Oh hey! It is my Day of Birth today so I decided to put my entire E/tsy S/hop, Lyric and Faun, on sale at 25% off, if you feel like checking it out 🥺👉👈
Do you like Locked Tomb fanart? Are you excited for Nona??? Go check it out, I just listed SO MANY prints of the pieces yall seem to like the most! :D
the sans reigen thing sparked a thousand other twitter polls and it’s not that serious but griddlehark has actually managed to make it to the second round of a wlw ships bracket where they are the least well known pairing and it would literally be the funniest thing ever to me if they beat everyone so if you guys have twitter please vote. i would die to see the obscure lesbian necromancers come out on top and nobody have any idea who the fuck they are or how it happened
sometimes i’m like “i don’t REALLY hyperfixate, right? like everyone has their obsessions.” anyway do you guys wanna hear about the time i spent eight hours researching the history and meaning of catholic rosaries, using this information to redesign the rosary such that it would fit into the context of the religion in the Locked Tomb series, making myself a set of ninth house prayer beads, and writing corresponding prayers because only one was ever canonized? no? too bad.
so now that you have been warned.
here are my Ninth House prayer beads. i’m afraid i was short on knucklebones, so they are in fact actual beads. true Ninth rosaries are primarily knucklebones, but the medallion and charm are often carved or engraved from larger bones or sometimes metal. now, onto the structure of the beads and how to pray them:
so this is an explanatory diagram i made for the beads. praying the beads starts with the charm, which replaces the crucifix on a catholic rosary and represents the Tomb. it is most often a carving or depiction of the Tomb, but can also be a padlock without a keyhole, a length of heavy chain, an unassuming rock, or something even more abstract. the prayer associated with this bead is the canonical intercession— “i pray the tomb is shut forever. i pray the rock is never rolled away,” etc.
from there, we move to the house announcements and the tomb sealing prayer. these replace the glory be and the our father on a rosary and are represented by the large beads and the lengths of chain surrounding them. the large beads, by the way, i have decided to call “fingers” (they are nameless on an og rosary), and while they are usually just knuckle bones set apart by lengths of chain, they will sometimes be molars or occasionally infant vertebrae. the house announcements are pulled from the poem at the start of HtN that gives four lines to the First and one to each subsequent house. with every large bead, you say a new section of the poem (for example, the sixth house announcement is “six for the truth over solace in lies”). the Nine Houses replaces the mysteries as the subjects of meditation during one’s prayers. the tomb sealing prayer is one i wrote, though i haven’t properly named it. it goes as follows: “O King of Nine Renewals, you who conquered death and sealed it away, I thank you for this holy abjuration. Grant me the strength to be a worthy guardian of the Locked Tomb. I seek your blessing and your guidance, that I may keep at bay the forces of death and be a preserver and beneficiary of your unending life.”
after that, we’ve got the decade beads, which i’ve renamed “gestures” as they no longer appear in groups of ten. there are eight in the first house segment of the rosary, one for each Lyctor, and five in each remaining group. the prayer associated with them replaces the hail mary on catholic beads and goes as such: “Hail to the King Undying, and blessings upon the Tomb. Today and always, I serve them. I will aspire to boundless thanksgiving, as I have been shown the boundless kindness of the Necrolord Prime.”
last is the medallion, originally symbolic of the virgin mary. in Ninth House beads, it represents the Emperor. the most commonly used medallion is just the First House symbol, but you might also see a depiction of a crown, a skeletal hand, or Dominicus. the associated prayer replaces the hail, holy queen, and goes like this: “It is my greatest joy to give praise to the king above death and my greatest honor to partake in His gift of resurrection unto the Nine Houses. Let everywhere know Him, everyone adore Him, and every part of myself worship Him. May I always remember the depth of His power and the greatness of His works. Thanks be to the Emperor, who will reign eternal over the living and the dead.” it evolved from the same root prayer as the big intercession of the other houses (found in ch 8 of GtN), but was changed some when the Ninth was founded and has changed more in the subsequent myriad. anyway that’s about all! hope you all enjoyed this testament to how completely crazy about Ninth religion i am.
Many thanks again to op, this helped me make mine and i wouldve been totally lost otherwise!!
I know it’s weird to have one Locked Tomb piece amongst only SPOP content, but my partner wanted fanart for her lesbian necromancers in space thing. So she got it.
