"Anirniq" in Inuit religion is the soul or "breath" of all living things. Put nicely, you're shepherding the souls of your dead allies into the afterlife, sheltering them from the cruel whims of the mythos. Put in another way, you're capturing their souls in a soul jar for use in your necromantic rituals.
Even ignoring the fact that this is copies 3 and 4 of your The Red-Gloved Man at a fraction of the XP, don't sleep on the draw 3 effect. This is a basically a 1 cost Cryptic Research with a more restrictive play condition. At just half the XP, that's a steal.
Consider that seekers and mystics run many disposable allies: Arcane Initiate, David Renfield, Art Student, Research Librarian, Laboratory Assistant, and the new Medical Student, and so on. It's easy to get value out of the card, be it from a Mystic killing off their Arcane Initiate from spell backlash or a Ward of Protection or from Dexter's ability, or the Seeker simply drawing through their deck, or just passive damage from the mythos. And you can even play both copies to draw six cards actionlessly!
Most Seekers can easily fit this into their decks as Seekers tend to run low resource curves with plenty of skills. Mystics on the other hand need to consider whether they'll have the resources to make use of all the cards they'll draw. It does mean it's a lot easier to actionlessly use Winds of Power (funding the cost with Prophetic) or set up your Favor of the Moon/Recharge combo.
Edit: I've also somehow missed the excellent though thematically ridiculous combo with Sacrifice. This is now my favorite two card combo.