Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 6

The Economics of Resurrection

Raol's footsteps felt heavy as he gazed upon the distant walls of New Reedcourt. Back when he was alive, walls like those were reserved only for fortified border cities neighboring hotly contested territories, but if Elkayla's words were to be trusted, the mind-boggling increase in monster populations over the centuries most certainly justified their presence.

They made infiltrating the settlement considerably more complicated than he originally imagined, and yet, it wasn't the reason behind his sluggish steps. It had been a whole day since he had left the friendly hermitess's cottage, and at the moment he was wearing more jewelry on his skeletal body than he had ever done when he was still living. Each individual trinket she let him borrow helped to hide his presence, and when layered on top of each other like this, Elkayla promised that not even the most sensitive detection charms could find him.

Unfortunately, the idiom 'There's no such thing as a free lunch' was always true, regardless of the time period. In this particular case, the drawback manifested in the form of greatly restraining the ebb and flow of his magicka. It wasn't a side-effect, but the mechanism by which they concealed his presence from magical detection.

That was well within expectation, but not its unforeseen consequence, which arose from his very nature: Raol was an undead. While the exact classification of his type and nature was still up to debate, despite Elkayla's best efforts to investigate him, there was one inescapable fact that all undead had to conform to, namely that they were creatures of magick. Whether a barely sentient skeleton worker, a ghost trapped in their own past, or a powerful wizard turned lich, they manifested, moved, and sustained themselves through magicka.

Raol was no exception. Due to the obvious lack of muscles, his limbs were moved by the power of magicka, and so when the various enchanted rings, talismans, and medallions fastened to his bones suppressed its flow, it was only natural that he would become weaker as a result. It wasn't to the degree that it would interfere with his objective, but the lethargy he experienced was still vexing him to no end. Yet, even this coin had a flip side, as on account of another unforeseen side-effect, the suppression of his magicka resulted in the seemingly impenetrable fog retreating from his vision.

This small observation made him wonder about the nature of the omnipresent mist. Was he perceiving the natural, ambient magicka blanketing the realm? And if so, was the change caused directly by the trinkets, or a side-effect of his own magicka being suppressed? However, as much as it bothered him, he soon emptied such concerns from the recesses of his mind. By the grace of the Seven, he would only have to put up with this skeletal body and its strange, unnatural quirks for a little longer, and then he would regain his flesh and all of this would become just another anecdote he could add to his repertoire of stories. A tall tale to amaze his grandchildren, he reckoned.

That thought, innocent as it might have been, made him freeze in his tracks, the lights in his eyes shrinking until they were barely more than pinpricks. Did he leave behind any descendants, he wondered? While alive, he experienced more than one whirlwind romance, though none of them was meant to last. Due to his profession, he used many a different identity, and after moving on to fulfill his next mission, he scarcely had the opportunity to keep in touch with his past lovers. As far as he knew, he could've easily been the great great great grandfather of someone, a prospect that filled him with all kinds of mixed feelings.

However, such things were something he would have to investigate after his current predicament was successfully resolved; he surmised as he came to a halt and sat on his heels. There was a roughly fifty paces wide area cleared around the walls of the town, most likely to make approaching monsters easier to spot, and Raol was currently crouching at the edge of this zone. The sun was already going down by the time he reached the vicinity of New Reedcourt, and while he circled around in search of the most optimal approach, it fully descended behind the horizon.

The sky was clear, but it was just after a new moon, so visibility was low. He couldn't see any patrols on the top of the fortifications, but his decades of experience taught him to be thorough, so he waited for nearly an hour more before he resolved himself to make his approach.

Without the trinkets weighing him down, he had an inkling he might've been able to clear the walls in a single leap, but in his current condition, he was certain he couldn't manage to do so. Not that he would've done it even if he could, considering he had no way to safely land. Instead, he searched for the wall segment with the roughest masonry. He didn't know whether the portion he was looking at had been built first, built last, or had been rebuilt after some kind of catastrophe, but its surface was considerably coarser than its surroundings'.

Once he was reasonably certain there were no sentries stationed in sight, he shifted his posture and, without as much as the sound of a mouse's breath, he dashed across the bare meadow of the buffer zone. This method was the safest under the circumstances, as the lack of foliage and cover made a stealthy approach impractical; it was best to cover the distance in as short a time as possible to avoid detection.

His speed was unnatural, even though each step felt to him as if he was wading through a muddy swampland, and before long, he reached the ditch around the ramparts. It must have held water in the past, serving as a simple moat, but at the moment it was dry and barely more than an indentation in the ground Raol could easily jump over. Soon, he set his back against the wall.

For several breaths' time, he listened closely for any signs of clamor from the top of the walls, and once he was certain he wasn't detected, he turned around and grabbed hold of the uneven masonry in front of him. As a human, he would not have been able to scale such a wall without tools, but in his current condition, such an endeavor felt almost trivial.

As a skeleton, he was much lighter than he appeared at a simple glance, and even while weakened by the dampening effect of the charmed trinkets affixed to his body, he still possessed the raw strength of a trained soldier. Combined with his inexhaustible stamina, it took a trifling effort to ascend on the wall, one arm's span at the time. He didn't even need to use his legs, and his biggest concern by far was making sure his grasp was firm on whichever small jut or crack he grabbed onto. From the outsider's perspective, the way he scrambled up the vertical surface would have appeared both bizarre and frightening.

After but a few short minutes, Raol silently set his feet on the top of the wall. The sight that welcomed him was in many ways familiar, yet also somewhat disconcerting. After seeing the curious new light sources and other odds and ends in Elkayla's cottage, and learning that it had been over three hundred years since he last walked this continent, he imagined that New Reedcourt would appear markedly different from the many towns and cities he had visited while in the past. Yet, the sights of the thatched roofs, smoking chimneys, dirt roads, and narrow alleys could have been taken right from his memories.

Did the town fall on hard times, he wondered, but for a moment before he erased the stray thought and focused on his next objective. From his vantage point, he could see three towers. The one, near the other end of the town, had a small circumference and a comparatively bulbous top reminiscent of a mushroom. The second one was an even taller, six-sided obelisk with stylized eyes painted on its top, softly glowing and visible even in the middle of the night. Last, but certainly not least, and thankfully the closest of the three, was a spiraling tower with a large representation of the sun-sphere sitting at its pinnacle.

These were the temples of Dialoth, Sargoth, and Alma, respectively. Raol wasn't even the slightest bit surprised by the fact that their iconography and architecture remained completely unchanging, as they had been since the days of the Warran Republic. Their constancy was, in a way, reassuring, yet it also forced his mind to wonder about why the town around them didn't see any change either.

The thought was exiled from his head once more and Raol unceremoniously jumped off the wall, landing near a building that, on first inspection, was most likely a slaughterhouse. He didn't dally around to make sure, but instead he put his training to use and hid in the shadows of the nearby alley. Skulking was never his strong suit, but he would've been the laughingstock of the Imperial Secret Service if he couldn't conceal himself from sight in the middle of a moonless night.

He slowly but steadily made his way over to the temple of Alma, and after circling around the tower, he approached the back entrance, an unassuming wooden door set into the side of the building. Feeling oddly nervous, he exhaled hard, mostly out of habit, and knocked three times on the door.

There was no reaction at first, but he knew that priests, without exception, preferred to live inside the temples of their patron gods. After patiently waiting for several minutes, the back entrance unceremoniously opened, revealing a short, middle-aged man. He was wearing a sky-blue nightgown and carrying an oil lamp in one hand. His cleanly shaved face had more than a few wrinkles on it, and his hair was long and frazzled at the back while the top of his dome was completely bald.

While Raol observed him, the priest looked him over in turn with a phlegmatic gaze.

"Please state your business," he stated in a monotonous, seemingly uninterested nasal voice. Normally one wouldn't have expected such an apathetic demeanor from someone who was just awoken in the middle of the night, but Raol was already more than familiar with the clergy. Over time, the priests and priestesses of the Seven slowly but surely adopted the mannerism of their deities. That is to say, they became detached, mechanical, and just a touch crazy.

"I require a miracle of resurrection," Raol told the priest and showed him the medallion of Unalas he prepared in advance.

"A miracle of resurrection. How quaint," the bald man muttered and poked his head through the door. "Where is the cadaver in question?"

"It's me," the skeleton stated gravely and unwrapped the scarf hiding his skull.

The priest let out a dispassionate hum, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary, and he gestured for Raol to follow after him. They passed through the dressing room, where dozens of clerical robes were hanging in tidy rows, and then entered the main hall of the temple from the side of the chamber. Since the Seven Temples operated on the basis of contracts and equivalent exchange, there was no need for any prayer areas or benches. Instead, the room had an incredibly high ceiling, with flags bearing the sun symbol of Alma hanging from the walls, and the space in the middle was dominated by three objects.

First was the towering marble statue of the god himself, wearing a simple Warran era garment, raising a brightly glowing sun-globe over his head, its light illuminating the room even in the dead of night. In front of it stood the altar of the god; a marble basin carved of a single piece of marble the size of a bathtub, designed to hold the votive offerings delivered to the temple over the day.

Then, at last, there was an enormous, gold- and silver-bound book sitting on a pedestal, situated between the statue and the altar, and it was also the destination of the priest.

"Please hand me your token of purchase," the bald man asked, and Raol carefully offered the amulet of Unalas to him.

He raised it to his eye level, and after placing the oil lamp onto a nearby plinth, his hand began to turn the pages of the book without even looking at it.

"Registration number four-seven-two-zero-eight slash three-eight-seven-nine dash one dash E S K. Waiting for response… Parsing…" After muttering for a while, the priest let out a thoughtful hum and faced Raol again. "You have not visited a temple in three-hundred and eighteen years, three months, and seventeen days. To continue this transaction, please give me your password."

"… Excuse me? What password?"

"The six-digit password you created when you registered your account in the temple of Unalas," the priest explained with the same, aloof tone.

The question caused Raol's eye-lights to blink repeatedly, but he soon collected himself and fell deep in thought.

"I can't remember making a password, but… I usually use my birth date for things like this, so let's try that."

"Please give me the six digits."

"Yes, just give me a moment." After saying so, Raol whispered a few curses under his breath, aimed at the celestial bureaucracy of the temples, and then faced the priest again. "It's the last two digits of the year, the month, and then the day, so… Thirty-one, zero-nine, zero-one."

"Please stand by," the priest muttered while turning the pages the other way, and after several breaths' time, he stopped and poked a finger at the book. "Authentication successful. Our records say that you have not changed your password during the past three hundred and eighteen years, three months, and seventeen days. Would you like to change it now?"

"No, I don't," Raol told him a touch impatiently, and the priest nodded.

"Very well. Your account information is yet to be completely filled out. Would you like to enter your account information now?"

"No. I want to just get this over with. Please resurrect me, and then I'll be on my way."

"Understood." Saying so, the priest began leafing through the book again, and after finding a certain page, he poked it several times before nodding to himself and looking back at Raol. "To thank you for your continued patronage over the past three-hundred and eighteen years, three months, and seventeen days, your account has been upgraded to Platinum Plus Membership."

"Erm… Thank you?"

"Would you like to upgrade your membership tier to Diamond Plus Extra Membership for the nominal price of—"

"No, I just want to be resurrected. Please."

The priest didn't seem to mind Raol's interruption, and after another round of book-browsing, he let out a thoughtful hum.

"You have some overdue fees, but due to your Platinum Plus Membership, you are granted a twenty-one percent discount on all transactions. With transaction costs taken into account, we require a nominal fee of…" The priest paused and produced a large monocle from the same plinth that held his oil lamp, and after making taking another look, he nodded and faced Raol again. "… nineteen million, eight-hundred and fifty-seven thousand, three hundred and thirty-one gold crowns."

The silence that settled on the temple was deafening, and it took several breaths' time for the extinguished lights in Raol's eye sockets to blaze up again after the first shock.

"Excuse me? Did you just say nineteen million gold coins?"

"It's nineteen million, eight-hundred and fifty-seve—"

"Check again! That has to be a mistake!"

The priest shrugged, seemingly not caring about the panicked skeleton in the room at all, and observed the book again with his monocle.

"Your resurrection contract had a ten-year prepaid period, which means you have three-hundred and eight years, three months, and seventeen days' worth of overdue fees. With inflation taken into account, that will be nineteen million, eight-hundred and fifty-seven thousand, three-hundred and thirty-two gold crowns."

"Wait, wasn't that thirty-one just a moment ago?"

"As I said, inflation is taken into account," the priest answered while looking at Raol like he was a simpleton. "Please deposit the payment onto the altar."

"Are you out of your mind!? Do I look like I have—!?" Raol bit back his last words and whispered, "If an average coin is about five grams, then nineteen million is…" After muttering to himself for a while more, the lights in his eyes expanded into a shocked expression and he yelled, "It's ninety-nine gods damned tons of gold!"

"Please mind your language in the temple," the bald man warned him in the same, monotonous voice. "Can I presume that you do not have the funds at your disposal?"

"Of course I don't! Do I look like I'm carrying the entire gods-forsaken imperial treasure vault on my back to you?"

"Please mind your language in the temple," the priest repeated with the exact same intonation and closed the book. "If you are unable to pay the required fees, I request that you leave, and return once you've secured the necessary funds."

"How am I supposed to gather nineteen million—!?" Raol started, but seeing the middle-aged man's apathetic expression, the flames of his fury turned cold and he snatched the Contract Amulet out of his hand. "Then I guess I'll just have to do that."

"Very well. On a scale to one to ten, how would you rate the quality of our service?"

Raol didn't answer, or even listen to the priest anymore, and he stormed out of the temple the same way he entered. Fuming, he fastened the amulet to his chest again while simultaneously tearing off all the talismans and trinkets Elkayla gave to him. Not caring if he would be detected or not, he put his previous thoughts into action, and with a single, enormous bound, he leaped over the town wall in one go.

By the time anyone inside the town garrison could've raised an alarm, he was already running at full speed through the forest. His thoughts were a jumbled mess, and moving his arms and legs, dashing and leaping through the woods, was his way of distracting himself from the weight of his new reality. He ran without stopping, all through the night, passing through thickets and clearings, roads and cliffs, trying his hardest not to think. Maybe it was because of this that he was almost as surprised by where he ended up as the young woman opening the door in front of him.

"Mister Raol? I… didn't expect that you would come back so soon…" Elkayla mumbled while beholding the skeleton in front of her threshold, currently covered in dirt, leaves, and mud. "Did you… get lost on your way towards the town?"

"No. I just…" Raol tried to answer, but his thoughts were still a mess. After taking a few deep breaths, or at least pretending so, he rubbed his skull and said, "There were some… complications, and since you're literally the only person I know in this time period, I somehow ended up…"

"Ah, say no more!" Elkayla exclaimed with smiling eyes and stepped out of the way. "Mister Raol is always welcome in my hermitage! Please, make yourself at home. I'll brew a tea and listen to what happened."

"Thank you," the skeleton squeezed out through his teeth and stepped inside, closing the door behind himself.

And that's how the cohabitation between a skeleton and a young hermitess began, but at this point in time, neither of them knew of the significance of their cooperation, nor just how far it would change not only their lives, but the world itself. As is the case with most visionaries, revolutionaries, and troublemakers…