All the other races are unanimous in this belief: it is bad luck to kill a crane anywhere near a human

All the other races are unanimous in this belief: it is bad luck to kill a crane anywhere near a human.

And then what happened?

ok

Feeding the cranes explosives has finally paid off I see.

Okay?.....and? Does this have an actual reason behind it? Is there a story to tell here? Any significance to this?

live crane body armor.

Humans worship fire

Fire is sacred, and it is a crime to pollute the sacred fire by throwing unclean corpses onto it

Only by laying the body out for birds to eat can the corruption be removed from the body, so it is clean enough to burn.

Because birds eat the dead, it is unclean to eat birds.

Anyone found guilty of eating birds is put to death and buried beneath the earth with the worms.

It's a cool idea for a superstition, I guess.

Hijacking thread, since it seems to be going nowhere. What superstitions does your setting have?

Most societies view burial as either disgusting or barbaric. Elves leave their dead on high towers to be consumed by vultures and crows, humans and dwarves tend to practice cremation, orcs practice ritualistic cannibalism, etc. While some cultures do practice burial it is incredibly uncommon overall. Due to the practice necromancers generally gather undead from these few cultures or have people killed themselves.

Cremation has less to do with superstition or tradition in my setting, and more to do with simple prudence.
When some asshole can just come along and return a false life to dead Uncle Jim, making cheap zombie swarms, it makes more sense to burn the dead.

In my setting the roots of the method of disposal tend to be pragmatic. Orcs live a hard life and need all the food the can get, Dwarves live in mountains, don't want granny's rotting corpse right next to your kitchen, elves are all about the circle of life and shit, and many humans live in city states where land protected by the walls is at a premium. Necromancers are also bad but the roots of the practices often have to do with lifestyle too.

I would probably be less annoyed with the orc thing if cannibalism didn't kind of have a history of being bad for your health. I think dwarves cremating the dead is kind of neat in a "Urst fuels the forge now" kind of way, but cremation is really just incredibly practical in general, particularly where grave keepers have to keep necromancers and monsters out instead of just teenagers that want to drink and make out

Don't fuck your kids. Not because genetics but because the last person to do that pissed off the god of love who made a spectacle of drawing and quartering the guy for it in every town across the land. She'd make sure he wouldn't die and she'd do him up good as new after dragging the bits to the next town.
Don't be that guy that does shit to purposefully piss someone off then goes "it was only a joke" cause the Jester, the god of fun and politics, will prank you 365 times a day for 365 days and every single prank will be lethal if it pans out. Survivor's bodies tend to tell the story and serve as a warning to not be a public nuisance.
Don't leave a chick just cause she got pregnant. Again god of love. If you get someone pregnant then hop town the second you find out your balls fall off and you're plagued by shit luck for life. Women who abandon kids have their tits fall off and ugliness beset them while also getting shit luck for life.
Cremate your dead. Already been stated by another user but necromancy means no body is to remain intact by law. Other various means of body disposal are acceptable so long as the WHOLE body is broken down in some way.
Don't leave meat out in the open unsupervised. Maggots will spawn in them and if you eat it they'll spawn in you as well. Salt prevents this so most use it for meat preservation as it prevents maggot growth and everyone knows maggots make shit rot.
In a small village at th base of a mountain pregnancy is spontaneous and has absolutely nothing to do with sex. If you contradict this with proof the entire village will shun you for an unscientific nitwit cause women obviously don't lay eggs and men don't have seeds.
Trepanation is a big deal in one of the cities as it lets god have a window into your soul and lets your prays out of your skull. Polite company demands you keep your headhole uncovered so people can hear if you're actually a decent person or secretly think bad things of them or their company.

In one of the more famous trade cities clothing of any sort, especially of the head or face, is severely looked down on as that shows you have something to hide.

In one of my setting's cities it is considered good form to wear a diaper, piss yourself at every opportunity, and swallow new acquaintances whole.

Dare ye enter my magical realm?

>All the other races are unanimous in this belief: it is bad luck to upset a human
The Gu'razin tried pissing off the humans once. Ever heard of the Gu'razin? No? My point exactly.

Well, yeah. But I wouldn't adhere to good form.

>cannibalism didn't kind of have a history of being bad for your health
It really doesn't the most famous cannibalism induced disease, kuru is only found in Papua New Guinea (even then some research shows that it may have been due to the ritualistic dismemberment as opposed to the actual cannibalism) this is despite the fact that numerous cultures around the world have practiced ritualistic cannibalism in various forms in addition to the times when people were forced to commit cannibalism due to hardship.

Even then cannibalism is far from unique to humans and many modern humans have genetic markers linked to immunity to diseases caused by eating human brain tissue, so it isn't infeasible by any measure that Orcs or another race could evolve or simply be given at creation the ability to consume brains with no ill effects. Even then at the end of the day the only real problems tend to come from decomposition or brain parasites, the latter of which can be solved by not eating brains.

Of course if none of this sways you there is the fact that people have done it throughout history. Even if the effects of cannibalism are bad Orcs can do it for the same reason humans can do it, they are ignorant of the causes of any health issues and see ritualistic importance behind the eating of their friends and relatives.

>In a small village at th base of a mountain pregnancy is spontaneous and has absolutely nothing to do with sex. If you contradict this with proof the entire village will shun you for an unscientific nitwit cause women obviously don't lay eggs and men don't have seeds.

Did you get this idea from real life? iirc there's an island where the natives have so much casual sex they've never discovered the link between sex and procreation.

No, but thats basically it. Most will say how the fuck would you prove it takes 9 months from conception to birth if no one stops fucking for 9 minutes.

>it is bad luck to kill a human anywhere near a crane.
or any other construction vehicle for that matter

In the setting I use for my books, the superstitions all basically never got started in the first place. The Gods and demigods and demons were so accessible and so approachable (with a few specific exceptions) that there really weren't any metaphysical questions that couldn't be answered.

Human, here.

That was one dude and he was a fucking wizard.

Don't stereotype us because one wizard loves cranes