R9: Establishment of Selczek Gobayuik, Undertaker

This quiet little embalming studio nevertheless performs brisk busmess. As the owner is the master of the Embalmers' Guild, he has managed to arrange that most of the business in the River Quarter comes to his door.

See Ch4 FFF for a description of the Embalmers' Guild and Selczek Gobayuik.

The other members of the guild don't complain, for under Selczek's leadership they have secured their monopoly on the legal disposition of corpses in the city.

This establishment is fairly typical of the type, if a bit grander than most. Selczek has a large display of coffins, stones, and the like. He maintains a small chapel, though generally a deceased person of strong religious faith is memorialized at his own temple.

Selczek lives here alone with his treasure. He has accumulated quite a sum over the years, keeping 8,500 gp value in gold, silver, and platinum coins locked in a crypt below his house. The crypt is guarded against intrusion by 12 skeletons.

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R9: Gobayuik’s Undertakers. Without question, the most successful half-orc in the city is Selezek Gobayuik [IN 1/2om F5; hp 38; Con 16, Wis 8, Cha 4; leather armor +1, scimitar +1]. Now quite old (45) but in good health, Gobayuik is the guildmaster of the , Embalmers’ and Gravediggers’ Guild. Hideously ugly and always dressed in black, he is quite ‘ wealthy and keeps his money invested in various enterprises with the Union of Moneychangers and Pawnbrokers. He has no known friends, and other guildmembers follow his directives only because they fear him. They also hope he will include them in his will. Gobayuik hates good clerics because they are bad for his business (they heal and resurrect people). Various jokes about this guildmaster, most involving improper romantic involvements with the undead, have been circulating in the city for decades.

The guild maintains civic cemeteries in the city and purchases land to set up new plots. Because of city overcrowding, the guild is about to buy a large tract of land east of the city along Ery Trail for a future burial ground. The guild has a monopoly on the (legal) disposal of corpses in the city, and only a certificate proving the death and burial of a citizen, issued by the guild to the Inspector of Taxes, Glodreddi Bakkanin, will remove that citizen from the census and guild rolls; otherwise, the deceased’s family members must pay the deceased's taxes, Because of this, every relative of a dead person wants the deceased to be certified by the guild and buried. The guild works with all legal religions in Greyhawk to organize funerals, mourning ceremonies, and so forth, though the churches almost universally despise the half-orc.

DM's Notes: Gobayuik has been involved in a variety of illegal activities over the years, the most important (and illegal) of which has been the sale of fresh corpses to evil cults and necromancers in the city. Gobayuik knows many ways to contact representatives of the underground followings of Nerull, Incabulos, and the like, though he refuses to deal with Iuz’s cult for unrecorded reasons. Many bodies of poor, unimportant persons are taken out of the city by secret means to be animated elsewhere as zombies or skeletons, doing eternal guard duty or simple repetitive tasks. The bodies of more important people are sometimes sought for darker purposes (magical questioning, secret resurrection and sacrifice or torture, plots against living relatives, etc.).