Game Content: The Tower of Silence (Area)

Home for the city’s gravediggers’ guild is a solemn, nearly featureless slate gray tower which matches the uniforms of its members. Crows and ravens frequent that gray tower.

What People Know

The gravediggers’ guild and its headquarters are a subject of frequent and somber conversation in the city. A character knows the following information about the guild and the guildhall with a successful History, Streetwise or Religion skill check.

• DC 14: The gravediggers’ guild is an organization responsible for enforcing laws and customs that prevent the creation of the undead. They do this by ensuring proper interment and keeping track of graves.
• DC 16: A solemn, gray tower frequented by crows and ravens is the guild’s headquarters. The tower is located close to the city walls. The proper name for the tower is “Astodan.”
• DC 18: The city’s guild here is recovering from a scandal which occurred about 20 years ago, where the masters of the guild operated in collusion with necromancers.
• DC 20: There is an entrance to the Necropolis located in the cellar of the guild’s tower.
• DC 22: Poor people may turn to the guild for inexpensive interment. The guild, in fact, owns and is responsible for the city’s catacombs and “Potter’s Field.”
• DC 24: An impressive library of records is kept and maintained by the gravediggers’ guild. This library includes catalogs of graveyard, tombs, maps, diagrams, copies of wills and assessments of the current status of all of the above.
• DC 26: Members of the guild are supposed to wear uniform cloaks and hoods. These uniforms are supposed to conceal the members identities and come in different shades of gray, the darker the color the higher the rank. However, the uniforms are unpopular and members go without them whenever they can.
• DC 28: A tangle of allegiances and vanity has put the leadership of the gravediggers’ guild at odds with the city’s government. As a result the city has restricted the guild’s access to the Necropolis in the catacombs below the city streets.

Astodan

Within sight of two graveyards inside the city walls is “Astodan,” though it is commonly called the tower of silence or the gray tower, the headquarters of the gravediggers’ guild. The stone tower resembles a step-pyramid, is gray in color and five stories tall.
The tower provides facilities for embalming, cremation, excarnation, conducting funerals, libraries for recording keeping on graveyards and similar services.
Cremations requiring a ceremony (something demanded by certain deities for proper disposal of the remains of their worshippers) are performed on the uppermost roof. Excarnations – allowing remains to be reduced to bones – are performed on platforms along the terraces of the building. Crows, ravens and vultures feed on the remains.
The exterior smells of decay and smoke. The interior, composed of wood, with curtains, nice furniture and tasteful decorations, smells of cedar and antiseptic potions. Astodan is well maintained and kept clean.
Members are allowed almost anywhere, but patrons are limited to the lobby and viewing rooms or the library and member offices if accompanied by a member.
No one dwells in the tower, though some members of the guild are present in the towers at all hours working on one project or another and a patron is usually present during the day to hire some service the guild provides. Some remains of the dead, or “clients” as the guild refers to them, are always present.
Astodan possesses one cellar, where the guild stores supplies, raw materials, remains awaiting preparation, interment or cremation and some barrels labeled “Worcestershire sauce, not embalming fluid” and other barrels labeled “embalming fluid, not Worcestershire sauce.” The guild’s entrance to the Necropolis is located in the cellar, through currently it remains locked by order of the city government.

Guild Memberships

There are two kinds of members of the gravediggers’ guild; adjunct members and full members. About four dozen people across the city are adjunct members, who are not required wear the robes and this level of membership include individuals like the Old Mister and Misses Vespillo. About two dozen people are full members and while on duty they are required to wear guild uniforms, which are full length robes the same slate gray color as the tower itself. The robe’s hood is round, heavily starched, resembles a pillbox and the wearer looks out of a horizontal slit in the front. The color of the hood and the matching gloves signifies the individuals rank in the guild, with novices wearing grey and the leadership wearing black.
Guild membership includes all races, genders and classes but excludes the chaotic evil and necromancers.

Astodan Services

Services and goods, such as performance of rituals, coffins and the like, provided by the guild may be provided by other merchants in the city somewhat cheaper, but the guild offers the luxury of one-stop shopping. It also provides some services not found elsewhere, including professional mourners – usually members of the guild out of uniform – who may be hired to increase the size of a funeral party. In keeping with their business, the guild keeps records of all graveyards, tombs, mausoleums and the like in the city and for miles around. Copies of census – a list of items, remains and any known undead – of these locations are sold, as are two kinds of maps, one only detailed enough to find the site and the second essentially building schematics. Guild libraries include information on the funerary customs of many races and cultures.

Item	Cost
Available at Astodan
Goods or Services	Cost
Adequate Map of Gravesite	10 gp.
Good map of Gravesite	25 gp
Census of Gravesite	20 gp.
Research	25 gp. per hour of access to library 5 gp to 50 gp.
Partial Cremation, Reduced to Bones	1 gp.
Complete Cremation	3
Urns	2 gp.
Ossuary	2 gp.
Coffins	10 gp.
Oilcloth	1 gp
Sarcophagi	250 gp.
Bronze Grave Marker	50 gp.
Stone Grave Markers	100 gp.
Wood Grave Markers	5 gp.
Wards against the Undead	7,500 gp.

Necropolis

To the surprise of many the gravediggers’ guild owns only one cemetery, the Necropolis. This facility runs under several neighbors across the city through the modified tunnels of an abandoned silver mine. The guild sells notches from the Necropolis for interment. A full description of the Necropolis is provided in the next chapter.

Burial Site	Cost
“Noble Section” Notch	16 gp.
“Common Section” Notch	8 gp.
“Peasant Section” Notch	4 gp.
Indigent Section/Potters Field*	1 gp.
*This is usually paid by the city government.