Chapter 9: Gods and Zombies (2/2)
“She improves the prosperity of my inn for a fee,” Lynette explained.
“Really?” Manling Victor sounded strangely hopeful. “How much to be transported back to my homeworld of Earth?”
“Let me ask the goddess.” The priest underwent a brief trance, feverishly waving his hands until a golden number made of light briefly flashed into sight.
…
…
Vainqueur had never seen so many zeros. “That’s robbery!” Victor voiced his master’s contempt.
“You get a twenty percent reduction if you take the Shesha worshipper annual subscription,” the priestess tried to sucker Manling Victor, the number altered to reflect the deduction. “Thirty percent if you become a Bishop or Vestal. Donations to the Church of Shesha are also tax-deductible, so if you have time we can discuss your financial future.”
“The minion has no intention of leaving his current, fulfilling job,” Vainqueur answered for Victor, although he noted that being a god sounded almost as profitable as being an adventurer.
“Yeah,” Victor replied with a strangely less than enthusiastic tone. “We came to get rid of seven corpses outside, six Scorchers and one manticore.”
“We can buy the corpses to make fertilizer, and use the manticore’s parts for leather and potions. Taking into account the value, I would give one gold piece per human corpse, and one hundred for the manticore’s pelt.”
“One hundred and six?” the dragon said upon adding the numbers, “I say double.”
“One hundred and six,” the priestess replied, eyes shining with the steely determination of the true negotiator.
So Vainqueur upped his price. “Triple!”
“Your Majesty, you are supposed to go lower in a negotiation.”
“Lower is only for unassertive manlings,” Vainqueur replied. “I am a dragon, I know what I am worth. As my representative, I expect you to show dominance as well, minion Victor.”
“Dragon or not, the market is absolute,” the priestess replied, her greed so pure, so dragon-worthy Vainqueur couldn’t hold it against her. “One hundred and six.”
Manling Lynette observed the scene in silence, while a hooded figure wearing heavy, hooded crimson robes, approached the group as the argument heated up.
“Excuse me, I heard your argument,” a figure said with a raspy voice. Even if he couldn’t see his face beneath the hood, Vainqueur noticed his corpselike white hands and the familiar smell of rot underneath. A ghoul. “Are you looking to sell fresh corpses?”
Vainqueur glanced at the undead, then at his lackey. “That’s a worshiper of Camilla,” the minion said, pointing at the mosquito crest on the newcomer’s robes. “The Marquise of Blood, goddess of death, pestilence, and darkness. One of the Dread Three.”
“The three what?”
“The Dread Three. Camilla, goddess of death, Deathjester, the god of crime, and Veran, goddess of fire and tyranny. A trio of evil adventurers who became gods together, and stayed friends since; they oppose Mithras, but people are too scared of them to ban their worship.”
“I resent that evil label,” the ghoul replied. “Our goddess is simply misunderstood.”
“Didn’t she unleash the Red Death plague that turned many people into bloodthirsty vampires?” Manling Victor asked.
“Only to prevent overpopulation, and the vampires played a critical role in defeating the Fomor during the Century War. As I said, misunderstood.” The figure coughed. “Anyway, have you heard of the undead labor trade?”
“Here we go again,” the priestess of Shesha said with a sigh.
“No, never,” Vainqueur said.
“I did,” Victor said. “They buy corpses from living relatives, turn them into mindless zombies, then put them to labor work, from mining to farming. Isn’t it illegal, though?”
“The undead labor trade is a perfectly legal new industry, albeit currently limited to very few cities allowing it in their charters,” the hooded figure replied. “Very few of them do, but in time, when they see the benefits of enslaving the dead for the betterment of the living, we hope more towns adopt it. Imagine, zombies laboring the fields in every town, from Midgard to Ishfania, or fearless skeletons saving helpless orphans from forest fires.”
“Oh, where can I get one?” Vainqueur asked, now positively giddy.
“Your Majesty loves the dead?” Victor asked. “I never thought you would be that kind of dragon.”
“Minion Victor, having undead as minions is a status symbol among dragons,” Vainqueur told his chief of staff. “And they are so useful. They never run away, they do not eat, they are not tempted by a hoard, they live almost as long as dragons…”
Vainqueur’s own rival, that arrogant Icefang, couldn’t stop boasting about his army of dead manlings protecting his treasure when he didn’t brag about his crown.
“From what I heard, Victor,” the necromancer priest of Camilla told the lackey, “You fit the criteria to unlock the Necromancer class. You could make good money.”
“Really?” Vainqueur glanced down at his lackey, who lowered his head. “You can raise the dead? That is wonderful!”
“I meet the criteria to take levels in that class,” the lackey admitted. “But I’m not proud of it.”
“Minion, you have to take levels in that class,” Vainqueur insisted. “For my own good.”
“I must warn you,” said the priestess of Shesha. “That our goddess herself is currently unsure whether the potential long-term consequences of mass necromancy make up for the added market value.”
“I assure you our use of undead labor is perfectly safe, and no matter what these bourgeois noble imperialists trying to crack down free undead enterprise will tell you, there is no proof necromantic energy negatively affects the environment.” That necromancer couldn’t help going on a tirade. “Sincerely, the use of mindless labor is more ethical than the animal slavery still practiced by our nation. Animals have feelings, animated corpses don’t.”
“Corpseling,” Vainqueur interrupting, caring more about a quick buck than local politics. “How much?”
“If you sign a binding contract authorizing us to turn them into undead, we can provide fifty gold pieces per corpse and five hundred for the Manticore. Eight hundred in total.”
“Deal!” Vainqueur said before Minion Victor could open his mouth.
“I will need to inspect the corpses first,” the priest of Camilla said.
The necromancer left to examine the ‘wares,’ Manling Lynette put a hand on Victor’s arm. “Victor, Your Majesty, can we talk for a second?”
Victor nodded, clearly eager to earn the female’s favor. “What’s the matter?”
“Henry is missing,” she told them, before giving Victor a letter. “Someone ransacked his home last night, stole his researches, and left this inside.”
Henry. Vainqueur struggled to remember that name, while Victor read the letter.
“One very pompous Captain François Vilmain of Harmonia,” said the minion, “Politely offers to discuss the release of ‘our common friend Henry’ and an ‘offering of gold’ with ‘His Glorious Majesty King Vainqueur Knightsbane’ in exchange for the use of Haudemer’s ships.” Vainqueur silently appreciated that at least one manling knew the proper way to address him. “Vilmain also offered coordinates for the meeting point and an hour this evening, and not at all sinisterly signed with blood.”
“Our apothecary confirmed it to be Henry’s,” said Manling Lynette, who sounded worried, “Since we do not have any spellcaster powerful enough to locate him, I thought to ask the goddess Shesha, but the price she asks is great.”
“If they want to buy my forgiveness and a ship, who am I to judge?” Vainqueur replied, still not remembering who this Henry was.
“Your Majesty, the meeting place is conveniently very far from Haudemer. This is clearly a trap.”
“I know, minion, but what can they do? Not die?”
“Clearly not, but they could sack the city in Your Majesty’s absence and escape,” the manling pointed out. “If they haven’t lied and killed Henry already by bleeding him dry.”
Manling Lynette made a blank face, then left without a word. “W-wait, I didn’t mean it!” Minion Victor called her, “That was just the worst-case scenario!”
Vainqueur figured his lackey wouldn’t reproduce anytime soon.
In the end, after the corpseling found the wares to his liking, Vainqueur had Victor sign a very long contract with the church of Camilla. Basically, as the legal ‘living relative’ he swore on the gods he agreed to surrender the corpses to necromantic transformation.
“I just sold corpses to a necromancer for postmortem slave labor,” Manling Victor complained. “That feels dirty.”
“Why? There is no greater pleasure in life than watching my hoard grow!” Vainqueur decided to cheer his lackey up with his promised fee. “Corpseling, please give my chief of staff his fee of eight gold coins.”
“Eight coins?” Manling Victor blinked. “I thought it was one-tenth of the sales?”
“One one-tenth,” Vainqueur clarified.
Manling Victor looked up at his master, apparently not very good with math. “Like one-tenth of a tenth?”
“Yes,” Vainqueur replied, “One one-tenth, as I promised. What, you want less?”
“No, I’m good,” the minion said wisely. “This is already too generous from you.”
“We will have the corpses reanimated and sent to the cities of Ferpuit and Minecreuse for immediate mining labor,” said the necromancer, true name ‘Jules Rapace’ according to the contract. “Thank you for supporting our country’s modernization.”
Congratulations! For ruthlessly selling your enemies’ corpses to the church of Camilla, making the world a deader place, you earned the [Deadfriend] Personal Perk!
[Deadfriend]: mindless undead mistake you for one of their own and do not attack you, unless attacked first; +5 charisma when interacting with the undead or worshippers of Camilla.
“Sweet, minion, I have a new Perk! You too?”
“Never before have I been more ashamed of one.”