#ethari apparently chose his grief for runaan and (possibly) retaining the support of his community over rayla so

[kradogsrats]

Do you think Ghosting could be sort of like shunning in some religious communities…?

I think that's almost definitely what inspired it! Which kind of says a lot about Moonshadow society since groups that practice shunning tend to hit a lot of the markers for what defines a cult. :|

One possible difference that would be really significant is how compulsory everyone in a community participating in the Ghosting is—shunning doesn't work if only some people do it, the point is that the target loses their entire community. Generally AFAIK anyone who doesn't participate in the shunning winds up shunned, themselves. That's one of the more cult-like aspects of it.

Rayla initially believes that surely Ethari wouldn't have gone through with Ghosting her, which could go either way: it may be just be wishful thinking that he would defy the entire community for her, or he and Runaan may have refused to participate in Ghosting Tiadrin and Lain (see below) so she believes he will do so again. Tylluan's community also uniformly ghosted them—the person who replaced them as a leader was a close friend of theirs, and while she's generally sympathetic to them, she also refuses to discuss them in public or otherwise indicate that she supports their plan to save the town. So there is at least a little bit of that aspect to it, with social pressure to not speak about people who were Ghosted, but maybe that also means that the actual magical part is voluntary? I don't know. It's kind of unclear.

But with regard to that... by how we've seen Ghosting applied, it would be logical that Tiadrin and Lain were almost definitely Ghosted. Which means that if participating in the Ghosting is compulsory, Rayla has almost definitely Ghosted her own parents, which will cause a very fun(tm) moment when they are released from the coins. If it's not compulsory (like maybe you can get a "conscientious objector" exception if you're otherwise a sufficiently established community member) I think it's likely that Ethari, at least, did not participate. Runaan's a bit of an open question on that for me, and it probably would come down to either whether or not he actually believes Tiadrin and Lain would be even capable of abandoning their posts or Ethari demanding he not do it. And then if either of them refused, I very much doubt they would have allowed Rayla to do it. (Assuming they could prevent her, which... I was going to say obviously the guardian of a minor would have be involved in that decision, BUT Rayla is apparently culturally considered old enough to die on a mission into enemy territory to assassinate a heavily-guarded major political figure, SO YEAH.) But I think the question of whether or not she would have voluntarily is an interesting one—was Ghosting her parents an effect of her destructive attitude toward them (and herself), or was NOT Ghosting them part of its cause?