Everyone knows that nobody is buried anymore. Not since the Cataclysm. Bodies are helpfully incinerated by electroplasmic cremation before the ghosts can arise.
But there are so many ghosts. Where are they all coming from?
Well, from the poor, certainly. Those who die in secret, unnoticed by the authorities. But also from the rich. Those who still worship old and forgotten ways, or those who fear cremation. And the rich, well, the rich are often buried with their treasures, and that’s where you come in, o my dear cutpurse.
Mind you, even when the body sleeps soundly, in some hidden grave somewhere, that doesn’t mean that the job is as easy as sneaking in and toting a spade…
Some scholars think it’s about the electroplasm levels. The psychic print of a dead person can last a long time if they were sufficiently agitated upon death. Sometimes enough energy rises in the background that it fills in one of those dormant patterns, allowing it to energize and act. If enough electroplasm flows into it, the pattern can become self-aware, too.
There are also rumors that electroplasmic cremation is not as perfectly effective as its proponents claim….