Why Be a Grave Robber?

Why would anyone do something as universally reviled as dig up the dead? The answer is most likely "money". For many struggling just to survive, the welfare of the dead and their possessions seems of little consequence. After all, the dead no longer need their bodies or their possessions, so why shouldn't the living put them to good use.

Doing a job deemed distasteful or criminal means that one can operate without the normal rules and restrictions. No boss, nobody to answer to. No competition either - who else would want to take the risk. People who are Grave Robbers are likely opportunists, they see the opportunity that nobody else is willing to pursue: a little bit of work, a bit of risk, and a lot of money.

Grave Robbers' Roles in Society

In the Old World, it is ideal that the dead stay buried in their graves and crypts, since the restless dead have too often brought grief to the living. It is therefore understandable that there are strict rules regarding where and how the dead rest, and who may handle the bodies of the dead.

Many however chafe at the restrictions they deem paranoid and superstitious. Doctors often desire to probe the dead to learn the secrets of the living, alchemists and wizards for secrets in the human body that they alone pursue.

Its a Living

The main reason for digging up bodies is on behalf of academics and professionals, acquiring the bodies for dissection and anatomical research. Due to the fear of necromancy, there are countless laws regarding the use of human bodies, mostly imposed by the Cult of Morr. Many academics, bearing suspicion for the devotion of faith and lack of medical knowledge of the Shallyans and the paranoia of the priests of Morr, scoff at these religious based laws. Such laws kept the body mystified and science needs to turn its impartial eye to the subject of human anatomy.

While these bodies are often sold to alchemists and wizards for magical experimentation and reduction of the corpse into ingredients. Such detailed reduction is beyond the means of most grave robbers, but there is one part of a corpse that a grave robber might be interested in taking for themselves: the hair. Many grave robbers, while digging up bodies cut off the hair, this is then later sold to wigmakers, usually earning them a few gold pieces or more depending on the quality and length of hair. While this alone is financially insufficient to exhume a body, it is a profitably activity on the side.
As noted above, a handful of unscrupulous alchemists and the like also purchase bodies, and they often render them down for numerous products, using human blood and fat for various beauty products and medicines. Many folk cures and superstitions also revolve around medicines and magic involving the dead, particularly executed criminals, and the body parts of men and women executed in public can be sold for a small fortune on the black market.

Not all grave robbers are interested in trafficking in the bodies, some are interested in what the bodies are interred with. It is believed in the Old World that a body is a testament to the way one lived, and should bear the dignity and respect that they had in life. This has resulted in many being bedecked in their greatest finery and adorned with their most impressive jewelry. This act of hubris is calculated to give the deceased one last and grandiose appearance upholding their legacy and their family's wealth and status before the deceased is beyond human ken forever. An enterprising grave robber can make a fortune off of digging up the dead, stripping them of all their wealth, and hawking the goods to a fence.

The act of grave robbing that catches the imagination of the public the most is the least likely: exhumations involving the act of necromancy. This is far less common than believed, for a grave robbery gone afoul can easily result in the capture of a necromancer. There is trade in this however, but such acts are exceedingly secretive as the authorities are increasingly diligent for this sort of activity.

There is of course another reason to dig up bodies, to dishonor the dead. This isn't very common, but someone can always pay to have someone dug up, the body removed, and dumped or reburied elsewhere. The motivations for such acts are murky, but history is filled with all manner of stories of bodies defiled or moved as an act of final vengeance by the living.

Elsa, at first glance, is the last person you would expect. A young, pleasant woman whose gentle smile belies the grim task she has: providing flowers to the deceased and mourning. She stands outside the cemetery gates each day and has an exclusive monopoly on the selling of flowers. Her arrangements have brought a small amount of comfort and color to the lives of the grieving. She is also given small retainers by families to ensure that some dead receive flowers regularly and that their graves are attended, and she is often in attendance at funerals, placing the flowers within the coffin and her presence is paid for to help bolster attendance at funerals as well.

Her intimacy with the cemetery and its procedures has made her band of grave robbers some of the most profitable and successful in the Empire. She knows who has been buried where and with what wealth. With the help of her four brothers, she has managed to provide all the local colleges with bodies, but regularly exhumes corpses, robs them of her wealth, and reburies them.

Her brothers, through her contacts, are hired by the clerics of Morr to dig graves, and they are able late at night, to return and quickly dig up the bodies. They are always careful to replace them and have even been able to steal some of the corpses out of the waiting morgue, since they often drink with the caretaker and the old chap is prone to passing out after a hard day's labor.

The group is successful for a number of reasons: first is their superior information. They know when the bodies have been buried and are able to dig them up hours after burial ensuring fresh corpses and graves that do not arouse suspicion due to disturbance. They know which bodies are most profitable, being fresh or buried in opulence. They're constant presence at the cemetery and their contacts there have even allowed them to report in rival grave robbers and thus divert suspicion from themselves. The other element of their robbery is their caution, they always ensure that the grave do not seem unduly disturbed, thus ensuring that their crimes goes unnoticed.

Elsa and her brothers are not monsters, but they are angry: angry that the dead are often treated better than the living, and that many people go to their grave with wealth that could feed families and the homeless. For them, there is nothing sacred about the dead, and that the needs of the living are more pressing. However despite their rationale, they do not give charitably or redistribute the wealth, but have hoarded the money for their own family needs.