Worldbuilding: corpse-stealing in a fantasy world

[Morrison]

I'm working on a kind of steampunkish setting based on Victorian London and I'm trying to figure out a way to make Burke-and-Hare style graverobbing make sense. Which is to say, stealing bodies from graves, not simply stealing any valuables they were buried with.
Historically, there was a demand for fresh cadavers because the hospitals needed them for surgeons to practice on, but this wouldn't make as much sense in a fantasy world where Cure spells exist. Who needs to practice on corpses when you can just pray for spells every morning?
The obvious tweak is that the graverobbers are selling parts to necromancers to make undead creatures, but that doesn't quite fit what I'm going for either. Selling corpses to necromancers is an unambiguously evil act, and I want it to be more morally ambiguous, as it was historically: an unsavoury act, committed by unsavoury people, that nonetheless is in service of a social good.

At the same time, I also don't want this setting to be so exaggeratedly grimdark that the cadavers need to be ground up to make Soylent Green or something.

Anyone have a solution?

[Xervous]

Bones are good for making holy symbols and/or are an important material component. Rarer and more valuable are the bones of the creatures that died peacefully. Short lived animals are the officially preferred option but it’s a sellers market and longer lived animals supposedly give better results.

Disincentivizes murdering to produce corpses. Sets up incentives to rob rich graves because you know they went out comfortably.

[Grim Portent]

Make various ailments need higher level magic or mundane treatments. Cure should be able to fix injuries, things like cuts and mildly broken bones, but stuff like cancers, impaction, organ failure and so on should need Restoration or medical intervention. This makes it still important for physicians to understand how the body works so they can treat it, because powerful clerics who can cure non-wound based ailments are rare and likely to be too busy to treat every sick person in the slums.

Since it's still important to understand the internal workings of the body, that makes stealing bodies, or making them as Burke and Hare did, to sell to medical schools a viable market.

This can also tie into some physicians learning the dark arts to try and further their own mundane medicine through the study of unliving cadavers. Not just anyone can learn to snap their fingers and cure liver disease, but almost anyone can learn to animate the dead. Can an undead liver be used to treat liver failure? It's certainly worth a try for the morbid and the desperate.

[Morrison]

Bones are good for making holy symbols and/or are an important material component. Rarer and more valuable are the bones of the creatures that died peacefully. Short lived animals are the officially preferred option but it’s a sellers market and longer lived animals supposedly give better results.

Disincentivizes murdering to produce corpses. Sets up incentives to rob rich graves because you know they went out comfortably.

This is a decent idea, definitely. I kind of like the idea that the temptation does exist to murder to produce more corpses, so I might drop the bit about dying peacefully.

[Xervous]

This is a decent idea, definitely. I kind of like the idea that the temptation does exist to murder to produce more corpses, so I might drop the bit about dying peacefully.

Do you really need to drop it? We’re talking black market vendors and product that can’t be tested before use. The truth of it could be specific spells demand a peacefully dead bone, but the majority don’t care. Sprinkle a bit of scandal when the spell fails because the components were questionably sourced. What’s the caster going to do, admit they dealt with someone trucking murder corpses?

[Keltest]

Even if joe apprentice level 1 cleric can wave a wand of cure wounds over a body to fix basic stuff, society is at a level where people want to know how things work. There could be a fairly substantial subset of the scientific community thats willing to buy corpses simply for the sake of taking them apart to see what does what, not for the sake of medicine or anything like that, but simply because they want to know.

[Morrison]

Make various ailments need higher level magic or mundane treatments. Cure should be able to fix injuries, things like cuts and mildly broken bones, but stuff like cancers, impaction, organ failure and so on should need Restoration or medical intervention. This makes it still important for physicians to understand how the body works so they can treat it, because powerful clerics who can cure non-wound based ailments are rare and likely to be too busy to treat every sick person in the slums.

Since it's still important to understand the internal workings of the body, that makes stealing bodies, or making them as Burke and Hare did, to sell to medical schools a viable market.

This can also tie into some physicians learning the dark arts to try and further their own mundane medicine through the study of unliving cadavers. Not just anyone can learn to snap their fingers and cure liver disease, but almost anyone can learn to animate the dead. Can an undead liver be used to treat liver failure? It's certainly worth a try for the morbid and the desperate.

Yeah, this is a very good setup. Maybe conventional medicine is largely seen as being for the poor, which is part of why it's underfunded and can't get legal access to many cadavers in the first place. Maybe also there are religious divisions that make some people who can afford a Restoration spell unwilling to get it from certain temples (and vice versa), so hospitals are also kind of a nondenominational common ground for everybody.

[Morrison]

Do you really need to drop it? We’re talking black market vendors and product that can’t be tested before use. The truth of it could be specific spells demand a peacefully dead bone, but the majority don’t care. Sprinkle a bit of scandal when the spell fails because the components were questionably sourced. What’s the caster going to do, admit they dealt with someone trucking murder corpses?

Good point.

[Morrison]

Even if joe apprentice level 1 cleric can wave a wand of cure wounds over a body to fix basic stuff, society is at a level where people want to know how things work. There could be a fairly substantial subset of the scientific community thats willing to buy corpses simply for the sake of taking them apart to see what does what, not for the sake of medicine or anything like that, but simply because they want to know.

Yeah, but that doesn't really have the moral ambiguity I want. I want the graverobbers to be fulfilling a genuine social need beyond mere curiosity. I think it's more interesting if there's a tangible social good that comes from this extremely unsavoury and occasionally murderous business.

[Keltest]

Yeah, but that doesn't really have the moral ambiguity I want. I want the graverobbers to be fulfilling a genuine social need beyond mere curiosity. I think it's more interesting if there's a tangible social good that comes from this extremely unsavoury and occasionally murderous business.

You said this was steampunkish, right? Scientific exploration would be a genuine societal need. Invention and knowledge are kind of big things in steampunk.

I guess my overall point here is that just because magic exists doesnt mean that medicine would be considered useless or unimportant.

[Unoriginal]

Healing magic isn't the be all, end all. A Cure spell won't help people when their lungs are filled with toxic smoke, their bones broke from a bad fall or their liver is giving up after years of heavy drinking. Higher-tier magic can reverse even death, but that's not something the vast majority of people could afford, and even having access to someone capable of doing it is easier said than done. Non-magical healing as its places even in a world with healing magic, as Keltest noted.

Also as Keltest noted, people will want to know how things work, and that includes how bodies work.

But before going into why there would be a need to steal corpses, the question should be: why is legitimate access to corpses forbidden/limited?

The obvious answer is: "people don't want undead or corpse-using constructs like Flesh Golems to be made", which is fair, but you'd think that there would be some kind of license or governing authority allowing the people they approve and judge unlikely to create corpse monsters to work with corpses.

[Zhorn]

Historically, there was a demand for fresh cadavers because the hospitals needed them for surgeons to practice on, but this wouldn't make as much sense in a fantasy world where Cure spells exist. Who needs to practice on corpses when you can just pray for spells every morning?
I don't see any reason as to why you cannot just continue to use that historical reasoning.
Sure, your setting has cure wounds and other healing magic, but is there any reason why it has to be a high magic setting where such things are common enough to the point that it eliminated the demand for physical sciences?

This is the same problem I see pop up in many settings (not the corpse thing, the magic one), where the assumption is just because healing magic exists, therefor all medical problems are non-issues. The simple solution being to scale back how common spellcasters are, to the point that while everyone knows a few casters, the number of people that can use magic per hundred or per thousand is still in the single digits. And then of those than can there's the separations of those that have specifically healing magic vs those that don't, and then of the healing capable ones how many heals they can do in a day vs the demands of the population, or even vs the other things they would be trying to do with their spell slots instead.

[JackPhoenix]

Just because creating undead is unambiguously evil (or, well, not good) in the default 5e, it doesn't have to be in your setting. Perhaps the undead aren't evil, murderous monsters but useful tools, but their creation may still be illegal... either due to outdated beliefs and superstitions, or better yet, because whoever is in charge wants to maintain their monopoly.

[Burley]

The grave robbers steal fresh bodies, whose spirits may still be attached. They bind their souls into containers and sell them as batteries. It's a steampunk world, so, batteries would be hot commodities. That could be a plot to unfurl much later, maybe once the party has begun using and relying on the batteries.

[Temperjoke]

You might be over-thinking things a bit. Graverobbers exist because there is a market for corpses. Morally-speaking, graverobbing is considered an evil act in most cultures regardless of the reasons for it. So I wouldn't try to come up with "good" reasons for graverobbers to exist, unless your players are going to actively move against them. If it's a steampunkish world, then the entire surgeon thing is perfectly plausible. They're still going to want to examine bodies that died from certain conditions to learn about the progression of diseases and poisons. A trope of many steampunk settings are body augments, and people are going to need to understand anatomy to create and install them.

At a world-building level, I think it's enough to understand that it exists without going into too close an examination of it. That sort of need would be for a specific campaign or adventure to worry about.

[J-H]

Healing magic isn't the be all, end all. A Cure spell won't help people when their lungs are filled with toxic smoke, their bones broke from a bad fall or their liver is giving up after years of heavy drinking. Higher-tier magic can reverse even death, but that's not something the vast majority of people could afford, and even having access to someone capable of doing it is easier said than done. Non-magical healing as its places even in a world with healing magic, as Keltest noted.
I was going to go with something like this, but you beat me to 80% of it. Healing magic won't fix your liver... but a compatible liver from a freshly dead body can be put in with a pretty good degree of success thanks to Cure Wounds on the bleeding and Cure Disease on the infection. Finding a compatible organ may require harvesting 5-10 livers, but divination helps if you can't check blood types or whatever it is that's associated with organ rejection.
Sprucing up a moderately dead liver would probably involve some specialized variant of "Gentle Repose" or "Restore Necrotized tissue".

Organ transplants from the recently dead, for the low low price of some bodies and a few 3rd level spell slots.

[Clistenes]

Are there enough magic users to treat all the population? If there are that many magic users, you are getting into post-scarcity Tippyverse territory...

If magic users are scarce enough, they would sell their spell slots at a high price, and poor people would have to resort to mundane medicine, surgery and pharmaceutics, so there would be a need for surgeons.

Also, since it is a fantasy world, maybe you can magically fix and reanimate limbs and organs from dead bodies and use them for organ transplantation?

Another option is the production of electricity-powered Frankenstein's monster-like Flesh Golems as workers, bodyguards or enforcers. It would fit the Steampunk theme... The army and factories could even legally buy the bodies of poor people from their families en masse for that purpose, but grave robbers could steal bodies and sell them using forged papers (you could sell your grandpa bodies a hundred times...).

[Keravath]

You might want to keep in mind that stealing corpses in a D&D type world is probably one of the greatest possible crimes.

Resurrection magic exists. Even commoners know this. They may not have the funds or the ability to raise loved ones but they may hope to do so in the future. They may save for their entire life so that a lost sibling, spouse, offspring or other greatly loved relative may one day be restored to life. Stealing their corpses destroys any possibility of such dreams. Some folks might keep a part of their loved one embalmed just in case they might be resurrected in the future so as to avoid issues with disappearing corpses. However, whether they keep a selection of body parts or not, graves in a D&D world are far more than a place to remember a valued lost person. Corpses represent a possible future for that person, even if they can't afford it now.

Consider an adventurer whose family was killed by a ravaging tribe of orcs. They might initially seek vengeance but as their power and ability grows they will likely want to resurrect their lost family so that they might share in the wealth they have gained from adventuring. That adventurer would react very badly if someone came along and took their corpses, stealing any possible future for them and I think society might react equally negatively to the concept whether they are being stolen for scientific reasons or to support a local necromancer making undead or any other purpose - even the manufacture of holy symbols.

Just something to consider :) ... magic in D&D would have a lot of ramifications that most games really don't factor in ...

[Brookshw]

But before going into why there would be a need to steal corpses, the question should be: why is legitimate access to corpses forbidden/limited?

The obvious answer is: "people don't want undead or corpse-using constructs like Flesh Golems to be made", which is fair, but you'd think that there would be some kind of license or governing authority allowing the people they approve and judge unlikely to create corpse monsters to work with corpses.

And people aren't too fond of having their loved ones dug up. Violent mobs used to attack medical schools irl for this reason, and I guess you can argue property rights in the corpse passed according to a will or laws of intestate.

To your other point, limited access to healing magic certainly suggests the value of people practicing and developing medical skills and knowledge.

[Unoriginal]

And people aren't too fond of having their loved ones dug up. Violent mobs used to attack medical schools irl for this reason, and I guess you can argue property rights in the corpse passed according to a will or laws of intestate.

I was talking about why people would forbid or limit the legitimate acquisition of corpses, not why people would object to corpse stealing.

Even if there is a religious edict against studying corpses, well, D&D usually don't have one religion for everyone, so said edict would be limited to where the religion has power and influence.

[Brookshw]

I was talking about why people would forbid or limit the legitimate acquisition of corpses, not why people would object to corpse stealing.

Even if there is a religious edict against studying corpses, well, D&D usually don't have one religion for everyone, so said edict would be limited to where the religion has power and influence.

The moral outrage seems as good a reason as any to pass such laws, I don't see why religion would play a necessary part. Plus the more supernatural concerns you referenced. The DM could offer a licensing route, though that would be counter to the purpose

Alternatively, you could offer the license but researchers could find the corpses available from authorized suppliers aren't sufficient for their purposes. This is similar to a real problem in academia and research currently, where if you want to research marijuana you need to purchase it from the one and only university authorized to grow and distribute it for research purposes, except that strain is not representative of what people actually use so the data you can generate is always sub-par.

[Unoriginal]

The moral outrage seems as good a reason as any to pass such laws

There is no reason for moral outrage if the acquisition was done legitimately, aka with the approval of everyone who have a say in the dead person's fate.



Alternatively, you could offer the license but researchers could find the corpses available from authorized suppliers aren't sufficient for their purposes.

Quite true. Even when something can be acquired legitimately, there will always be people who want or need more

[Brookshw]

There is no reason for moral outrage if the acquisition was done legitimately, aka with the approval of everyone who have a say in the dead person's fate.


Maybe? Historical precedent suggests outrages is the default state, it took wide transparency and education about the benefits before a process was offered for legitimate acquisition. Bit of an evolution, right? So seems like it depends which point on that evolution you're setting the standard for a campaign. If modeling it on the industrial age, well, you know where that leaves the standard.

[Unoriginal]

Maybe? Historical precedent suggests outrages is the default state, it took wide transparency and education about the benefits before a process was offered for legitimate acquisition. Bit of an evolution, right? So seems like it depends which point on that evolution you're setting the standard for a campaign. If modeling it on the industrial age, well, you know where that leaves the standard.

Outrage is only the default state when there is a socio-cultural and generally religious standard about how examining or generally interacting with corpses outside of specific rituals is outrageous.

D&D settings do not have to have that context.

[Keltest]

Outrage is only the default state when there is a socio-cultural and generally religious standard about how examining or generally interacting with corpses outside of specific rituals is outrageous.

D&D settings do not have to have that context.

Technically no, but corpses are gross, potentially emotionally painful, and especially before the advent of modern medicine have very few legitimate uses. Personally, i would take some convincing for an unburied corpse to be seen as anything other than really weird by the common folk.

[Brookshw]

Outrage is only the default state when there is a socio-cultural and generally religious standard about how examining or generally interacting with corpses outside of specific rituals is outrageous.

D&D settings do not have to have that context.

I'm not sure I agree with that, lots of cultures venarate the elderly and treated remains with respect and care outside of any religious commonality. Agree to disagree maybe.

[IsaacsAlterEgo]

Just have some neutral necromancers who use bodies to make zombie/skeleton workers that do dangerous but helpful jobs that society needs. There's nothing inherently evil about necromancy.

Alternatively, just have medicine and doctors still exist? Just because a chosen few can heal wounds doesn't necessarily mean that everyone would have access to that level of care, and mundane medicine might be the only option available to a great deal of people, maybe for financial reasons or because they don't subscribe to the same belief system as the local clerics, etc.

[Carlobrand]

I don't know what the fuss is about. I'm trying to come up with a way to animate a body so that it remains intact indefinitely rather than rotting and stinking up the place. If I can perfect my techniques, I will revolutionize the labor market with laborers who will work without complaint or need of rest. You'd think they'd understand the significance of my work but, no, all I get are police coming to my door asking about missing bodies. If not for the money I pay the judge, I'd have the bloody fools in here searching the place - not that they'd find anything, but it's so infuriating to have to dump the work onto the black pudding in the basement oubliette every time they show up.

[strangebloke]

I don't know what the fuss is about. I'm trying to come up with a way to animate a body so that it remains intact indefinitely rather than rotting and stinking up the place. If I can perfect my techniques, I will revolutionize the labor market with laborers who will work without complaint or need of rest. You'd think they'd understand the significance of my work but, no, all I get are police coming to my door asking about missing bodies. If not for the money I pay the judge, I'd have the bloody fools in here searching the place - not that they'd find anything, but it's so infuriating to have to dump the work onto the black pudding in the basement oubliette every time they show up.

perfect example yeah. This is the fooking victorian era mate, undead being used as laborers in some kind of hellish grist mill is basically par for the course. Legality or illegality isn't a morally driven concept, especially not in a victorian-esque setting. Lest we forget, this was the era of imperialism and conquest abroad, an era in which hundreds of thousands were killed in the name of industry and acquisition of resources.

As for research purposes, its easy to see that some sort of vile experimenter might want a body or twelve for some kind of purpose. Remember, 5e is not a prescriptive all-encompassing system. Our foul researcher here might be trying to develop a manual of flesh golem creation, or might be trying to extract certain vital reagents from the corpses so that he can improve his ooze experiments. Perhaps he's a wizard with a medical bent, trying to create a new and improved soldier for her majesty's army.

All of these things and more are possible. The researcher himself doesn't want to bother digging up corpses (or murdering people to create said corpses) and while his research might be legal, the legal means for acquiring corpses might be expensive and slow. Persuading a grieving loved one to allow their dearly departed's corpse to be turned into fluids is no easy task. This is where the 'resurrection man' comes in. They can claim to be getting the corpses legitimately, and so the researcher has plausible deniability while still getting what he wants cheaply and quickly.

[Droodicus]

The state religion mandates all bodies must be consecrated and buried. The non state approved religion believes that for the soul to pass on/reincarnate the earthly vessel needs to be completely destroyed, I.e. burnt.

Enter two reasons for grave robbing.
1. The new religion is gaining momentum but not enough to overthrow the grip on customs so people are hiring grave robbers to pinch the body post burial and burn it.

2. State religion post burial are secretly digging up the bodies and stockpiling an unread defence force under the city to protect against X threat ( be that another city, world ending calamities or even to move against the new age religion)