Dooming

• WFRP 2nd Edition Core Rulebook Page 172
• Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd ED -- Tome of Salvation

Sometime near their tenth birthday, every child in the Empire should experience the Dooming, a rite of passage that ends with a foretelling of death.

The Ritual

How the Dooming is handled varies in different parts of the Empire, although a priest of Morr the Imperial God of the Dead, Dreams, and Dreamers, is usually involved.
In the cold forests of Nordland, communities gather their children on New Year’s Day around a great feast of bloodpie and beef to celebrate “Doomtag”. In the last hour of twilight as the daylight fades a local Morrian priest begins the foretellings.
In more civilised Reikland, Doomsayers of Morr criss-cross the land, conducting the Rite of the Dooming wherever they encounter children of the correct age.
Whilst across the rolling plains of Averland, doomsayers are rare, so communities typically conduct a simple rite without a priest, relying instead on a village elder or parent to make the foretelling.
By comparison, the Ostermarker Dooming is a complex ritual, held each year on the Day of Mystery, and involves hundreds of candles, bizarre conical hats decorated with bird skulls, and sacrifices of milk and horse flesh. These latter are firmly gripped by chanting children as, nearby, blood-covered Morrian priests swing great skull-shaped censers.
No matter the exact details of the rite, one thing is always the same: at the end, a pale-faced child is brought forth to be told how he will die.

A Typical Dooming

As daylight fades, the nervous child, bearing sacrificial offerings of blood and meat mixed with milk for Morr, is brought before the black-robed doomsayer. The sacrifices are cast upon a sacred brazier, and the priest pleads with Morr to accept them instead of the child into his realm. The doomsayer then lights specially prepared black candles. Thick, muggy smoke coils from the candles and wraps around the face of the child, twisting into patterns and forms that are believed to hide the child from the sight of Morr and represent the child’s doom.
The doomsayer explains what he sees in sombre tones, and then concludes that the sacrifices will only appease the God of the Dead until the day that doom comes calling. The child then leaves, now much closer to becoming an adult, though often in tears.

Components and tools

1. A Sacrifice of Meat and Blood often mixed with milk intended to take the child's place in Morr's realm.
2. A Sacred Brazier on which to burn the offering.
3. A Special Sacred Candle that emits a dense black smoke to hide the real child from Morr's sight.

Participants

A Priest of Morr to conduct the ritual.

Observance

Soon after a child reaches the age of ten.

"May ravens alight upon you." —Morrian phrase meaning “May your death be easy".

"I never met a Priest who could tell me what the future holds. Well, unless you count the Priest of Morr who Doomed me for thruppence, but don't they say that death and taxes are the only things we can be certain of?" —Sylvextr Jutzenbach, Ostermarker Noble

Primary Related Location

The Empire