The Final Contract

In Karnath, during these increasingly difficult times, it has become more and more common for individuals to sell the future rights to their own corpses. This practice is called "signing the final contract." The payouts are negotiated from person to person. Typically the amount is larger for physically superior bodies, but some brokers will pay handsomely if death is expected soon. Although necromancers, chirurgeons, and even the military are frequent buyers, for the most part the bodies are raised after the seller expires to provide cheap, uncomplaining, tireless labor at plantations and factories across the nation. The contracts have become so prevalent among the nation's impoverished and downtrodden that a number of colloquialisms for the practice has entered the common parlance. Some of the more colorful include: "ghoul's gold," "trading rot for riches," "earning one's corpse coppers," and "taking the dead-man's deal."