Traveling further after a few more hours I see the wood palisade of Trosafen, heading to the guard I let him see that I am a doctor and hand over a few coppers for information on the area. I am in luck in that market day is tomorrow, some locals to be wary of, and an inn with a stable that I can use along with dropping his name for it. I thank him for his help and head to the inn he describes as dusk sets in, it is one with a sign that has a blue outline of a bird on it. Heading in I speak to the keeper and arrange a spot in a common room for myself along with some food for myself and feed for my horse. After handing over the money I take my simple meal and add a few bits of my own meat after making sure it was safe to eat. This is a better quality inn then others since it caters to skilled workers and merchants but one can never be sure of the quality of food there. I listen in while slowly sipping my ale on the talk of the patrons here and hear the usual griping about everyday life but one conversation gave me interest.

“You hear those rumours about the undead out at Vocaten, things are supposed to be coming out of the woodwork like never before”

“Yeah and that is bad news for us, more and more of my fellow merchants are not going on this route because of the trisk. I get more business for now but soon people won’t have the money to actually buy my wares and I will have to find another place to go to”

“Yeah once you leave I will have to leave, without merchants we don’t have as much carpentry to work on or even the tools for it”

“I don’t think it will get that bad but there won’t be as much ore or ingots for the blacksmith certainly”

“If things get too bad will the soldiers actually do anything?”

“When have they ever, it would take a few villages to get wiped out before those fools get moving. By that time I bet Vocaten or the soldiers themselves will get attacked and then we are out of luck”

“Yeah, the church might send for a knight or the lord in Vocaten could send for soldiers but that would be long past when we have already left”

A bit more grumbling about more local affairs of low importance I listen to others and hear similar worries about the undead or bandits appearing. Vocaten itself is about a day and a half to two days trip going straight without stopping at villages and that should be enough for me to get there quickly. From the looks of things there have not been any large movements of forces for the locals here and no notable special characters so far. Either I am the first here or we have some low key apostles or chosen from the other gods and important people.

Some more important information then these grumblings come in from my scout mice in the local burgermeister’s office and the adventurer’s guild. Surprisingly small place but I suppose that the mortis fields have only now started acting up. There is no local organized mage group so most of my focus was on the local military force and the adventurers. A typical lot for this sort of backwoods region, the guards number about 50 and are made up of your typical guardsmen, low skilled and low motivated and the burgermeister has a mid gold rank bodyguard and hedge maji. The adventurers are not much better, only a few small parties of mostly iron and copper rank with a hedge maji or two scattered and few low bronzes lying around.

I could literally one man show this entire city without any help from my creations but that only makes things easy on me. The largest force will be at the market town and judging from the records it will be typical of the general trend. At most a silver rank but likely steel or high gold will be the strongest adventurer with a smattering of bronze and gold parties. The guards will be worthless as usual but simply more of them along with no mercenary force since they will be in more civilized areas with guaranteed pay, if there are mercenaries then they are small timers.

A bit of backstory on the mortis fields states that several exploration parties have gone but either found nothing of use or died, even what structures they found from previous times were quite worthless. Everything either rotted or got too old to be of use so they gave up exploration, there have always been small amounts of undead from the area though mostly undead animals or the recently buried. The place simply ranked low on the priority list of those in charge and no mage was interested enough in necromancy to come exploring. A few scattered myths of divine punishment and cursed lands along with the actual practical fact that the land was rather barren stopped most from trying over time. I suspect that the land is not quite so barren as it seems farther in but most ordinary people would die from exposure to the miasma so whatever is deep in was never found.

A cursory check with the ring’s archive show a recorded 3 separate civilizations have dwelt in the area with suspected more buried deep in the lands distance wise both far away and down. The latest and most pertinent group was the Defoant Kingdom which eventually died out due to civil war and plaque, perhaps sparked by the leaking miasma over time. The others were an elven kingdom known as the Ala’Sotena’fel and a group of primitive beastmen tribes known collectively as the Heltasti died of similar causes so this seems most likely to be the case, even if latent that much buried death mana is not good for the mind. As a good note for me at least a message left in the archives by the goddess gives me permission to have free rein to make use of whatever I find barring any objects that can obviously cause trouble on a large scale along with the fact that the dungeon assistance will activate from the ring once I establish a safe holding there.

Any more specific information is for another time, for now I should get some sleep and prepare for tomorrow. I should get some long term supplies for living and other miscellaneous goods I may need, selling off my spare medicine should get me what I need. Barring any events I should reach the agros de mortis in about two weeks and begin my work there, but before then I should get some forces ready for I will need guards and a work crew. Perhaps the local bandits and monster packs need a bit of a cleansing done. None will truly miss them, unless of course many are from a local village but then again it is simply a sad affair for them. I am not quite that merciful right now with only so much to spare, if I need to pillage a village then so be it if the need arises. I prefer to keep things to a minimum with compensation when I can but war is a fickle mistress and that is what I plan for, being civilized cannot solve everything.

Still to have to personally raise an entire village would waste my time, the hours spent on so many low quality bones and having to root through everything gives me a migraine. Just give me a small batch of bandits I can quickly work with inorder to get some forces, better yet send a patrol of guards or soldiers at me that would be worthwhile to spend time on. But I honestly don’t think that will be happening so better get moving now, I want to keep detours to a minimum as possible if I do not feel that the benefit will outweigh the cost.