A person dies every three to four days in Burzyn and its surrounding area, and nearly all of them end up with Dalon Ashawe. The embalmer provides a range of services and can accommodate adherents of all the legal churches. A shroud and pauper burial in the Peonian cemetery west of town costs a few pennies, while a full Laranian ceremonial interment in a temple or family mausoleum can cost several shillings.
It is illegal in Burzyn for a body to be disposed of improperly, and offenders can be fined. Dalon ensures his cheapest burial costs just less than the fine.
Dalon is the leader and brains behind Burzyn’s small Lia-Kavair-Kavair chapter and has connections to the rest of Chybisa’s underworld. His seat on the Mangai council allows him to keep abreast of the goings-on in the kingdom’s commercial community and his contacts with the churches and nobility inform him of other opportunities he can exploit.
Dalon’s longest-running scheme is as part of a “rat-line,” an escape route for Lia-Kavair fleeing justice in Kaldor, Melderyn, and even the Thardic Republic. His workshop is one of the safehouses along the route. Dalon often uses those traversing the rat-line to pull off jobs he can’t do with his regular gang members.
If a job goes wrong and there is a chance that the members of Dalon’s gang might be identified, they are known to ensure no witnesses survive. Those on the rat-line who betray Dalon are gruesomely murdered as a warning to others, regardless of how far they have left Burzyn behind them. These brutal policies have given Dalon’s gang a reputation for viciousness and retribution.
Dalon secures little of his ill-gotten gains here. Most of the profit from many years of work is secreted in tombs in the Laranian mausoleum in the town graveyard or in vaults in the temple crypt, waiting for a rainy day.
Dalon learned the embalmer’s trade from his parents and inherited their guild franchise when they died. Although he does his job with workmanlike competence, his true passion is leading the local “thieves’ guild.”
Dalon is well-respected in the community and a member of the Mangai council. He often visits the Laranian temple and is known by all the clerics there. He has even had an audience with King Verlid VII about funeral arrangements.
A lack of spouse and children allows Dalon to conduct his clandestine business free from observation. His real family is his gang. His chief lieutenants work in the shop while controlling a handful of petty criminals and violent thugs. Dalon does none of the dirty work himself, either as a Lia-Kavair or an embalmer.
Dalon, 53, is intelligent, shrewd, and prefers to plan things out rather than acting impulsively. He is decisive and often harsh with his gang. The public persona he cultivates, however, is the opposite: impulsive, kind, understanding, bumbling, and easily led. None of the townsfolk he deals with suspect he has the wit or cunning to lead a criminal gang.
Fitting for an embalmer, Dalon dresses somberly in dark colors, favoring black with no decoration; he is seldom seen in public without a black cowl. His features are very ordinary and he has no identifying marks nor a distinctive hair style. He is deliberately nondescript and unlikely to be identified in poor light.