Putting in the Hours is a piece of fiction for Moüd: The City of Bones, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara, which is available in versions for 5th Edition and Pathfinder.

It’s not uncommon for the more junior members of organisations to do the less pleasant or tedious tasks that said organisation needs doing, and the Silver Wraiths, despite their more unusual nature, were no different.

Amalia al’Tiran was bent over a workbench in the cooler depths of the College of Bones in Moüd’s North District, scrimshawing the bones of a skeleton with arcane marks in Hausfaran. Essential work, as it identified that the undead bearing the marks was created by the guild, but no less tedious for it. The Silver Wraiths prefer working with the corporeal undead and, given the choice, Amalia preferred working with the raw materials of skeletons to those of zombies. It’s cleaner work, as all the meat has been removed from the bones, and that’s not the only benefit.

The guild has preservative methods to keep the flesh of those bodies intended to be zombies fresher, and the bodies were often kept chilled as well but, even with those, the dead bodies had a tendency to smell like, well, rotting flesh and, should those preservative methods fail, the heat of the desert could make smells rapidly far more unpleasant, not to mention that the flesh itself would be revolting to work with.

Amalia finished scrimshawing the bone she was working on, and moved onto the next with a quiet sigh. Essential, but boring, work, and she couldn’t wait to be finished with this stage of her apprenticeship so that she could move onto the more interesting jobs. But the time needed to be put in first, and doing the job she was given efficiently and competently ensured that her superiors would consider her worthy of ascending in the guild. Scrimshawing the bones of skeletons it was, then. And at least it wasn’t zombies.