lych

not every death. never a player's — that lane is deathmark's, whole. what lych watches for is a creature that was named, or tamed, or a villager: the deaths that mattered to somebody. and only where the world has room for it, air or something that gives way, never inside stone or the middle of your build. then there are remains, and the remains remember: the name, what it was, how it went, who owned it, and where its home was.

burying is a thing you do with a shovel, not a recipe. one solid block over it and two beneath it and the remains become a grave, carrying the memory across unchanged. hold use on a grave with an empty hand for a couple of seconds and it is rited — the name goes quietly across your screen and a bell sounds low, once, and only ever once. a rited grave greens the grass around it come spring, refuses to take snow, and one dawn a year breathes a little smoke; crouch on it while it does and it will tell you three things and then stop: who, how they went, and how many nights they have been in the ground.

a body left three nights unburied rises at dusk and walks home. it takes nothing, harms nothing, collides with nothing and cannot be fought; it phases through walls rather than break them, stands facing home through the small hours, and is gone by dawn, and the loudest sound it makes is cloth. a grave never walks. a wisp leaves anything killed by something living — it flees, settles somewhere, and flickers at night until you pick it up. and your own death is a walk too: you wake at the place it happened and fly home to your body over the ground you last covered, or crouch and skip it, and either way nothing is lost.

as of 1.1.0 death leaves the totem something too: when any totem fires in a player's hand it leaves a husk behind instead of vanishing, for the hedge or the marrow to fill again.