im just fascinated thinking abt how the knowledge of and moral opposition to necromancy may have influenced BOE on a cultural level.

while The Nine Houses view Blood Of Eden as an annoyance or just like…. a pest that must be defeated as a matter of course (”nameless insurgents”), it seems like BOE views the nine houses as its mortal and moral enemy. we learned in the ch2 Nona exerpt that the language that The Nine Houses uses, while common, has fallen out of favor bc “bad people use it”. therefore it makes sense for BOE to adopt an even more reactionary approach in order to define itself in direct opposition to what it sees as the most morally corrupt parts of The Nine Houses: specifically, necromancy and their treatment of the human body.

The Nine Houses uses human bodies as fucking. couches. and macaroni art.  human leather on the seats, your grandfather’s bones on the wall, your dearly departed mother sister father’s bones farming the fields for eternity. what kind of death rituals does one adopt to set oneself apart from that? probably something about holding the human body as inviolate, and likely requiring complete destruction of the body (i.e. cremation) very soon after death –  to prevent the loved ones bones and flesh from being necromantically used/taken. burying your dead grandma in the ground is like leaving a juicy treat for any wandering necromancer. 

medical procedures such as organ transplants (dead or live doner) are probably also banned and/or viewed as deeply immoral (might still happen but like, on the black market) as taking another person’s body part and using it to power your own is…… well…… that’s basically what necromancers do and probably also makes you a zombie! 

with regards to the living body, culturally it would make sense if body modification – especially elective body modification – was generally frowned upon. it would make sense for scars to be heralded as incredibly positive traits, because lyctors (”zombies”) don’t scar – and competently preformed thalergetic healing likely doesn’t leave much trace either. zombies and necromancers just heal up whole again, but healing with a big scar proves your alligance to BOE.

anyway. does anyone have more thoughts? The Nine Houses are so wild just by themselves and BOE opens up such a new world of fascinating cultural posibilities.