[i]My son can see the death-folk. He's been a seer ever since he got drunk in Kittilä and took a dead body into his arms. Enontekiö, 1930. [url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/2431980/announcements/detail/5922868739490557343]SKS Archives[/url][/i] We’ve talked about the prominent role that the dead have in Finnish folklore when we met one of the enemies in Goblin Camp, the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/2431980/announcements/detail/4617965876711013168]grave-folk[/url]. Although the walking dead and the ghost stories of Finnish folk religion are very dramatic, most of the time, the spirits of the dead aren’t really malevolent. They’re just trying to make their way home. Like many Siberian peoples, the [url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/2431980/announcements/detail/3675548335162620547]ancient Finnic people[/url] believed that when someone dies, their spirit travels to the land of the dead along a river. The next world was believed to be in the far north, where all the rivers ran; possibly it was reached through the great whirlpool in the northern sea, where the pillar holding up the sky met the ocean. One of the first creatures the goblins will encounter in the middle world are the death-folk: spirits of the dead on their way north. The death-folk aren’t hostile, and they won’t hurt your goblins. But they are scary though! [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//44295898/f366f6a8b3216c9172e9cd5cb626936c683361aa.gif[/img] We use the death-folk to introduce a key concept from Finnish folk-religion: being hard-blooded. Finnish folk beliefs maintain that people are either hard-blooded (fin. [i]lujaverinen[/i]) or not. A hard-blooded person is someone who isn’t (that) scared of the dead, and can see them and even interact with them. Often, like in the opening quote of this post, a person becomes hard-blooded by encountering a dead body or something associated with death, and enduring it. These were the people who could become wizards. On the other hand, some people just aren’t cut out for dealing with the dead. This was always perfectly understandable, and I’ve never seen any folk tales mocking people for it. On the contrary, there are stories of people being initiated into the spirit world and regretting it, or giving up their initiation into becoming a magic-user. Being hard-blooded may well be a mixed blessing. We’ve adopted this concept from Finnish folk religion into Goblin Camp. Most of your new goblins will appear in the game with a trait called Untried, meaning they haven’t faced the spirit world yet. When they encounter something scary, like the death-folk, they’ll have to make a morale check against their Willpower statistic. If they pass, they steel themselves and become Hard-blooded; if they fail, they become scared and are Soft-blooded. Only a goblin who is both Hardy, having survived a winter in the camp, and Hard-blooded, can become a shaman. Stay tuned for more exciting spirit content in the upcoming [url=https://steamcommunity.com/games/2431980/announcements/detail/4598826846183189413]Farming Update[/url]!