Setting: The Morticians

Since I'm having a case of writer's block with how to get to the next part of Yaris' story, let's talk about the Mortuary Colleges.

The Mortuary Colleges and the people who staff them are a result of a universe that has a cycle of reincarnation and souls who are unable to move on for any number of reasons.  Members of Mortuary Colleges are collectively called Morticians, and not only do they know magic to deal with ghosts, they are also required to know a wide variety of funeral traditions.

Ghosts (and demons by extension) used to be a lot more common until there was serious movements to understand how a human soul became a ghost.  This didn't happen in any single place but it was something each human culture had to come to grips with.  Different funeral customs naturally arose and different schools of thoughts also proliferated on how to deal with ghosts.  When the different human cultures came into contact with each other after the rise of voidships, there were brush wars fought over the correct funeral rites.

Eventually various conclaves of proto-Morticians figured out that there were a lot of common elements among the various funeral rites and started cataloging and codifying them.  This lead to the idea that there were certain patterns to convince restless souls to move on into the next life.  At least, most human cultures believed in some form of reincarnation; a few outliers believed that there was some kind of afterlife realm.  Neither belief has been explicitly proven.

The codification of funeral rites lead to the establishment of the Mortuary Colleges and the major sects of the Colleges.  While each college serves as a center for the local peoples to conduct funeral rites and thus had to adhere to local customs in these matters, the sects represent broad philosophical methodologies on how to handle the unquiet dead.  The Mortician's Order as a whole serves as a larger educational and administrative body to make sure that souls pass into whatever comes next without bothering the living.

The Morticians are not only responsible for overseeing rites of passage for the departed, they also serve as a kind of psychological counselor corps.  By doing their best to ensure people live fulfilled lives, they are also reducing the incidences of ghosts.  So many Morticians are also pillars of the community they serve, acting as mediators in disputes (despite often having no actual legal authority) and psychologists to the people around them.

The two major sects of Morticians are the Eulogists and the Sin-Eaters.  There may be more, though I have not determined what those are at the moment.  There are a few minor sects and two heretical sects as well.  While most ghosts will tend to need to be handled by a Mortician who understand the funerary customs of their original culture, there are ghosts whose anchors to the living world require the services of a different sect for a variety of reasons.

The Eulogists essentially speak on behalf of the dead to communicate their final wishes and desires.  They explicitly do not act on behalf of the dead except to communicate with the living.  They are also known as Speakers For The Dead.  The purview of Eulogists also covers those ghosts who simply want to be remembered to the living.  Father Oren is a Eulogist and has been assigned to Ashan because the local funeral rites are primarily Eulogist in how they are carried out.

The Sin-Eaters, however, agree to take on the burdens of ghosts, metaphorically or not, in order to assure the dead that their work will be completed.  Sometimes these are simple tasks such as finishing a love-letter, while some more arduous.  More than a few Sin-Eaters have had to finish the construction of a building to put a ghost at rest.  Yanis was a Sin-Eater before studying under the Purifiers, and personally believes that it is important that the dead's tasks be completed.

The Purifiers are a small sect that deal with demons, and are a more recent development in the Mortuary Orders.  They were inducted into the Mortuary Orders when it was discovered that demons were a malevolent and more powerful form of ghost.  Demons are rather rare and the mechanisms that create them are not anywhere near as understood as the circumstances behind ghosts.  The current school of thought is that a ghost becomes a demon when their base emotions overwhelm and consume the essential spark of humanity in a soul.

There are two heretical sects of Morticians.  They are heretical because their doctrines and aims are antithetical to the other sects.  The Necromongers seek to create more ghosts and learn how to control them.  The Goetics seek to understand demons by creating and controlling them.

Strangely enough, the Morticians have no records of ghosts originating from beastkin or the starfolk, leading humans at large to simply assume that beastkin and starfolk have no souls.  Most Morticians believe that the vastly different cultures and lifestyles of the beastkin lead to a different process for their souls after death.  As for the starfolk, the Morticians aren't entirely sure that they die at all.