At 03:06 PM 11/9/2005, Howard Brazee wrote: >Tsarren wrote: > >>Exactly. Funerals of any kind are for the people left behind, not for the >>dead. >The services are. (although people such as Churchill planned his >own funeral). Whether the body is embalmed, buried, or whatever >is left over from old religions. > >If taking the body to Deathgate is that important, there will be a >big industry to handle this, and people would be as concerned about >whether it happens as they are about being killed by a Morganti weapon. >Holding corpses for ransom could be used as a weapon. I'm thinking about Dragaeran vital statistics--we see no evidence that Dragaerans have more than a very few children (more closely approximating modern Western demographics than anything else, it would seem). Given their very long life, one would think that births and deaths are very rare occurrences. I wouldn't expect that any kind of industry for the handling of the dead exists in Dragaera at all. -- Regards, Pete pgranzeau at cox.net