Practicants of Undead Physick

The Practicants of Undead Physick are a specialized class of mortal medical professionals within the Helsingfyrd Pact, trained in the extension of the immortal "lives" of undead nobility. Unlike necromancers, who command or create the undead through arcane rites, Practicants operate under a quasi-scientific, administrative model treating undeath as a state to be stabilized, optimized, and documented. Originally kept as doctors for their undead patrons to prolong their inevitable decay into madness, their work has expanded due to their connections with influential undead houses in the Pact, such House Markov. Their work now bridges medicine, engineering, and bureaucracy, and is essential to keeping the Pact’s sprawling infrastructure of skeletal workers, spectral clerks, and decaying administrators functional, as the Pact decays into inane noble feuds and undead senescence under the current Interregnum.

Educated in temple-colleges and bound by strict oaths of clerical neutrality, Practicants are granted limited autonomy and legal protections, even when stationed in dangerous or politically sensitive areas. They are often deployed aboard ships, in border fiefs, and in cities where undead populations are aging into instability. Most wear drab yet antiseptic garb and carry lacquered ledgers, syringes of embalming fluids, and censers to cleanse spiritual interference. Though publicly apolitical, many are quietly loyal to the vampiric elite, while others, like Practicant Marius, seem burdened by knowledge or allegiances they cannot safely express.