onghondan (Song)
The Songhondan (송혼단), “The Order of Soul Sending,” is the Guardian-Cleric shared subpath that recovers the bodies of the fallen and performs the funeral rites that keep the dead from rising as something worse.
Place in the Circle of Balance
The Song are one of the five shared subpaths of the Suhodan, the traditions that form where two paths share a border in philosophy and practice. They sit at the Guardian-Cleric connection. Like the other subpaths, they are player-led, with founders and key NPCs rooted in the world’s history while active leadership is carried by those who walk the path today.
The short title is “Song.” The full lore name is Songhondan (송혼단).
What They Do
The Song recover the bodies of the fallen from Maggi-rich areas and perform the funeral rites that prevent the dead from rising. In a world where an unattended corpse near concentrated Maggi can be warped and reanimated, sometimes within days, retrieval is a matter of survival for everyone else, not just respect for the dead.
They take particular urgency with fallen Suhodan members who had walked a path. The Maggi can twist a trained body and the Giun still lingering in it into something far more dangerous than a standard revenant.
The Cleansing Dances
Their funeral rites use elaborate, precise dances that channel Cleric purification through physical movement, drawing on the Guardian tradition of discipline and form. The dances are not decorative. Each movement is a step in the cleansing process.
This pairing of disciplines is what makes the subpath what it is. The purification comes from the Cleric side, the discipline and form from the Guardian side, and the rite only works when both are present.
Standing in Seonhwa
The Song carry a personal pride in going into places others have already fled from. There is an understanding across Seonhwa that no matter what happens out there, the Song will come for you.
Their training is half Guardian, but their work puts them closer in philosophy to High Cleric Eun-Ae’s compassion-first approach. They have a complicated but respectful relationship with Beom-Seok’s Guardians. First Shield Beom-Seok values their practical necessity but is uncomfortable with how close their work brings them to the dead.
Relations to the Danja
The Song work closely with the Danja (Jeopsindanja). The Danja often accompany Song retrieval missions to commune with spirits at recovery sites, in case the team arrives too late to recover a body and needs to reach the spirit instead. From the Danja side, this is described as the same standing arrangement: they accompany retrievals of fallen Suhodan members for exactly that reason.
Keep in sync. The subpath relationship web is restated here. Canonical version: The Circle of Balance (Shared Subpaths). Update all copies together.
Deep Lore
A dedicated deep-lore document for the Song, in the manuscript format used for the Danja, is pending development. The bible notes it alongside the Inscriber, Seon, and Hwa documents as not yet written.
See also
- The Circle of Balance (Shared Subpaths)
- Danja (Jeopsindanja)
- The Suhodan
- Guardian
- Cleric
- First Shield Beom-Seok
- High Cleric Eun-Ae
- Maggi
- Han (Unresolved Grief)
- Seonhwa
Source: ETK Lore Bible (The Circle of Balance / Songhondan section; Necromancer/Danja section; Path Leaders for Beom-Seok and Eun-Ae; “Enemy Respawns” and “Maggi” (Maggi.md) general-lore notes; the pending-deep-lore note at the end of the Danja manuscript). Foundation doc used for Suhodan, Seonhwa, Guardian, and Cleric context.