Hall of Heroes
The Hall of Heroes is one of the oldest and most noteworthy buildings in Arx, and not just because of its unique position as holy ground without being a place of worship. Consisting of a main hall and a side hall for each fealty, the Compact's greatest heroes are interred and memorialized here, sometimes only after some silly noble develops an unreasonable obsession with them several hundred years after their death. There are hundreds if not thousands of men and women buried beneath it.
Being inducted into the Hall of Heroes traditionally begins with a nomination during an Assembly of Peers, put forward by either the peers of a fealty or their High Lord, with the former requiring a simple majority and the High Lord's backing to proceed. The sitting Voices of the Realm (the High Lords or their representatives) then vote on it, with a simple majority proceeding the process. As the Hall of Heroes is holy ground, the Faith must grant consent for their interment. This final step makes it difficult for Houses to sneak in high honors influenced by nepotism, as the Faith almost always proceeds with a convocation, summoning all the seraphs of a fealty to reach a consensus on the individual, or a grand convocation summoning all the seraphs in the Compact for the main hall. If confirmed, godsworn artisans will see to the creation of their memorial.
Inducting a character into the Hall of Heroes requires the vote to take place IC. The convocation vote requires an action, costing 10,000 social resources reduced by 1 for every 100 legend the character has, representing the cost and politics of campaigning their induction.
In addition, this all requires an @action to win the approval of regional seraphs, and should first get staff approval by request.
Entries
Question: Q: 1) Being interred into the Hall of Heroes is supposed to be one of the greatest posthumous honors someone can receive. Since a Great House has to nominate them and it's supposed to be rare for anyone to object, how common is it for people to try and shoehorn their their friends/loved ones in?
2) Has there historically been repercussions for a High Lord nominating someone their people wouldn't view as worthy of being in the Hall?
3) With the last 'step' of the process being the Faith approving their interment, is there a precedent for the Faith stepping in to say 'this person has not earned a spot in the Hall'? If so, how has that went over historically?
4) If a House wanted to memorialize someone in Arx who isn't able to be interred in the Hall of Heroes, what would they typically do?
5) Less theme related, but what is the OOC process after all the IC things have been covered? Is it an action or a request to intern someone? Is there a particular Faith PC who would confirm interment or would that be a staff call?
Answer: 1: Rare. This is someone that is significant to either a) the entire Compact or b) that fealty, for actions done throughout their life. Someone that saved the Compact or did great works on the Compact's behalf, or someone that acted as an exemplar for a great house's ideals.
2: They might look bad, is considered unworthy and is rejected. Normally, the vast majority are buried in the house tombs at a house's domain. Buried in the crypts beneath Sanctum, for example.
3: Anyone being added to the Hall of Heroes is a big deal. Typically, for being buried in a house fealty's area, every seraph of that fealty will meet in a convocation and vote on the worthiness. For someone buried in the main hall, it would be -every- seraph in a Grand Convocation of the Faith. Typically, most seraphs bow to the will of the archlectors, legates and Dominus, but there have been exceptions (such as where to bury Marach the Apostate, who was not interred, despite his successor's nomination).
4: A nomination from the house to the head of their great house, with it being brought up at the Assembly of Peers with a simple majority agreement, and then seeking the consent of the Faith.
5: If someone isn't famous, it needs to be justified. It should be an @action with a minimum of 10000 social resources minus 1 for every 100 legend the person had, or face enormous societal backlash and a likely veto from the faith. This would be per person.
Question: Q: Since I've been asked this ICly a few times and have given sort of hand-wavey answers... in the Hall of Heroes, are the memorials in the main hall the only ones where the bodies (if recoverable, anyway) are interred beneath the hall? Are the memorials of the other halls also interred beneath the hall where possible? Or given the size of the Arxian catacombs, is it likely -- if not necessarily known for certain -- that not only are the various heroes of the halls buried there if possible, but that there are far more heroes interred beneath the Hall than there are specifically-called-out statues? (The last is admittedly my assumption.)
Q2: The statues seem to mostly end around the time of the elven war. Are people ever still buried in those catacombs in the modern day, even if they don't get statuary? For instance, is it possible that the more notable of those who fell opposing the Silent Army or similar threats might get interred there? (The Igniseri adventure twins, Baron Eos Saik, and so on.) And if not, is that something that -- with the return of the Queen, and the new awareness of said catacombs -- the NPC populace has opinions on?
Answer: 1: The memorials I created in the hall of heroes should be taken as a -sampling- of those buried there, and definitely not an exhaustive list. I made a few nods to that in the descriptions but I think it is very easily missed. There are definitely hundreds if not thousands of individuals honored in the hall of heroes, though for a thousand plus years of history, that still makes it a pretty rare honor. It does lead to the rest of the catacombs, meaning there's not any issue with space, even if the tombs below are hallowed ground and not visited except in ceremonial or special occasions and off limits.
2: Yes, in fact, while I enjoyed writing the history snippets there and spent a great deal of time on it, I also did intend for it to become a burial place for PCs that died in heroic fashions. To be so honored would require that they are nominated for the honor by the fallen's highlord (so crownsworn would be the crown), then confirmed by the Faith as it is on hallowed ground, typically with the consent of a majority of highlords and the crown. The honor is traditionally proposed as an item at a meeting of the Assembly of Peers. Despite that bar, it's usually not as difficult as it sounds, since most houses wouldn't want to needlessly provoke another by barring honoring their dead unless the individual is so hated in other houses their own vassals basically demand they do so.
All that said, it's still a relatively rare honor, and the vast majority of dead from noble houses are buried in tombs in their domains' strongholds.
Question: Who maintains the statuary in the Hall of Heroes, and who provides what we know about the statues there?
Answer: The Hall of Heroes is considered holy ground, and so templars guard its grounds, and disciples see to maintenance duty and Faith sponsored artisans. Being interred is more complicated process, and the traditions for it have changed throughout the Compact's long history. In current day, typically now the peers of the fealty nominate a hero to be interred below the Hall of Heroes during a meeting of the Assembly of Peers, requiring a simple majority of sitting peers. The highlord of the fealty seconds it (or he may start the nomination himself), and it passes a simple majority of the Voices of the Realm. Then, if it passes those three steps in the Assembly of Peers, the Faith of the Pantheon needs to grant consent for burial in the Hall, and godsworn artists typically create the memorial after after the rites are performed when they are interred.