Agatha the Nun

Agatha is the Nun at the Crossroads, and she is the source of every corpse you will ever work on. Bodies arrive because she sends them, once a week, and how good they are is a number that only her quests move.

That puts her upstream of two systems at once. A zombie is worth exactly what its organs are worth, and organs come out of the body she sent you, so she quietly sets the ceiling on your workforce and on your graveyard rating in the same delivery.

Every corpse comes from her, and they are graded

She does not hand them over out of goodwill. The arrangement is weekly, grudging, and she is clear about the quality you are getting at the start.

Fine. I’ll give you a couple once a week. The poorest of the lot.

Come on [Wrath] and take them.

Agatha, agreeing to supply corpses

The quality is a tier, and it runs from zero to three. You begin the game on nothing, and each step up is one of her quests rather than anything you can build, buy or research.

The reason to care is downstream. Red skulls on a zombie are the sum of the organs inside the body, each of which tops out at three, so a better tier is more red skulls on the Autopsy Table I before you have done anything clever. It is also more white skulls for the graveyard, which is the same delivery pulling in both directions.

I can pray harder before sending them to you… Then they’ll have more skulls.

But right now I don’t really feel like it. Unless…

Unless you could fix things up around here. Nicer digs would definitely make my prayers more… effective.

Agatha, on what a better corpse costs you

What her reputation unlocks

Three locks, and between them they own the graveyard and the church. Like every reputation node they cost no spheres and cannot be bought, so the only route is her quest list.

Those are not side upgrades. Gravestones and decor are how a grave stops being a hole in the ground, which is the whole of your graveyard rating, and the carpets and illumination are two of the biggest single lifts to church quality, which decides how many people turn up to a sermon.

How to raise it

Ten at a time, from sixteen quests, the same flat system every named character uses. Several of hers also drop Town Gratitude on the way past, which makes her chain one of the better-paying ones in the game.

The Nun Also Reads is the one that goes wrong, and the table line above is the journal being misleading rather than us. Asking is not the task: she refuses, names a choir as her price, and the sermon she then promises to attend only counts if there is a zombie singing in the choir.

The Donkey, and the well in the crypt

Her longest running objection is not to you. The Donkey carries the bodies, and she has views about the Donkey.

No! Not that filthy animal! I have seen him in my visions. He is an Emissary of Darkness!

Yet his foulsome filthiness still embraces this place of final rest.

I require water to clean everything up after him.

Agatha, on the Donkey

The fix is a job. Beneath the Crossroads there is an ancient crypt with a well at its center, and repairing that well is what buys the Donkey the right to keep hauling corpses.

Beneath us lies an ancient crypt. In its center, there stands a well.

Its water is said to be sacred… strong enough to defeat even this animal stench.

Repair it, and I may permit your creature to handle the corpses.

Agatha, naming her price