At certain points in European history, dissections of human corpses were banned or strictly controlled, leading to a thriving illegal trade between grave-robbing “resurrection men” and the individuals (often high-society artists or legitimate medical schools) who needed bodies.
Do you think Duskwall has room for Resurrectionists in it? I think they make a lovely alternate Smugglers crew.
I think Duskwall resurrectionists have a slightly different priority: keeping the body out of the electroplasmic furnaces of the Deathseekers.
Personally, I’d put resurrectionist missions as possibilities for shadows or smugglers (or other crews, really.) I don’t know that they need a dedicated playbook.
If they were to get a wider playbook, I’d suggest adding some skill in suppressing the chimes of the enchanted bells upon a person’s death. Skymazing to confuse the deathseeker crows. Tattoos, corpse paint, and bone scrimshaw rituals to trap a ghost in its meat, motionless. Ways to burn electroplasmic energy to activate pre-set ritual gates through walls. That sort of thing.
Expand it past trade in dead bodies to include trade in souls, and ways to manage assassins and corpse-seekers and ghosts that are all part of the gristle of the end of days.
I’d be more likely to add a resurrectionist gang to a crew than focus a crew on that sort of work.
Andrew Shields Fantastic stuff!
There’s a corpse-thief contact on the Leech sheet, whom I’ve turned into the leader of a band of corpse thieves, so I’d say there’s definitely room. In my game their big business is getting ahold of corpses and distilling essences out of them while the spirit is still trapped — it’s safer than ghost-wrangling — with a side of smuggling bodies to ritualists and similar.
Seems like a controlled substance for sure. The leech in my game is a tinkerer that blows off steam watching surgery at Duskvöl Academy. I’m totally going to have her approached about corpse smuggling.