Could you tell me more about dunmer rituals? Such as wedding and burial rites?
Dunmeri weddings aren’t a thing like elaborate Imperial weddings with special gowns and addresses and banquets that last for an age and a half. They’re very boring, really. A Dunmeri wedding is the same process as a Dunmeri adoption. One (or more, though most House folk see group marriages as quaint nowadays) person is bound to the other’s ancestral line with ritualistic mixing of the blood and certain incantations and other things rites too. There is nearly always a witness or two, but these are very private affairs.
Marriage is a bit of a nebulous concept in Morrowind. I mean, it certainly exists but it’s not how you Westerners do it, though granted, the Hlaalu mimicked the Imperial system because of course they did. We Dunmer court each other in all kinds of relationships, and it’s all an elaborate game of testing each other, trying to determine if it’ll be mutually beneficial, working out social dynamics, and so forth. It can get quite complicated even when it doesn’t veer into the romantic. There’s gift giving involved, certain ritualistic tasks, that sort of thing.
But the point I am making is that when it comes to romance, after a certain point in your courtship, when you both are wearing the other’s token and have acknowledged your relationship in public (which is a milestone, let me tell you, because we Dunmer are stubbornly private) and recognize each other as equals, you’re basically considered married in the sense that most other people use it. We have a word for this sort of marriage that translates to something like “lovers sewn together” because it’s like you’re stitched to the other with thread. You’re bound to them, but if you have to, you can always break that thread and free yourself. Of course, it’s going to hurt a little because severing yourself from another always does. We Dunmer are fond of delightful imagery.
Divorce isn’t a viable option for those who have wedded and bound themselves to their spouse’s ancestral line because at that point, you are tied to them on a deep mystic level and have inserted yourself into that line forever by becoming their family. There’s a word for this kind of marriage too and it means something like “knitted together like a bonelord.” Bonelords are one of the most romantic things I can think of. They’re an ancestral revenant and they’re constructed from the bodies of married couples shaped into one being. Theoretically, you could separate one into the parts of the people it was before, but if you do that, you’re not going to have those parts in the same state as they were before. They’re going to be distorted, bent, cracked because you had to yank them free from the other and things get shattered.
If you break that ritualistic bond, what I am saying is that there are deep consequences and they aren’t pretty. I’m told that it hurts your soul and leaves you in agonizing spiritual pain and you’re cut off not only from the ancestors you left behind but your new ancestors. Spiritually marrying has its risks, and it’s for this reason that many couples wait for decades to make sure that they’re certain that this will work and that they can stand being with the other forever before they undergo the rites of binding.
The rites used to binding a spouse to an ancestral line are also the same rites that bind adopted children to the line. Bloodlines only matter to foolish Dunmer. What’s important is the ghostline, the ancestral spirits we can summon for advice. Typically speaking, adoption outside the family is rare. If a child’s parents are killed, then most often, she will go and live with an aunt or grandparent or else someone else with the same ancestral line. If the entire family is in a bad way, sometimes children are relinquished to the care of well-off families. If you see a wealthy family with six children, then most of those children are almost certainly born of someone else. We reproduce rarely; children are precious to us. If not that, then children would be given to the temple to be raised and, unvaryingly, they would become one with Indoril. That is why the House is poetically called the orphan legion. Only wicked people abandon their offspring.
At any rate, you need not know the exact process of the ritual. Unless you plan to marry or be adopted by a Dunmeri family, it is really none of your business. I will say that it is not for those who faint at the sight of a little blood. As said, it is a very private affair with few witnesses, so we do not have elaborate wedding ceremonies with the dresses and the rings and the amulets and the wine like the humans do. Dunmer consider making a big deal about announcing your coupling to be tacky. Now, I do enjoy a good wedding myself, but the prevailing logic in Morrowind is that one doesn’t need to waste resources on a big party just to announce that you’re sleeping together. Just exchange daggers. Everyone knows it’s love if you’re stabbing with your fellow’s dagger.
You mustn’t think we’re joyless. We do have parties but not wedding parties. Now, after you’ve publicly acknowledged your relationship for a few years but before you’re ghost-bound, the families throw a little get-together where they shower the couple with basic household necessities: pots, pans, fertility amulets, glasses, books of prayer, salt, resin to coat chitin with, those hanging baskets that kwama eggs are stored in, big bags of rice, sujamma, mazte, shein, cooking sujamma, tea. There’s not much ritual or anything formal involved, but the couple is given matching belts to wear. I don’t know if there’s a real reason for this or if it’s something that’s just done, but they’re usually quite lovely things with colorful beadwork and devotional charms made of chitin dangling off the end. We have similar parties if a woman is expecting but they’re usually much bigger affairs and you might have the whole neighborhood giving presents.
As for burial rites, we don’t bury our dead if we can help it. At least, we House Dunmer typically don’t. The Ashlanders do have burial caverns to house their mummified ancestors and revenants. It’s traditional for us to burn the majority of our dead, often leaving a skull or fingerbone intact to display. Some of us elect to become the ancestral revenants that guard our tombs and protect our ghosts and families from those who would do them harm, and these are brave, honorable people who do so. Bonewalkers bother other people and I admit that I found the concept off-putting for quite some time, but I have seen the delight on the faces of small children as they visit with their dead grandparents who have become tomb guardians and I know that it is a good thing.
It’s typical to wait three days after death to cremate. Three is an auspicious number and also that’s enough time to make sure that the person is really, truly dead. There are certain protections put in place to ward off rot and our houses of the dead may be guarded by bound daedra, but other than that, one must use as little magic as possible. If one’s mother did not birth you with the aid of magic, then one’s priest should not burn you with the aid of magic. Oftentimes, organs are removed so that protective charms can be inserted and then they’re put back into place. Before a corpse is to be burned, I make a mixture of blood and ashes to draw pupils on the lids and forehead. The appearance of the devil Dagoth was a perversion of this old custom.
I hope you will forgive me if I decline to speak much more of our death rites. Secrecy is a necessity in my field when there are so many necromancers and damned Imperial scholars prying into our private affairs.
