Afterlife Collectors

While the practice of medicine outside and apart of religion and magic has been introduced to Valorden through contact with the Alesians, it is Valordan doctors who have propelled the field into a new era recently. Valorden's military benefits as the first army of any nation from a medical corps and military hospitals. The nation is also the first to allow non-clerics to learn and become physicians. This thourough embrace of medicine into their society is one of the reasons that Valorden - despite its smaller size - rivals the empires and nations around it. All these advancements are largely due to the Valordan's less romanticised view of religion and - with it - death. Though one occupation or (if you might call it that) profession that has completely died out as a result of this, are the illicit gangs of graverobbers and corpse snatchers exhuming and acquiring the bodies of recently deceased for the academy of physicians to study and dissect. In the past, hiring these gangs of so-called Afterlife Collectors had been the only way for doctors to gain insight into unknown sicknesses, causes of death and anatomy in general. Of course these gangs had mainly targeted graves of the people who had no financial means of securing their loved one's remains. In the meantime, financially well-off people had closed off burial site and mausoleums to repel the desecration of the resting places. The demystificazion of death and general less taboos and realistic view of these matters has helped Valordan professionals immensly in working towards open and transparent research on the dead, without having to steal corpses from their graves. Nowadays, people are given incentives and are fairly compensated to donate themselves for a time of studying before burial. And the academy's study program for doctors and physicians thrives with new students as the profession grows less brutal and cruel.