Eccentric Jobs as a Realm Dweller

The Crypt Cleaners

The Bone-Dry Bank Account

Mortimer Grimm hadn't planned on waking up from his eternal slumber—not after centuries of resting peacefully in his tomb. But that's the funny thing about eternity: eventually, it gets boring. And worse still, Mortimer had discovered something much more troubling than boredom when he finally stirred from his crypt.

He was broke.

It all began on a very damp and foggy night. Mortimer had just risen from his sarcophagus, stretching his creaky bones and dusting off his cobwebbed coffin. Every yawn, his skull clattered, and his joints creaked like rusty door hinges. There was no particular reason for waking up after centuries, but Mortimer just had a feeling—a strange pull. Maybe it was the loneliness, maybe the silence, or perhaps an itch of curiosity about the current world.

Whatever the reason, Mortimer did what any respectable skeleton would do after such a long nap: he rummaged through his old burial chamber in search of treasure. He remembered being buried with plenty of gold, priceless trinkets, and enough wealth to keep him comfortable for another few millennia. But after turning over every stone, flipping every cursed chest, and even lifting the enchanted mattress he'd been resting on, Mortimer found... nothing. Not a single coin.

"Gone? But I was rich!" Mortimer groaned, pacing his empty tomb, his bony hands on his skull in disbelief. "How does a skeleton lose all his savings?"

As it turned out, tomb raiders had plundered most of his wealth centuries ago. And the market for ancient cursed relics had dried up—turns out, modern buyers weren't too keen on haunted treasure that came with a side of eternal doom.

Mortimer slumped back against his dusty sarcophagus. "Great. Eternity, and I'm bankrupt."

After spending a few days grumbling about the unfairness of it all, an idea struck him—a business idea, to be precise. He had centuries of experience in all things crypt-related: curses, mummies, spirits, booby traps. Surely, the living (and the not-so-living) still needed a reliable hand when it came to keeping their tombs in order. And if there was one thing Mortimer had, it was expertise in ancient burial customs.

That's when the idea of Crypt Cleaners Inc. was born.

With the promise of profit, Mortimer dusted off his old bones, polished his skull, and set off to build a team. After all, what was a skeleton without a few loyal ghouls by his side?

First, he found Balthazar, a zombie with a foul temper and an even fouler smell. Once a warlord, Balthazar now spent his days grumbling about the state of modern tombs. "Back in my day, we didn't remodel crypts," he grumbled when Mortimer found him lounging in a decaying graveyard. "They stayed cursed, haunted, and terrifying, just the way they were meant to be. But I suppose I can adjust—for the right price."

Next, Mortimer hired Casper, a ghost who had been haunting the ruins of an old castle. Casper was an expert at spooking intruders but had grown bored with the predictable routine of rattling chains and eerie moaning. "No one gets properly scared anymore," he sighed as he floated through a wall. "But I guess I can help if you need someone to handle the spirit side of things."

Then came Igor, a skeleton who had lost his job after misplacing his head one too many times in his previous gig as a crypt caretaker. "I'm real handy with tombs and traps, boss," he insisted, trying to keep his skull balanced on his neck. "Just gotta keep my head on straight this time!"

Surprisingly, one actually, willingly, came to Mortimer for direct freelancing. Esmeralda, a banshee with a voice that could shatter glass—or, more importantly, disrupt nasty curses—was next to join. She had a flair for the dramatic, always appearing in a swirl of mist and wailing about "tragic destinies," but her curse-breaking abilities were unmatched. "If you need a curse lifted, darling, leave it to me. But I'll expect....ahem...proper compensation," she added with a wink.