Worldbuilding Wednesday - Pureblood Funeral Rites

So, I discussed this a while ago with fluffynexu back home on tumblr, but for me pureblood Sith funerals look a lot like the ones in ancient egypt (or what we think they looked like.)

All those traditions originated long before the dark Jedi discovered Korriban, as part of the Sith's native culture. Since strenght was one of their core values and some of them even tried to archieve immortality, Mummification of their dead would make sense, as a way to defy death, even though it's only symbolic.

The Sith discovered the art of preserving their dead by accident, as they discovered that the bodies buried in the desert sands of Korriban didn't decay, but rather dried out. As they discovered this, the priests saw it as a sign that their dead were strong enough to prevail even though they were long dead. The Sith responded by burying their dead in areas where mummification was known to happen, while some others experimented with the process and thus created the "Art of Mummification", an elaborate Set of rituals and actions with the goal to preserve the body as perfect as possible. Korriban was ideal for this, since it's dry climate made things decompose more slowly by default. With the Art of Mummification came the need to build big, elaborate tombs, since the dead Sith needed a place to stay, to roam. With that came the custom of burial gifts, of Lords buried with all their possessions, their slaves following them into the tomb, before joining their masters in death, a practice that was later discontinued. Even after Korriban got discovered by the dark Jedi, after the founding of the Sith Order, these funeral rituals stayed as an important part of pureblood culture.

But as they got exiled to Dromund Kaas, this "Art of Mummification" was almost lost, since preserving a body while following the ancient rites was impossible with Dromund Kaas's humid climate. So they started cremating their dead, something that had been done before if a Sith had died away from Korriban, or otherwise away from the cultural sites where the mummification took place.

After the Empire retook Korriban, some of the pureblood familys started bringing their dead there again, remembering the ancient rituals.