Unglamorous medieval professions (and a free playtest)

[Quickleaf]

I'm trying to create some humorous PC background options for a mini-campaign we've decided to run set in a stock feudal fantasy society. Each PC begins as a commoner with a unique background, and I'm trying to make these as degrading and funny as possible.

For example... an artifical pig inseminator.

Pig Inseminator
Like your father before you, you've got a knack with animals. You grew up playing with the pigs, and you'd even name them. Then you learned they were killed for eating. If that wasn't bad enough, you saw the violent mating of your favorite sow with a boar. Eventually these wounds healed, and you found a trade. Though your friends gave you lots of crap for your new line of work, in your heart you knew you were saving hundreds of sows. Some sows seem to like you, and some eye you suspiciously when you're in the pen. You do wonder about a couple of those boars though; they seem to like you too much.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The Poopsmith?

http://www.homestarrunner.com/vcr_poop.html

 

[demiurge1138]

Tony Robinson presents The Worst Jobs in History

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/W/worstjobs/

That should do the trick.
Demiurge out.

 

[Numion]

I thought that people shunned the executioners.

 

[Steverooo]

Honey-Pot-Polisher:
After a chamber-pot has been emptied of its nightsoil, someone has to clean it. Lucky YOU! You polished "Honey-Pots" until you were old enough to become an adventurer! You really know your s... stuff!

 

[Bront]

Royal Procession Cleanup -
Royalty must go everywhere in style, riding their high horse. You got to pick up after it.

 

[Turanil]

Shoemaker / Tanner

From what I once heard in a movie, in the medieval times shoemaker would use cow urine for some leatherworking process. In any case, tanners would smell bad as tanning processes would create noxious stinking odors that eventually permeate the character.

I say: go for a stinking odor due to his trade, that the character cannot get rid of and badly affects his relationships...

 

[blargney the second]

Actually, tanner's even worse than that, Turanil. They used urine to remove the hairs from the hide, then they buried it in feces for a certain amount of time to soften it up. No washing machines, so it obviously had to be washed by hand.

Tony Robinson said it was hands-down the worst job of the lot.
-blarg

 

[Numion]

What about torturers? Customers are mostly unhappy, work environment is that damp old dungeon, and you have to deal and deal with human suffering. On the plus side your wife isn't going to ask how your day went, and you don't have to bring work home.

 

[Mark Hope]

I imagine that being a vermin baiter would be pretty embarassing, like a badger baiter or a rat baiter. It would be alright while you were an apprentice, but once you became a master baiter I reckon that it would lose its appeal real fast...