Grey Garden Church

Major Tenets
"Exult in life, while it lasts; find acceptance in death, that it comes to us all."

"Proliferation while alive is paramount. Idle hands waste an opportunity to be at work, either in the service of improving one's self, one's soul, or one's village."

"Recommitting to the earth in death is paramount. Denial of one's body back to the land that it walked in life is to deny the gods their clay to make life anew."

"The shadow of the Second Age is still carried by the undead that walk the land. Eliminate the wretched things, that their souls may truly move on to their next stage."

Faith & Practices
The faith publicly worships Onedra as the Greygarden Church, and has secretly facilitated peaceful followers of Ula and their more secret rituals as the Mossborn Circle. It also serves as the primary cemetery service for the townsfolk of Lumberton. The Church was initially founded on the ideal of death and life not as opposites, but binary aspects of the same cycle: each necessary for the other to exist. It partakes in celebrations involving harvesting, births, and the springtime of the year, but also facilitates services for lunar conjunctions and funerals.

The Church's Onedran practices include holding prayers, overseeing childbirth, conducting festivals, etc. It's far less-known and less-appealing rituals and practices as its role of cemetery for the town

Born in Darkness
The Church's founder, Tiliana Myrsa, was an elf born in Avalon in the decline of the dark Second Age. As the Drendal Empire desperately sought more bodies to fill its dwindling ranks, Tiliana was forcibly recruited into the Drendal King's death squads once she demonstrated propensity for calling upon the dead. She was taught the ways of the Grim Lady and instructed to continue to raise the fallen and deceased in the name of the Drendal Empire. But Tiliana quickly came to revile how her abilities were used to raise the dead. She had a vision decades into her servitude: what she thought was the Grim Lady came before her and told her she was marked with the goddess's blessing to stop what she considered vile use of the dead. Emboldened by her vision, Tiliana Myrsa joined a band of devout fighters for Onedra - few in those days - in the battles of the Winterthaw that saw the collapse of the Drendal Empire, taking on the name Greysister Myrsa.

Onedra's Vision
In the wake of the Winterthaw, as the land began to heal, Greysister Myrsa learned more from her new allies about the teachings of Onedra. While the Earth Mother's followers quickly grew as the Age of Mending dawned, Myrsa couldn't help but to continue to feel bound in some way to the Grim Lady, called Ula in this new Age. In her sixth century, Greysister Myrsa had another vision, this time with Onedra, claiming that the goddess would guide Myrsa to her place in the great cycle of life. Confused, Greysister nonetheless followed Onedra's commands, and headed west.

Travels to Lumberton
Along the path laid out to her by the vision of Onedra, Greysister Myrsa tended to the developing hamlets and villages she passed along the way. She would commit the deceased back to the earth, priming the body for rapid decomposition to enrich the surrounding soil, and foster developing gardens. She handled what remnants of vileness from the Cold Dark she could, and earned a following of those who understood the balance of life unto death unto life that the Greysister preached. By the time she arrived in her destined location, she had a sizable group of those wanting to praise either Onedra, Ula, or both. They found the hillside overrun with the undead, and bolstered by their own numbers, the faithful purified most of them and drove the rest of them off.

Greysister Myrsa then descended into the earth on her own, and spoke with not only Ula or Onedra, but both of them. They commended her, and told her to build a Church that would celebrate all cycles of life on the spot. As the structure was built, the town of Lumberton was first erected.

Eclipsed by Khaz-Merda
After Greysister passed, the Church maintained its strength throughout town for decades. But when the Khaz-Merdan dwarves came down from their mountains, they brought with them their own faiths, including that of the Vigilant Flame, which looked none too kindly on any interaction with the dead besides cremation. The Church fell out of its popular standing as diplomatic and economic ties with the dwarven mountain kingdom became Meridia's priority, and eventually was abandoned. Any remaining practitioners took to private services throughout the town, or found other jobs.

Revitalized
About 25 years ago, a druid priestess came to Lumberton, seeking to revitalize the derelict Church. Though first met with indifference or disbelief, the elf - an Aewyn Thalryssa - recruited old surviving members of the previous Greygarden Church, and began a revitalization movement. The Church built a new temple in modern Lumberton, and has ardently been gaining followers within town ever since.

The Grey Garden
The site of rituals and sacred rites from the days of the original Greygarden Church. A large circular room with a green, mossy interior circle of vibrant flora and fungi, as well as a statue of Ula. The statue requires an offering of blood to descend into the Mossborn Mausoleum.

The Mossborn Mausoleum
A large chamber of walls, each a casket for certain members of Lumberton's past. The chamber leads to the Corpsing Room, the sleeping quarters, and the lower chambers, which are typically forbidden to all but the highest order of priests.

The Corpsing Room
A somewhat darkly humored name given to the chamber where cadavers are brought for containment and "Recommitting" - a process of rapidly decomposing a body, either individually, or as part of a more massive "recommitment" with multiple bodies at a time. Often entails all soft organic tissues to be decomposed and absorbed into soil, wherein flora and fungi are often quickly cultivated from the biological energy.

The Lower Chambers
Forbidden rooms below even the subterranean mausoleum. It's said these are the sacred grounds upon which Greysister Myrsa communed with both Onedra and Ula and received her instructions to build the Church and begin purifying the land. Normally none but the highest ranks of the Church are allowed into these lower chambers...but more and more members seem to have been allowed in recently.

Recent Events
High Druid Thalryssa seemed to have updated the Church for the better to keep up and reintegrate into Lumberton, but the priests who tend to the mausoleum are now giving more and more cryptic instructions with the cadavers. The number of bodies to be processed has seen a slow but steady increase. Many of the older members of the Church seem to be retiring from service, or passing away due to age and being committed to the Mossborn Mausoleum. More and more members seem to be descending into the deeper chambers beneath the Church, which have been forbidden for centuries. And the Church has taken on the "solemn burden" of caring for those afflicted with what the townsfolk are calling the "rot-curse".

The high priests are cultivating a glowing fungi that Thalryssa took interest in from some bog druidsto the south. There's been talk among town of some of the afflicted actually being seen again in town. Their miraculous recovery associated with the Church has apparently earned these returned the name "glowers".

Fresco 1: The Grey Garden Chamber - Founding of Grey Garden Mausoleum

 * Investigation - Figures in simple black robes, heads bowed, are seen walking out of a fog towards some small houses (Lumberton). In the fog behind the figures, the mosaic tiles are various colors of purple, gray, and black, and the buildings before them are reminiscent of some of the older looking buildings in Lumberton. The tiles in the fog make out shapes of uneven earth surrounded by eight figures, and a dark tower sitting in the middle of them.
 * Druidic: “In the Cold Dark’s wake, Ula’s truly faithful were driven to remind the world of her true majesty. Here would death’s most important lessons be remembered as the Mossborn tend to the uneasy dead, that new life may rise, whole and peaceful.”

Fresco 2: The Grey Garden Chamber - Tending the Dead

 * Investigation - Black-robed figures stand among bones in a mosaic depiction of the Grey Garden Chamber, praying around a bowl that rises up in the middle of the room. Dark purple tendrils are reaching downward and passing into the bowl, and flowers and roots are springing up among the bones.
 * Druidic: "The Mossborn remembered the darkness of the Second Age, and called it, drawing it in, and down, healing the lands around Lumbertown. Here were the sanctified dead laid, returned from the Verdant Lady to the Grim, that she may return them in kind as new and verdant life."