Here, have a cigar. Whatsamatter? Ah, right. Don’t know how that got in there. These things just turn up all over the place in my line of work.

So, ya wanna know how I got to the top. Well, I’ll tell ya. It all comes down to one word: respect. Ya gotta earn it. I did my shovel-time. I was in the graveyards, night after night, moving dirt with a rusty spade and these two arms.

Ya musta heard about that guy in Saint Louis. He thought, just because he found some fancy grimoire and could snap his fingers to command the dead to march, that made him a bigshot. Well, the Artificers’ Guild didn’t agree, so the next thing he knows, there’s a Filigree Angel on his doorstep and he’s being chopped up like a hard-boiled egg in one of those wire egg slicer things.

Now, an artificer ain’t ever gonna like a necromancer, but they can respect ya. Same goes for thaumaturgists, pyrokineticists, fetishists, whatever. Ya wanna make in this business? Ya gotta have respect.

Well, respect and a shit-ton of zombies.