"The dead are
not merely collections of bones and withered skin.
They are our flesh and blood, our fathers and forefathers. When the
dead rise and walk among us, their souls are tortured and beholden unto
some unholy power which shackles them once more to the hateful earth.
For this reason I shall not suffer the dead to rise and chew on the
flesh of the living."
From the Teachings of St Margelon, c. 10th
century.
Like many early Bretonnian saints, Margelon's
reallife history is
poorly known, obscured by millennia of pious legend. According to the
best of current learning, he was a priest of Morr living in the region
of Parravon around the time of Gilles le Breton, or perhaps a little
before. Margelon's homeland, after sustaining an attack of the plague,
found itself afflicted by a still worse malady: the curse of necromancy
descended, and hordes of hungry zombies and mindless skeletons roamed
the stricken countryside.
As the intercessor with Morr, god of death, Margelon
took it upon
himself to trace and defeat the source of this scourge. It is variously
reported that he performed a mighty ceremony of exorcism from atop a
great earth mound called la Tumule de Margelon (which can still be seen
some 10 leagues south-west of Parravon); hunted down the liche
responsible for causing all the trouble and imprisoned him under the
aforementioned mound; or that he used the power of Morr to entice all
the undead into a pit beneath the mound and seal them there for
eternity. All versions of the story focus on the Tumule de Margelon,
which certainly enjoys a sinister reputation amongst the locals, who
report witches' sabbats and other weird goings on there in the dead of
night. At the end of his life, Margelon too was struck down by the
plague, and lay feverish and agonised for days until a young novice of
Morr called Sugre came to his side. Sugre spoke soothing, kind words
into his old master's ear, and immediately Margelon's pain subsided and
he passed away calmly and contentedly.
St Margelon's cult is centred on Parravon and the
surrounding region,
where he is called upon by those praying for peace in death for friends
and relatives. Less often he is invoked by people threatened by the
undead, and witch hunters engaged in hunting the undead apparently call
on his name when working in benighted Bourgon.
In Bourgon and Parravon there are many dedications of shrines and temples of Morr to St Margelon. For whatever reason, the people of this province see it as especially important to secure their souls for the hereafter, so Margelon and Morr are called upon far more than one might expect. He is especially popular in small, isolated towns and villages, where common folk pray devotedly to him every day in the hope of aiding their loved ones in the next world.
The brooding, gothic cathedral of Morr in
Parravon is dedicated to St Margelon.