Selczek Gobayuik, Undertaker
The quiet, unassuming shopfront of Selczek Gobayuik, Undertaker belies the brisk business that flows through its doors.
As master of the Embalmers’ Guild, Selczek has secured a near-monopoly on the legal disposal of corpses within Greyhawk.
- His establishment features a grand display of coffins, tombstones, and funeral wares, all at premium prices.
- A small chapel on-site allows for simple memorials, though most devout followers of other gods receive rites at their respective temples.
Living alone in his gloomy establishment, Selczek has amassed a considerable fortune rumored to be kept hidden in a crypt below the shop, but intruders should beware. While Selczek rarely speaks of his past, whispers suggest he knows far more about the dead than he lets on—and that his knowledge of embalming may extend beyond the natural realm.
The Guild of Embalmers and Gravediggers
The Guild of Embalmers and Gravediggers holds a monopoly over the legal disposal of corpses within the Free City of Greyhawk. Tasked with maintaining civic cemeteries and burial grounds for the Directorship, the guild has also expanded its holdings by purchasing vacant plots near the New City Cemetery, transforming them into private burial grounds for those who can afford them.
More than just caretakers of the dead, the guild is deeply entwined with the city's bureaucracy. A citizen is not officially considered deceased until the guild issues a Certificate of Death and Burial, which must then be submitted to the Inspector of Truces. Only upon this confirmation will the deceased be removed from census records and tax rolls. Failure to properly register a burial can result in continued tax liabilities, with immediate family members held responsible.
This system has, of course, led to corruption. It is rumored that certain unscrupulous guild members have been known to sell death certificates to healthy citizens, allowing them to disappear from official records—for a price.
Selczek Gobayuik, Guildmaster of the Dead
The current Guildmaster, Selczek Gobayuik, is a orc with a deep and unsettling enthusiasm for his profession. Cloaked in thick black robes, he is hideous even by orc standards, with a permanent reek of embalming fluid that makes him a pariah at high-society gatherings. While most guildmasters enjoy a degree of social prestige, Selczek does not—perhaps due to his habit of measuring up potential clients before their time or his ghoulish greetings, such as the infamous:
"Didn’t I stuff your uncle last month?"
His wagonload of coffins and pale-faced apprentices is a familiar, if unnerving, sight in the River Quarter, often arriving suspiciously fast to the scene of serious accidents. Many suspect he has eyes and ears throughout the city, ensuring he is always first to claim the dead.
Selczek’s greatest frustration? Priests. He has a deep disdain for clerics and their ‘meddlesome’ healing arts, which so often rob him of future clients. Despite his considerable wealth, he continues to reside above his mortuary in the seamier parts of the River Quarter, surrounded by his macabre collection of embalming tools, funeral relics, and carefully cataloged bones.
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