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Vivamort
Vivamort is the god of undeath. He is associated with the occurance of zombies and other necromantic creatures. Worship of Vivamort was only recently legalised in Wessex. There have been several attacks on the city by necromancers in recent years, and followers of Vivamort have been hunted by the Children, Humacti and Azraelites amongst others. The Holy Symbol of Vivamort is a red disc. At present, it is a crime against City Law to openly display a holy symbol of Vivamort in a public place in Grantabrugge, under a Public Decency Act passed in early 1293 by Mayor Darcy Nottingham.
The Church of Vivamort
Vivamort grants his followers the ability to defy death by bringing life to those who have departed. Several other faiths claim this is no true life, but a shallow mockery and further an abomination, for what is dead should stay dead. The worship of Vivamort has long been illegal in Wessex, a land governed by a Humacti King. Due to the number of Vivamortians who have gone insane and abused their power against the people Vivamortians are negatively viewed by the majority of the populace of Wessex. Very little is known about this elusive faith beyond rumour, myth, and the annual bout of attacks on outlying villages. Some have argued that these few are not representative of the faith in general, but this tends to be argued very quietly and - due to the sheer number of villagers who have lost family to undead predations - those who start such arguments tend to lose.
Having taken in converts from the other death gods after the Great Dying there are many differing strands of belief in the Vivamortian faith. The prevalent attitude towards death is that of fear and loathing, an obsessive desire to prevent the destruction of the body that is strong enough to overcome the distaste of digging up corpses. The daily conflict of facing up to this fear is believed to be what drives so many Vivamortians insane, although others claim that Vivamort was always been unhinged. Others follow Vivamort seeking immortality and power, and occasionally, in rural areas the Death gods have failed to penetrate, Vivamort is followed as an aid the community and a form of ancestor worship.
Vivamort was previously God of Vampires, but after stealing Humact's sword and forging the Sword Pantheon by ritual he became god of all undeath, and Head of the Sword pantheon. His pantheonic opposite should have been Humact, but Humact stepped down and St John took his place. For this reason Vivamort hates St John, and through his constant persecution of Johnite priests the feeling has gradually become mutual. Humacti, Azraelites and other churches such as the Children of the Light and the Balance believe undead to be an abomination, and will hunt down any necromancers they find traces of. When there were multiple undeath gods, Vivamort's followers also regularly joined in the hunt, determined that only the undead in thrall to their own deity should survive.
There is a strict hierarchy within the faith, hence Vivamortians often operate individually and become highly territorial. Vivamortians seem to have some way of establishing this hierarchy consistently between themselves.
After the pantheonic treaty amendment of 1291, a legal temple to Vivamort was set up in the basement of the new Temple of Sordan. There were several clashes with followers of other death gods over the use of undead labour on the new Temple (as slaying the undead was one of the safeguarded holy actions in the treaty). The church does hold open services; mostly the preaching is currently on the subject of how wasteful it is to let people die and not be used, and generally aimed at convincing people that letting undead exist is the correct moral and ethical choice (often attempting to demonstrate how it fits into the strictures of less hostile deities, although always emphasising that only Vivamortians would have the proper control over undead to do it right). Vivamortians require consent to raise someone as undead, and so many spend time attempting to persuade people to provide this - though oddly many people find the idea of incentivising a necromancer to find them dead unappealing.