grave loam to take you by surprise.\n

Concerning Burial Positions

Be my time soon. Can feel it. Little things. Memories fading. Color is unnatural. Made a face that set the butcher’s apprentice to fainting. Didn’t mean to.\n\nIt’s the burial experiments that did it. Each one took its toll. Each corpse took a little strip of me with it. Cunning buggers. They played the long game.\n\nNothing for it. Going to lie in the hole. Face down. Hope for the best…\n\n-Oliver Ashwell\n

The Malleus Mortuis: Hammer of the Dead Chapter - NWGuide Database of Lore

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