Chapter 5

After introducing Germaine LeNez and her apprentices to the various shops they would need to work with, Ludmila parted ways with the gaggle of excited villagers and returned home.

‘Home’ was a temporary residence – one of the three-storey shophouses built around what was currently the sole plaza in the harbour’s commercial district. The move was made while she was away, before the old hill was refashioned into the one currently looming over the island. With the uncertainties that came with her new state, she regretted having chosen a location so close to her subjects. Still, having an office and hall to hold audiences and conduct the business of her fief was a necessity.

She only spent as much time as was required to keep up with work before heading off to continue her self-imposed seclusion. A patrol; an inspection; investigating something far removed from other people – there were many plausible excuses to keep herself at a safe distance.

“Welcome back, my lady,” Wiluvien greeted her as she passed through the living room.

Ludmila smiled and nodded in reply, eyeing the Half-Elf’s growing belly as she passed her to go upstairs and into her bedroom. Was it really safe for her to be in such close quarters with a pregnant woman?

Much of her time in the weeks following her return was committed to observing the various types of Undead working around her territory in an effort to understand herself. One of her first worries was that, like many types of Undead, she would leak some sort of miasma or aura that would adversely affect living things nearby. The servitors of the Sorcerer King, however, showed no signs of ‘leaking’ in any way, shape or form. They went about as neatly packaged bundles of negative energy within their Undead bodies. It was also true, however, that the Undead capable of emitting such effects were not made available for lease.

That being said, it appeared the opposite of ‘leaking’ was happening to her. When she had gone to examine one of the patches of negative energy – it was a concerning blotch that occupied the location of one of the former residences on the old hill – tendrils of darkness started seeping out towards her. She fled in alarm, her thoughts filled with the idea of some dark force entering her body and taking control of her. Ludmila avoided even the tiniest wisps of negative energy she could spot from then on.

The next day, Ludmila returned with a Death Knight, a Bone Vulture, and a Skeleton labourer. She tentatively ordered them near the patch of negative energy, but it didn’t react to their presence. When came closer to them, the darkness started drifting straight towards her. She retreated again to ponder the result and what it might mean.

According to the common knowledge of the region, Undead beings manifested in areas where negative energy accumulated. Where the Undead manifested, it was possible for more powerful Undead to manifest if enough lesser Undead were gathered. Just based on how things were described and the new sense for things that came with her Undead existence, Ludmila wondered if this explanation originated from another Undead being. The living had a vague sense for the Undead and places where the Undead could rise – something like a premonition or a sense of foreboding – but it could not really be described in those terms through that sense alone.

After some thought, she decided that some part of this rationale was flawed. In the months that the hundreds – now thousands – of Undead servitors in Warden’s Vale had been here, there wasn’t a single case of ‘wild’ Undead appearing. As for advanced knowledge about the Undead, she just so happened to have over a dozen Necromancers in her demesne. Ludmila had put off meeting with them for some time now, so she made up her mind to head out and get several matters settled at once.

“Headed out, my lady?” Wiluvien asked as Ludmila came back down the stairs.

“Yes, there are some things I need to catch up on out in the villages.”

“Would you like some lunch?” Her maid asked, “It’s just about done.”

“Go ahead and take your time,” Ludmila answered. “I am uncertain when I will be back, so please do not delay anything on my account.”

“Understood, my lady. Ah – Nonna dropped off a few messages this morning. One of them was from Lady Corelyn.”

Ludmila froze in her steps. She had not seen Clara since before her return, and this was the fourth message in half as many weeks.

“Please leave everything on my desk,” Ludmila told Wiluvien. “I will take a look at everything once I return.”

She left the building with a frown, plagued by guilt over avoiding her best friend. Normally, she stayed the night with Clara once a week, but Ludmila refused to simply come by as if nothing at all was the matter. The proper words to convey her Undead state eluded her, and it seemed foolish to put Clara at risk of harm with so many unknowns. She also dreaded how Clara would take the news. If she broke off their relationship on the spot…

Ludmila shook the increasingly dire thoughts away. She needed more time to figure things out. Her life was very much the same, but she herself had become something else. Sometimes it felt as if she was merely a spectator in her own ‘life’, going through well-worn routines and carrying out the plans established by her former existence.

A burst of laughter rose from a building nearby. Germaine LeNez and her apprentices were still where Ludmila had left them, surrounded by admiring residents. Her subjects in the harbour fancied themselves ‘proper city folk’ now that the course of development was made clear before their eyes. They leapt on any opportunity to make themselves appear more urban and, in Warden’s Vale, this meant having new houses, new furniture, new fashion and all manner of new magical items. A young and attractive arcane artisan like Germaine LeNez was instantly the centre of attention, and she wore their welcome well.

Ludmila made her way off of the island and across the new dam with its new mill, careful not to appear as someone tirelessly sprinting all the way to the first farming village. The second harvest was already well on its way, and she passed between green fields just beginning to show heads of grain. Farmers and their Skeletal labourers could be seen tending to the crops, and occasionally a cart delivering goods to the harbour crossed in the opposite direction.

Upon entering the village, Ludmila quietly slipped into the Lichtower and went to the second floor. She took a deep breath, adjusting the Ring of Non-Detection that had replaced her Ring of Sustenance. Shortly after returning to Warden’s Vale, Ludmila decided that it wasn’t right to keep Sigurd’s Cowl of Warding, and she had both it and his necklace returned. Though Lady Shalltear was not very sympathetic to what she considered an overblown set of worries, she still provided Ludmila with a Ring of Non-Detection to prevent others from detecting her new Undead state. Hopefully, the former Zurrernorn Necromancers didn’t have some way around it.

She was greeted by the scowl of Isabella Aguado, who came to answer her knock on the door. The scowl promptly vanished.

“Lady Zahradnik,” she opened the door fully, then lowered her head in greeting. “Welcome. Did…did I miss an appointment? I’m pretty sure nothing came ahead…”

“No appointment,” Ludmila told her. “I am still catching up on my work around the fief and came to address some things here. Was I interrupting anything important?”

“Nothing that requires my undivided attention,” Isabella replied. “Please come in, my lady. I was just trying to figure out how this stupid fetish was made.”

The ‘stupid fetish’ was most likely one of the magic items from the Demihuman army. Germaine LeNez was not the only artisan she had put to task analyzing them: each staffed atelier in her demesne had been delivered several to study. Progress was slow and breakthroughs were nonexistent in the month or so since they had started, but Ludmila had no expectation of things being so easy in the first place.

On the way to the desk sitting under one of the windows, they passed a long counter where a dozen black sheets of fabric were laid out.

“These sure are popular…”

“Uh-huh,” Isabella looked over her shoulder. “In hindsight, I should have been making these from the start, but old taboos are hard to shake off – even for Necromancers. Once I started showing them around, though, everyone wanted the things. Even the Lizardmen.”

“The Lizardmen?”

“A corpse is a corpse is a corpse.”

The sheets on the table were each a Shroud of Sleep – a magic item permanently imbued with the Gentle Repose spell. They were not fashioned in the form that those who usually employed them would be familiar with. Dyed black to hide stains and made to hang on a rack, they were now being sold for household use. The magic item was generally used by temples or Adventurers to preserve corpses for resurrection or burial but, as Isabella had put it, a corpse was a corpse was a corpse.

Any dead animal, be it a fish or a deer or a Human, was a corpse. The Shroud of Sleep did not discriminate. All one had to do was wrap it up within, and the magic item would prevent the ‘corpse’ from rotting. With this item, every household could store unprepared meat for long periods without worrying about spoilage.

Though Isabella was aware of this application long before her arrival, she never sold them for fear of being identified as a Necromancer. In Warden’s Vale, however, no one cared so long as you obeyed the law. The Shroud of Sleep – rebranded as a sort of preservation item for unprepared meat – ended up as one of the top sellers and most profitable magic item in production so far. Unlike items with a Preservation effect, they were limited to ‘corpses’ but in exchange were a fraction of the cost.

The item had broader effects that belied its unexpected application. Other magic items that complemented its use – such as ones that kept flies and other vermin at bay – could be smoothly introduced. This not only directly increased the profits of her magic item industry but acted as a sort of primer for her subjects as to how magic items were integrated into daily living, which further promoted interest in new products.

It had benefits for the environment as well since the wastage that came with meat storage was eliminated, thus reducing the burdens placed upon the land by hunting and livestock. Her concerns over securing enough supplies to produce preserved meats for her growing population also vanished.

“Speaking of corpses,” Ludmila said after they settled into their seats. “I had some questions…no, to be more precise, I would like to lean on your expertise about a certain concept.”

“A concept…something to do with magic items?”

“It has to do with necromancy,” Ludmila replied. “Or at least I think it does.”

Isabella gave her a long look across her desk, shifting slightly in her seat. Before migrating to her former home in Re-Estize, Isabella lived in Roble. Openly speaking about necromancy-related topics in the Holy Kingdom was decidedly not conducive to one’s well being, and Re-Estize was not much better.

Once they had gotten over their initial excitement, Isabella and the other Zurrernorn migrants had fallen into a tentative pattern of behaviour when it came to their once-hidden vocation. They were more than happy to practice their craft and conduct research behind closed doors, but their public face was still that of unassuming arcane artisans. Though they no longer needed to hide, the old habits that revolved around cultural taboos were hard to shake off.

“What ‘concept’ are you referring to?” Isabella asked.

“Negative energy,” Ludmila answered. “Or at least negative energy and its relationship to the Undead. The common sense around here is demonstrably at odds with reality, and this leads me to wonder if it has any truth to it.”

“It does, and it doesn’t,” Isabella told her after a moment’s thought. “What the people believe about it happens to naturally-occurring – ahem, ‘wild’ Undead. It doesn’t happen with summoned or created Undead. It being the case with all Undead is just superstition and rot from certain religions, like the Faith of the Four. They don’t make any distinctions over Undead origins. Concerns over having wild Undead appear because we have so many created Undead around here is not a worry at all, if that’s your worry.”

Ludmila nodded to herself as Isabella’s explanation confirmed her suspicions.

“If that is the case,” Ludmila shifted the topic slightly, “what is it that leads to the appearance of Undead? As the one responsible for the security of this demesne, it would be best if I distinguish ‘common sense’ from the truth of the matter.”

“The truth, huh…” Isabella pursed her lips, “As nice as it is to see someone that doesn’t choose to wallow in ignorance, I’m not sure if I can offer you a definitive answer.”

“I thought Zurrernorn is an organization dedicated to the pursuit of necromantic knowledge.”

“They are,” Isabella nodded, “but the way Zurrernorn operates isn’t as great at spreading necromantic knowledge as it is collecting it. Each group functions independently, answering to someone higher up. A lower-rung group in the cabal only has a piece of the picture, and each member only really knows what their group does. The people that communicate with the higher-ups are few. I suspect that the people at the top of the hierarchy are the only ones that have the closest to what you’d consider a complete picture.”

Isabella smirked to herself, resting her chin on her hand.

“You know, that offer of yours back then hit us in more ways than one.”

“How so?”

“The way you propose to run things here is something like the opposite of how most arcane organizations function. Magic cabals – even government institutions like the Imperial Ministry of Magic – guard their knowledge jealously.”

“The fruit of your efforts here is also confidential if you’ve forgotten.”

“I understand that,” Isabella waved her free hand in the air, “but it’s not what I meant. Like Zurrernorn, it’s those that exist at the highest levels of any organization that hold the most knowledge. They hoard it: keep it away from those below. Most of the Zurrernorn members that have come here – and those that will arrive in the future – all come from these isolated groups that the mysterious people above us string along with bits of knowledge. We work like crazy just for the chance that one of the elite gives us some scraps. Even with a closer relationship, like that between master and apprentice, it’s the same dynamic.”

“I see. I assumed what was happening here wasn’t anything new.”

“At a very basic level, it’s not anything new. The difference is that this barrier – where our superiors jealously guard their knowledge – won’t exist. Even the Imperial Magic Academy only teaches the basics. Past that point, you have to sign up for the Legions or the Ministry of Magic. There are indeed some spells or theories that you probably don’t want in the hands of the wrong person, but they keep a tight lid on everything. The community you’re trying to build here doesn’t exist out there – at least not for all the small people. What Chandler said back then means more than you know.”

Ludmila wondered how Isabella would react if she told her that the faculties in Warden’s Vale were modelled after the institutions of her faith rather than any arcane organization. The temples had ranks of administrative authority, but the greater the number of Priests and Clerics there were serving the faithful, the better. Even maids were allowed to learn.

“Now that you mention him, where is Chandler?”

“He prefers to study in his room,” Isabella replied. “I get to bug him about missing you later. Anyways, sorry for getting off-topic. Negative energy, hm…well, the ‘common sense’ isn’t too far off from what I know.”

“Is there anything wrong with it?”

“Not explicitly,” Isabella said. “It’s more like the common sense is very broad. Broad enough to spook people and blow minor things out of proportion. You get one little Skeleton and people think that the place is on its way to becoming the next Katze Plains.”

“Many of the families here have become accustomed to their Undead servitors,” Ludmila told her. “A child that is not aware of the true nature of the ‘one little Skeleton’ that they find lost in a meadow one day is a tragedy waiting to happen.”

“I…I didn’t mean it like that,” Isabella frowned. “Sorry. With the way you put it there, I guess identifying the sources of negative energy accumulation would be a noble’s first priority. Most people know the big ones: battlefields, places where the dead are gathered, like graveyards and crypts. Places where a whole lot of pain and suffering happen.”

Battlefields…

She had just turned the upper reaches into a battlefield. Death Knights were placed along the riverbank in her territory just in case anything washed up, but Ludmila wondered what the wilderness beyond her southern border looked like now.

“How long does it take for a place to start giving rise to the Undead?” Ludmila asked, “Katze Plains and the E-Rantel cemetery are clear examples of this phenomena, but the border has seen conflict since this place was settled. The Demihuman tribes out there have been fighting amongst one another for far longer.”

“It takes a lot to get things started,” Isabella answered, “but once it exceeds nature’s capacity to clean up, it’s hard to get rid of. The temples have tended to the E-Rantel cemetery since there’s been an E-Rantel, but the place still has Undead popping up on a regular basis. As for the frontier, it’s like I said just now: nature has a way of cleaning things up. You might have Undead showing up after wars and such, but to have things end up like Katze Plains requires some sort of unthinkable catastrophe.”

“I thought Katze was the result of intermittent conflicts in the past between Re-Estize and Baharuth over the valuable river basin.”

Isabella snorted.

“It doesn’t take much to poke holes in that story,” she said. “The Kingdom, the Empire and the Theocracy all have claims on the region dating back centuries. The Kingdom has been around for less than two, and the Empire is younger than the Kingdom. There might have been a conflict there in the past that caused it all, but Re-Estize and Baharuth didn’t exist back then. In all likelihood, it was between the Theocracy and whoever used to be there until the Demon Gods wiped everything out.”

The histories of the region never brought up that point. It was something that Ludmila found curious, but what was the chance that one could find a historical record from a source closer to the truth?

“Regardless,” Ludmila said, “I would like to keep my fief free of wild Undead. Nature cleans things up and Priests can work to cleanse or at least suppress it…but I still don’t have any Priests. Is there anything Necromancers can do? As our population grows, it will become a more pressing issue.”

“Not us from Zurrernorn,” Isabella said. “Our focus was sort of in the opposite direction.”

“I see. One last thing before we move on to other business: how do wild Undead interact with areas of negative energy?”

“That is a very good question,” Isabella told her. “One that I only have speculation and rumours to answer with. Soul Eaters eat souls or something, and every second person seems to think that all Undead do. Elder Liches are said to grow by absorbing mana over their long existence, but I have no idea where that story came from or why everyone seems to believe it. There’s probably a reason why the Undead linger around their birthplaces when they can just as easily pack up and go elsewhere, but whether it’s because of ambient zones of negative energy is anyone’s guess. We all get that sort of creepy feeling when we’re around those places, but it’s not as if any of us can see it.”