Vernon-Lament

They are legally at war with Traansadoor, but after five long years there have been exactly 8 confirmed causalities, half of them friendly fire.

File:Vernon-lament.png

## **A Very Proper country**

A strict, insular nation of upright morals and severe disposition, Vernon-Lament is proper.
Gentlemen of Vernon-Lament wear coats, waistcoats, trousers and top-hats. Ladies wear
confining clothing, often several layers of it. The dominant ethos of Vernon-Lament is that a
proper life is one spent productively and in worship of the spirits, and so leisure and idle activity
are frowned upon. Life in Vernon-Lament is puritan, stern and morose.

Also, almost everyone is dead.

## Kalarain’s First Undead

Thirty years ago, the Sorrow killed the entire population of Vernon-Lament in a single instant.
Across the entire island, every single person’s heart just stopped. The next morning, the entire
population rose up again with greyed skin and stilled lungs, the first undead in recorded history.
But the proper ladies and gentlemen of Vernon-Lament weren’t going to let the fact that they
were now dead get in the way of living an austere, spiritually-nourishing life. After the initial
panic settled down, and certain doctrinal issues were dealt with, the people of the Isle went on
as they always had. They continue still.

If you enter a city of Vernon-Lament at precisely 6am on any given morning, you will likely encounter a skeleton in a waistcoat and top-hat, head bowed,
shuffling morosely through darkened streets to attend the morning ritual prayers.
All undead in the world stem from this one incident. Not all of the undead, however, were
natives of Vernon-Lament. A few visitors to the island and passing ships were hit as well. And,
on the flip side, a few of the island's occupants were away at the time. Most have returned, and
live amongst the undead.

## The Vernon-Lament Ethos

The dominant philosophy of Vernon-Lament is that mortals are impure. Spirits are believed to
be a higher, purer level of being. Tier 3 spirits have become the pure embodiment of a single
ideal, and worldspirits are the highest of these, the loftiest, most righteous form of existence. It is believed that the Vernon-Lament way of living, in solemn prayer to the spirits, is the one most likely to result in a mortal becoming a spirit of the third tier when they die. The dour, puritanical lifestyle this all generates actually led to the founding of another nation, the wild, joyous Isle of Puck, which stands as a deliberate contradiction of the Vernon-Lament ethos.

Vernon-Lament holds spiritborn and ectochoirs in great esteem, granting them privileged
positions in their society. This is only true for the first reincarnation or repossession, however. The second time it happens, they are believed to have abandoned their ideal for the flesh, and
shunned accordingly. Vernon-Lament is also strongly at odds with the anti-spirit nation of
Traansadoor.

Vernon-Lament theology has oscillated between insularity being the right path, and the concept
that spreading Vernon-Lament ideals increases your chance of ascending. The last century has
seen shifts back towards proselytizing after a long period of reclusion. The country sporadically
invites groups from other nations to come to their isle to witness their ways. Recent years have
seen an increase to the country's wealth, as its production infrastructure no longer needs to
service its majority undead population (allowing for more trade). They have also seen the
emergence of terrifying undead missionaries.

## A Relic of History

Vernon-Lament is one of the few countries that has remained more or less entirely intact since
the Shattering of the World. Some have questioned whether it itself might be an Escaran
patchwork like Pascaria. People from Vernon-Lament do not appreciate this theory being raised.