Fantasy Economics 101 - Prologue

Volume I - The Economics of Resurrection

Prologue – The Worst Way to Wake Up

The Great Lowlands. In history books, it was either considered the invaluable breadbasket of the empire, its golden wheat fields and rich orchards stretching as far as the eyes could see, or a miserable stretch of endless plains dotted with run-down farming communities. It all depended on the author, really. However, few could deny its paramount importance to the Attu-Sevrian Monarchy. The fertile lowlands not only provided a steady food supply to the rest of the empire's territories, the three great rivers cutting their serpentine ways across its surface also served as the veins through which trade goods and gold, the lifeblood of all nations, could flow.

As misfortune would have it, most of that was of the past. The great Tianube river hadn't been regulated for many, many years, giving rise to new bogs around its meandering banks. Past the swamplands, the ancient forests reclaimed much of the farmlands, long abandoned by the tillers of their soil. Few were willing to walk under these canopies. For most, it was a dangerous land full of vicious creatures and beasts. For the rest, the same creatures and beasts simply weren't profitable enough to hunt.

This, among many other things, made the three people wading through the woodlands appear more than just a little peculiar. The man at the front was clad in long, dark robes, with the hood pulled over his head, an odd choice of attire during the sweltering, humid summer midday. At first glance, his outfit appeared black, but if one took a closer look, the silken fabric was closer to a dark shade of purple, though worn down by time and caked in the dust and mud of traveling on rough terrain.

The two following him weren't any less peculiar either. By height alone, they were large, if exceedingly scrawny men, each one carrying a large backpack on their backs, with various tools attached to their sides. Hoes, pickaxes, shovels, and even a large broom with thin twigs for bristles. Even stranger were the attires of these men. Unlike their leader's robes, they were garbed in thick, earthen-colored linen outfits that covered them from head to toe. They even wore thick worker's gloves and, more bafflingly, long scarves wrapped around their heads that completely hid their features, held in place by hard leather caps.

Soon, the man at the front stopped and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. His face was old and withered, eyes sunken by both age and exhaustion, with countless wrinkles etched into his skin. His bushy brows and wispy beard were white, though the dirt spotting them gave them a yellowish tint. He let out a low, frustrated grunt before taking a big gulp from the water skin hanging from his belt, after which he reached for a piece of paper hidden inside his robe.

The hastily scrawled lines were instructions of some kind, speaking of a location in the depths of the woods. The directions were spotty, at best, going as vague as 'two or three days of walking that way', but the robed old man had no choice but to follow them anyway. Pocketing the paper, he glanced at the sun in the sky, and wordlessly continued on his way, his companions following after him without uttering as much as a sound.

The Attu-Sevrian Monarchy had a long and storied history, and as with most histories, it was one filled with wars and bloodshed. The number of battles the empire's brave soldiers fought could've filled a book on their own, but few of them were as glorious as the battle of Upper Raven Rock. An otherwise small and mostly insignificant village, yet it etched its name into history thanks to a single event.

In the year 1467 of the common calendar, the infamous horde of the Kelani, steppe warriors of the east riding enormous war-beasts that dwarfed even the empire's finest warhorses, invaded all the western lands. Their main force, led by their legendary war chief Rakan the Wise (or as better known in the empire, Rakan of the Bloody Hand), poured through Bannan Pass, one of the few mountain passes crossing the Batatooth mountain range encircling the Great Lowlands and protecting the Monarchy's eastern borders. Their numbers beyond counting, they were posed to deal a devastating blow to the empire, yet when Rakan led his troops to Upper Raven Rock, one of the few places where a force their size could cross the river Tianube, they fell into an ambush laid by the Monarchy's soldiers.

With their war chief slain and their vanguard force decimated, the Kelani soon descended into infighting, giving the Monarchy enough time to levy its armies and push the invaders back into the Eastern Steppes. This one victory not only allowed the empire to avoid the devastation the raiders inflicted on its neighbors, but it also solidified its position as not only the dominant local power, but the de facto cultural and economic leader of continental Eksilva.

Yet, despite the significance of this battle, which decided the fate of a nation and the course of an entire continent's history, nobody could tell exactlywhere it took place, or indeed, where the body of the dreaded war chief was laid to rest by his men. At least, until this day.

The old man's eyes lit up with a mixture of relief and greed the moment the monoliths came into his sight. Out of the three enormous stones, only one was still standing tall, and they were completely overgrown by the foliage, but it was definitely the place he was looking for. He had spent nearly six months traveling across the land, visiting taverns and pubs and listening to old tales and rumors. Six miserable, wretched months in the ass-end of nowhere, but it was all about to pay off big-time.

"You two, clear the area around here."

The wrapped-up men followed his orders without complaints, and while they rapidly cut away the underbrush and swept the brown leaves from the topsoil, the old man took out a small crystal pendulum and began walking around in circles. After every full loop, he would direct the workers to another spot, and after repeating the process a dozen times, his aged lips slowly bent into an elated smile that didn't suit his face at all.

Another order later, the workers picked up their shovels and pickaxes and started digging. They worked tirelessly, without taking a single break or drinking from the full water-skins still hanging from their large backpacks, and the old man only told them to slow down once they were already waist deep. After that point, the work continued at a much more meticulous pace, shaving off the top of the soil layer by layer, one finger's width at a time. Then, at last, they hit paydirt.

The old man couldn't hide his excitement, but still tempered it with prudence, and he also joined the fray with a large, stiff brush. Soon, the crown of a skull peeked out from under the dirt, followed by the rest of the bones. It was fairly large, and had, among other things, a rusty sword, a couple of spearheads, and numerous beads and pieces of jewelry strewn around the body, no doubt parts of an extravagant outfit long since decomposed.

The historical value of this find was incalculable… but the old man was no archeologist. He wasn't a grave-robber either, and he swept all the jeweled pieces of gold and silver, warped beyond recognition, out of his way. It was getting dark by the time he completely freed the skeleton from the soil imprisoning it, all the while the two workers widened the hole considerably. Soon, half a dozen large crystals were scattered around the edges of the now-circular pit, and with a wave of the old man's sleeve, they lit up with an eerie pale blue light. Following that, he took out a bag full of finger-sized chunks of softly smoldering white chalk. After picking the brightest piece, he crouched down and began to draw lines into the dirt. Each stroke left behind a glowing mark on the soil, and over time, the simple patterns gradually formed a large circle of geometric shapes and mystic symbols around the skeleton.

Then came midnight. The Witching Hour, when all manners of dark magicks were at their most potent, and just in time for the old man to finish his work. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead in the ominous blue light of the crystals; the visage of a man possessed. In just a few short minutes, all the effort of the past half year, all the toils and tribulations he had to suffer, all the trite pleasantries he had to squeeze past his teeth to drag every last clue out of the dimwitted simpletons living on these lands. All of it was about pay off.

At last, the time was right, and the man raised his hands over his head. The lights of the crystals flared with cerulean balefire, and their light soon ignited the magic circle inside the hole. Wisps of white smoke rose from the lines on the ground, and as the old man waved his hands around, they formed a spiraling pattern that slowly descended upon the skeleton in the middle.

"I command thee, Rakan of the Bloody Hand! I command thee to throw off the yokes of Unalas, the Queen of Twilight, and walk this earth once again! I command thee to rise, Lash of the East! Come forth, and—"

The chant he prepared was much, much longer than that, but to both his shock and elation, the bones in the ground trembled and began to absorb the twirling mist surrounding them. One by one, the detached carpals shook off the dirt clinging to them and returned to their position in life. The caved-in chest rose as the ribs regained their shape, and the bones broken by battle and time came together and mended themselves in front of his eyes. Then, with an audible snap, the skull rejoined the spinal column, sending dirt flying across the hole as the arms and legs freed themselves as well.

As the last of the white smoke was absorbed into the rising skeleton, it went from a weathered yellow to a bleached white with an eerie blue sheen. The newly raised undead was a good head taller than the withered old man, and after a long and suspenseful beat, the eye-sockets of the skull lit up with a pair of blue lights the size of pinpricks, giving it a sinister appearance.

It only lasted for a breath though, at which point the lights expanded, then narrowed into thin lines. The process repeated itself twice more, and then the unsteady skeleton looked at its left, and then at its right.

It was only then that the old man realized what was happening; it was blinking! It was confused! That meant it had an ego! Normally, even rare and powerful undead took a long time to learn how to express their thoughts and emotions, but the fact that this creature could do it the moment it was reborn meant he not only succeeded, he did so with flying colors!

"Rakan of the Bloody Hand! I am your—"

"Wait a second. I'm still a little disoriented here."

Now it was the old man's turn to blink in surprise. Normally, he would've lost his calm the moment someone dared to talk to him like that, but even this interruption made him feel elated beyond measure. The voice that came out of the skeleton's throat was a pleasant baritone, and it not only lacked the ominous echoes of the voice of a specter, but it could also clearly convey its emotional state!

Breathing heavily, the old mystic flexed his fingers and raised his hands over his head again. In the meantime, the skeleton seemed to just notice its bony fingers, and after grabbing its smooth skull, it looked down and completely stopped moving, the lights in its eye sockets nearly extinguishing from the shock.

"I raised you from the dead, Rakan of the Bloody Hand, Rakan the Wise, Rakan the—"

For the third time, the old man was just about to really get into his speech when he was interrupted, though this time considerably more violently than before. The skeleton covered the short distance separating them before he could even blink an eye and grabbed him by the collar with both its bony hands.

"What's the meaning of this?! Answer me!"

"W-Wait! I am your summoner! I am your—!"

"I don't care about that! What have you done to me!? Where's my flesh? Where's my hair?" While speaking, the skeleton raised the helpless old man off the ground and pulled him closer. "Where's my junk!?"

"Y-Your what?"

"My junk! Why did you resurrect me without it you gods-damned bastard!?" For emphasis, it shook the old necromancer, and finished things off with a thundering, "Give me back my junk!"

The bone-rattling shout was followed by complete silence, and it took the irate skeleton several long seconds to realize that the man in his hands wasn't just refusing to answer him; he was clutching his chest and gasping for air like he was about to drown. He reflexively let him go, and as the necromancer landed, his legs immediately gave out and he fell back, still grasping his chest. Not knowing what to do, the skeleton only stared as the old man twisted and hunched into a fetal position, and then stopped moving altogether.

The silence that followed was very, very loud, and after a series of baffled, confused, and incredulous blinks, the skeleton in the hole finally noticed the two workers standing by the side, and he immediately raised his hands, palms open towards the pair.

"I didn't do anything to him! He collapsed by himself, I swear!"

Then, as if to bring the already unusual scene to a crescendo, the crystals around the ritual site flared up one last time before being extinguished for good, plunging everything into the darkness. Simultaneously, the two workers collapsed in on themselves, like marionettes with their strings cut, in the company of the clanking cacophony of bone hitting bone and metal falling onto the ground.

There, in the darkness of the night, a single skeleton stood all alone. His burning eyes first glanced at the old man at his feet, his eyes still open in death and his face twisted in an expression that looked more surprised and outraged than pained, then at the remains of the other two, currently little more than a pile of cloths and tools with a few white bones sticking out. Then, at last, he looked at his own fleshless hands, gently pulsing with a pale blue light.

"Well," he spoke at last, his voice low and thoughtful, yet still sounding distinctly annoyed. "This is easily the third worst morning I've ever had, isn't it?" He paused here, then after putting some thought into the question, he muttered. "No, wait. I'm sober. It's definitely the second worst."

And with that, and a groan that had no business coming out of the mouth of a being without lungs or vocal cords, he climbed out of the pit that was his grave, turned around, sat down by the edge, and buried his face in his bony fingers.