Dubious Business Practices

I have often felt that the real sadness in the life of Mordan Casketrule was that he had managed to fall into two entirely disreputable professions.
In his youth he was regarded as intelligent with an analytical and enquiring mind. He was a success at university but was tempted into the study of the magical arts.

This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. Herbalists of all sorts are sought after. Illusionists, provided they remain entertainers and don’t enter into the world of finance, are well regarded. Alas for Mordan, necromancers lack social cachet.

Apparently, and here I do not speak from personal experience, necromancy is an expensive field to research. This I can understand. Herbalists and illusionists can support themselves, providing goods, or at least services, for paying customers. In all candour, even demonologists can turn a relatively honest dreg to help fund their infamous work.

Mordan obviously analysed his situation and realised that he was lucky to have some money. His family, if not wealthy, was comfortably off. So he branched out into usury, lending out money at interest, and using his surplus to both live and to further fund his researches. Financially he was a success. Socially he was less successful.

I have wondered about this. It strikes me that there is something very human here. I would go so far as to describe it as a law of humanity. Those within a profession who are less successful will always seek to belittle those within the profession who do succeed.

You see it widely. I have noted it among writers where those who struggle to sell their works claim that they are authentic artists, whilst the successful writer whose work is much sought after and is lavishly remunerated, has ‘sold out’ or is a mere ‘hack’ who writes for the uneducated and ill-informed. But other professions show the same trait. Look at doctors, teachers, or even, and I say this to my embarrassment, poets. The sneers I have to endure from my less gifted compatriots would cut me to the quick, were I in the habit of taking such intellectual pygmies seriously.

But in the case of Mordan, it also seems to be a trait common among usurers. Morden was a successful usurer. Looked at dispassionately, any right thinking avarice of usurers ought to be delighted to entice him into their partnership. But no, they used his necromancy as a reason to snub him. This at least allowed them to camouflage their own inadequacy.

On the other hand, it seems that necromancers are every bit as petty as usurers in this regard. Whilst the profession is not especially companionable, Mordan was exceptional in the amount of backbiting comments he got from other necromancers. This was obviously inspired by pure jealousy. Other necromancers who struggled to find funds were never going to speak well of one whose researches were comparatively well funded.

When it came to domestic arrangements, Mordan, like most necromancers, lived alone. But he remained in close contact with his sister and her family. Indeed some of her sons joined him in the usury business. (But none showed any interest in necromancy, much to Mordan’s secret sadness.) Indeed I know that the whole family showed considerable affection for their eccentric but affable uncle.

There were people who had their doubts about Mordan’s business practices and raised questions as to how ethical they were. With other, (admittedly lesser) usurers, should you die, the repayment of the debt was at risk. Some usurers tried to write the documentation so that the debt devolved onto the heirs who could either continue the payments or be sold into indentured servitude to at least contribute something. Indeed I know one usurer who regarded it as a point in his favour. Whereas other usurers would just evict a widow, putting her out on the street, this one claimed to have looked after the welfare of one widow he had to recover monies off, selling her contract to a bordello that would at least provide her with a bed.

But with Mordan, he saw no reason why the mere death of the debtor should cause problems. If the debtor couldn’t pay off the debt when alive, they could pay it off when dead. Whether this was through their continued labour or contributing parts to further researches seemed to be a matter of chance.

This caused more bad feeling than you would have thought possible. Again other usurers tried to take the moral high ground. They would show how those whose indentures they sold went on to live long, if not necessarily well remunerated, lives.

Whether this constant carping had an impact on Mordan I don’t know, but when he did die it was in a complicated accident involving him apparently involuntary ingesting a potion he was experimenting with. His family grieved, I believe genuinely. But rather than send his body to the corpse boat to be dropped into the deep waters with the rest of those who pass away in Port Naain, they arranged for a funeral plot in a cemetery north of the city. Here his grave is distinguished by wrought iron work that I have been assured is purely ornamental.

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Should you wish to know more about life in Port Naain

As a reviewer commented, “Thanks to the inimitable generosity of Tallis Steelyard, in this selection of tales, we are given further insight to the denizens – sorry, I meant ‘Citizens’ – of Port Naain, who are an education in the diversity of humankind, from physical through spiritual, from adroitness through haplessness, from … but I think you get my drift.”