There is a good deal of variation among preindustrial societies in regards to who's on top. In some societies warrior classes reign over all while in other cases fighters are seen as a regrettable necessity. Merchants may reign where coin is king or may be marginalized as being good for nothing peddlers who neither till nor make or fight but just move stuff from point A to point B. Guilds of artisans may hold power and prestige for their skill and influence, or men who work with their hands for a living might be seen as doing work more befitting of slaves. But there is one group which you'll almost inevitably find at the bottom. They're known by many names: untouchables, gong farmers, nightsoil men, scavengers and other such names. What they do is take away the poo.





They live nearby towns, cities and villages though usually outside of them. Every night they go around town with their wheelbarrows, carts, shovels and buckets and collect the contents of chamber pots, outhouses and privys from houses, workshops, tenements, manors and taverns for a copper every week and wheel them away. Urine is sold to fullers, alchemists, gunpowder makers and other people with a need for amonia while feces is is dumped into a big hole along with vegetable scraps, sawdust and other such organic detritus. There the fetid mixture is stirred about by them and their smelly children until the hole is full, at which point it's left to ferment and dry out as a new hole is filled. A year or so latter they shovel it again, this time into sacks for farmers who use it to fertilize their fields. In truth some of them can make more than the average peasant, but since they're smelly and are at risk of catching sicknesses from handling so much human waste they at best have a hard time making friends with others who don't deal in Nightsoil and often are legally ostracized by society. Most of them are them were born into this pungent lot which only the most diligent can excise themselves from while a few fall to the bottom of the social heap and get collected by this class along with the aftermath of dinner.

