Ghoul

**Ghouls** are the risen and living but not really sentient corpses of the dead.

## Physical Description

Ghouls dress themselves in the meat of their prey, and don't seem to have proper bodies at all. They do seem to have teeth, which they use to bite. Ghouls can roar while hunting.

## Abilities

Ghouls are not very smart, but they do have some ability to hunt and trap prey. They grow more cunning as they eat more prey. Light can attract them. They are physically strong.

Cremating bodies and scattering the ashes are the best deterrent against ghouls, which otherwise form from dead bodies. Gravestones - the finer the better - also act as a less powerful deterrent. Graves have to be carefully tended to avoid ghouls. Untended ground often leads to ghouls rising, and ghoul-disturbed ground is more likely to spawn more ghouls. Blood saturated in the earth is also liable to wake ghouls. Untended graves and graves without a legible stone are the more obvious signs of a ghoul walking. Ghoul victims are likely to become ghouls as well. Suicides "are the most likely to turn ghoul." Old corpses are unlikely to turn ghoul.

Ghouls will eat and clothe themselves in dead meat, often digging up graves for bodies, but don't stay satisfied with it, and although they are supposedly slow, around 2-3 months after rising they will move to killing living beings. Ghouls also become stronger the longer they are risen and the more people they kill. Thara Celehar was never given a reason for why ghouls eventually tired of carrion meat and moved on to living beings. In practice, Thara saw that a ghoul that had feasted on two living humans was faster than those that had not eaten kills.

#### Quieting

Witnesses for the Dead are the only people who can read the memories of ghouls and find their names in order to quiet them until they can be reburied, and prevented from rising again. The stronger a ghoul is, the harder it is to find a ghoul's name and quiet it. Once a name is found, the quieting process can begin, which involves repeatedly calling the name - which is strengthened when more than one person does so - and ritual words:

* "I know your name! I know your death!"
* "Let the darkness take you"
* "you have been wrongly woken from your sleep"
* "You must rest again"

Once the ghoul is quieted, the ghoul slumps to the ground and the body breaks apart into meat.

## Characteristics (culture, habits)

They are "nothing but dead flesh and hunger". They dislike cities packed with people, and prefer solitude and despair.

Ghouls are common in the northlands, particularly in Aveio. Ghouls do not tend to rise in the south, where goblins live, though they can seemingly rise from goblin graves.

Ulineise prelates have attempted to turn their parishioners to different funerary practices because of the incidence of ghouls, but there doesn't appear to have been any success stories.

## Trivia

* Cremation is considered barbaric in the capital. It's still too expensive for about half of Amalo's citizens.
* The Vikhelneisei, followers of Vikhelno, believe that "their names are known to the gods and therefore they cannot become ghouls", so they do not follow proper burial procedures to avoid ghoul creation.
* The ghoul of Hiriän in Tanvero was the first ghoul that had killed that Thara dealt with.
* Some Ulineise Witnesses claim they can feel ghouls in the ground, but it's not any more accurate than if you look at a headstone and make a good guess.
* Ghouls are different from ghosts and revetheralin.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Addison, Katherine. *The Witness for the Dead*, First ed., Tor, 2021.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Addison, Katherine. *The Grief of Stones*, First ed., Tor, 2022.