Soul tenders are members of a nation's armed services who are responsible for administering mass death rites after a battle. Implemented in the aftermath of the Skeleton Wars, soul tenders ensure that the bodies of fallen soldiers cannot be raised by necromancers or other such individuals, preventing a future undead catastrophe.
History
The Skeleton Wars
In the year 4,243 AB (5E 30), followers of the god Olumn mass raised tens of thousands of undead soldiers on the continent of Wreimos, sparking a series of conflicts known today as the Skeleton Wars. The worshippers of Olumn were able to raise their army due to the gruesome chaos of the Lithos War, which frequently saw casualty counts in the thousands from single battles. The sheer magnitude of death was unlike anything the world had seen since the Ascendancy, leaving the many clergy within the world's militaries woefully unequipped to fully perform every dead's final rites.
When the Skeleton Wars ended in 4,245 AB (5E 32), among the reforms instituted by the United Coalition of Allied Nations (UCAN) was a new approach to handling the dead. This change saw many clergy within militaries reassigned as soul tenders, with these soul tenders being redeployed to active battlegrounds to quickly perform final rites for all fallen soldiers.
Controversy
The establishment of soul tenders was met with fiery rebukes from nearly all major religious orders, citing grievances over how these mass rites strip the practice of its cultural purposes. For several years after the practice was established, religious gravetenders would deny entry to any deceased who had mass rites performed, considering them to be "unworthy" of being buried in sacred grounds. In recent years, despite some religious organizations becoming more open to the practice of mass rites, many still view it with disdain, and frame soul tenders as heretics.
