SPLINTERING, FRAGMENTING AND AWAKENING#

Sepulchre was created by Saint Marrow, also known as the Prophet - the leader of the Founders who first established Deshret. His death and miraculous resurrection in the first year after the Founding set the template for Sepulchre's most holy mystery: splintering, the revival of the dead. Through holy ritual, the clergy can preserve a shard of your soul and guide it back into your body. But as all human souls are inherently flawed, something is always lost in the transition. Only Saint Marrow was perfect enough to return unchanged.

This process actually consists of three different aspects:

• Splintering itself, which is dedicating a shard of your soul to Marrow;
• Fragmenting, which is updating your current splinter with your most recent memories;
• Awakening (to Sepulchre)/recombination (to Mythos), when your soul is returned to a new body grown from the prior sample.

In practice, many people often refer to all three procedures as 'splintering' interchangeably, even though they're quite distinct.

THE PROCESS OF SPLINTERING#

To splinter, an individual goes to the Basilica on Floor 16 for a process that registers an impression of themselves at the given time. This process requires paying a small fee, approximately 3000 marks, for the initial splinter. Additional fragments can be done for the lesser price of 1000 marks.

The experience of splintering is notoriously painful and difficult, though it inflicts no genuine harm; most people will go in groups and take the day off after being splintered or fragmented.

THE PROCESS OF AWAKENING#

When someone who's splintered dies, their consciousness revives in the Abzu, from which they can initiate awakening procedures.

Awakening allows someone who's splintered to come back at any chosen adult age as a version of themselves without any scars, injuries, or other physical remnants of their past.

The real cost is likely mental. For one thing, people forget everything that's happened since the time they splintered - so if you last fragmented 5 years ago, you'll lose 5 years' worth of memory!

Beyond that, however, there are seemingly other issues. While the effects of awakening differ from person to person, people tend to come back fundamentally changed. After all, none are so pure as Marrow.

SIDE EFFECTS OF AWAKENING#

Documented side effects of awakening include but are not limited to:

1. nausea, vertigo, trembling, headaches, sensory overload
2. proprioceptive weirdness: limbs feel fractionally wrong, balance feels off, movements overshoot
3. phantom pain or phantom scars from the old body
4. reaching for an injury that is no longer there
5. feeling cold, hungry, desperately thirsty, or overwhelmingly tired
6. temporary difficulty recognizing yourself in a mirror
7. derealization or a strong sense that the body is not yours yet
8. vivid dreams or flashes associated with death
9. emotional flattening, crying unexpectedly, irritability, inappropriate laughter
10. gaps in your memory, both literally due to splintering and in general stretching back
11. temporary difficulty sleeping because closing your eyes resembles dying
12. fixation on sensory things just to prove you are alive again: food, touch, heat, sex, exercise, pain, etc.

And the damage compounds: more of the soul is lost with each death. (This means that the Church eyes the ruling line of House Vesalius as increasingly degenerate, as one single soul is being awakened imperfectly in three separate bodies again and again.)

That said, symptoms don't always proceed in a linear fashion. Someone who awakens with many negative symptoms and then dies again MIGHT be better off the next time - but they might also be worse.

Sepulchre claims the exclusive right to determine just how much of a person's soul is genuinely gone, and the exclusive responsibility to handle the occasional hollow husks that result from the process...

LIMITATIONS TO SPLINTERING#

As awakening requires a procedure done in advance with some cost (referred to colloquially as S+S, sleeve and shard fees), not everyone can take advantage of it. Exceptions might include executions by the state and church, people who just can't afford splintering because they're too poor, people who don't have time to splinter again before they tragically die again... and, of course, some rare individuals who might simply choose not to splinter at all.

But it takes quite a serious case of heresy to be blocked from splintering and/or awakening. The church preaches that even the worst can be redeemed, citing Saint Cassius the Betrayer and his eventual penitence as an example.

FAQS#

Does splintering destroy or damage the soul, or is that just awakening?#

Sepulchre teaches that to splinter the soul does not have any negative consequences on its own; it is merely committing a part of yourself to Marrow, living in communion with him. It is the awakening process that causes damage, as the rest of the soul will not always adhere faithfully to the remnant Marrow holds in his bosom.

Certainly the reports of consequences and side effects do seem to come only after awakening, not after splintering.

Is an awakened person still viewed as the same person post-Splintering by the church?#

Yes. This is the idea it all rests on - splintering and awakening allow for the theoretically eternal salvation of immortality.

Do you come back from awakening without any damage? I.e., if you had cancer before splintering, would your new sleeve(body) still have cancer?#

When you splinter, a genetic sample is taken, and that genetic sample is used to create your new body. That means all injuries, illnesses, etc. incurred in a lifespan would be gone in your new sleeve. Only genetic conditions you were born with would persist. This also means that fleshcrafting changes like increased height would persist in a new sleeve, assuming you had splintered after the changes were made.