Deceased mortals of no great renown, honour or personal merit or demerit, the Clerks of the Incunabulum are put to work to perfect their mediocrity in the service of Kelemvor in the great limbo between the realms of paradise and the realms of the infernal. Of all the realms of limbo, the Incunabulum is the closest to the mortal realm and a natural bridge between the spheres of the living and the dead.
Generally pudgy, hunchbacked and dressed in grey flaxen rags, their visages are fixed behind carved ivory masks that gradually grow more and more featureless over time.
The clerks are seated in eternally tall columns of carrels, each with a desk, a quill, and a bookshelf. They receive intercessors from the mortal realm with mundane but meaningful requests: clarifications of testamentary instruments, the locations of important family heirlooms and the like.
What little respite a Clerk knows from its drudgery comes on the First of Autumnfall of each year, the Day of the Dead: one of the few holidays celebrated by the Kindly Ones and the only one celebrated in Hell.
On that date, the Clerks are permitted access to the delicacies and luxuries of the Atrium while the Potentates are away, and the clerical orders of the Kindly Ones have a standing invitation to socialize. The holiday is not theirs, however, but the Clerks' -- and on this day each Clerk is permitted to ask one question of the living. Some even ask a favour. The Kindly Ones have noticed and recorded in their lore, however, that those Clerks that
do ask a question are never seen again, not quite. That is not unusual, given the countless number of them, but even when the same file is requested a second time, the Clerk responding is behind a mask that has become duller somehow, less detailed.
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