Habilist

“clever people”; what the citizens of the Half-Continent think of as a “scientists”, who study and are involved in one, some, or all of the pursuits of habilistics. Includes dispensurists, skolds, scourges, physicians, surgeons, viscautorists (“gut-growers”, those who grow organs such as are required in sthenicons and gastrines, a process known as viscautory), even taxidermists. The darker students of habilistics are the black habilists or morbidists: the necrologists (those who raise corpses to life); the cadavarists (those who make monsters from parts, an illegal discipline called fabercadavery); the therospeusists (who grow monsters from living matter, an illegal art known as therospeusia (said “ther-ros- spew-zee-ah”); or the transmogrifers (surgeons who operate on people to make lahzars, a process known as transmogrification or clysmosurgia). Though these dark philosophies are illegal throughout the Empire, they are welcomed in other realms, such as Wörms or Sinster (yet their secret work continues unabated). Habilists are sometimes derogatively called cankourmen, for all their dabbling about with chemicals, and this term is often used to especially mean a black habilists.