The warden spent the morning in a coughing fit, sweating like a leaking dam.

The effort of using his stigmata seemed amplified, as though the presence of his liege drove a panic attack into him. “They’re all here, m’lord.” His gesture was feeble, far too little to encompass the near one thousand prisoners that spent their lives ripping glitter from the dirt, awaiting an unplanned burial.

Lucius clasped his hands behind his back and surveyed the group. The gesture was almost meaningless; nothing more than to show he could hold the silence of their attention. “To those of you who don’t speak Vassish, I apologize. You’ll have to get a translation later. I’m here because I’m short on time. I have things I must do and little time to do them. My resources are limited. If gold were endless and laying upon the beach maybe then I could hire a knight order to come down here, all drawn up and girded in shining steel. Some of them have so much money they even armor their squires. They look great on parade, but I’m not paying for a parade. I’m going to pay for fighters and nothing more.”

The men, half prisoner and half slave, didn’t know what to make of his speech. They shuffled their feet and glanced at one another. Some murmurs of translation passed from one bowed head to the next. The sun blazed overhead, no shade or breeze to give them reprieve as they listened.

Lucius had been given one of the guard towers to stand on, an impromptu pulpit which he descended from. His voice carried loud across the crowd regardless. “I’m sure you lot are familiar with the wastelands, the southern continent. You’re familiar with the degeneration of humans that live there. The cause of why has been a mystery, but it’s simple really.” He pointed to the sky and scanned the front row of prisoners. “It’s the sun.”

Some of the guards, the free men of the mine, glanced at one another, but Lucius carried on. “Travelers say it’s a peculiar thing, like the sky is a haze. The sun shines, but you can’t say from where. Shadows change at random and night comes like a sorry debtor. The very passage of time becomes confused because they’re cut off from Lumius. It drives them to insanity. They seek refuge in perverse demons and occult ritual. The cannibalism is but one example…”

Some of the prisoners scowled, hard faced men with sunken eyes and tanned skin. They were fit and their backs unbowed. Lucius made note of them, meeting their gazes as he went on. “What do we have here? Mist. The same haze and confusion, just to a lesser degree. We’re at the edge of the map, the end of the world. Lumius and the goddesses can still reach out and help us, but the creatures can reach out too. They whisper false promises and seduce the unwary. You’ve all seen it happen. You’ve seen the people who disappear. They aren’t escaping. Their sentences didn’t run out. They turned their backs on civilization, on completing their imprisonment and returning home. Rather, the jungle swallowed them up. They sank into canopy shadows and handed their lives over. Those men were eaten by the islands.”

To simply tell men of the nature of their world can be a difficult thing, and Lucius didn’t have much experience at it yet. I believe he should have played his cards close to his chest as they say. He had to take account of the people he spoke to: criminals. They were frustrated men beaten down by the mine and yearning for escape. He didn’t need to give them justifications beyond his mere permission.

But he did.

And they tilted their heads. They sneered in confusion. They shook their heads and closed their ears.

Thinking he primed them with righteous cause, Lucius paced before them and barked out, “I need men to fight the source of this problem, to burn out the roots. Serve me and your sentences will be commuted, nullified, ended. If you’re welling to fight, assemble at the docks. If not, return to your hovels and shovels, you won’t be leaving anytime soon.”

With that, he turned his back to them and marched off. He left so abruptly, the prisoners stood in shock. Confusion broke out among them, hasty conversations and translations. Some scrambled to follow, they shoved through the ranks of dusty miners and chased after him. These were largely the young among the prisoners, and those Lucius most needed for his purge.

The warden followed after him as well, pleading. “My lord, how will we meet our quotas if you take away the workers! We have debts, obligations, requirements! The onus on us is from the crown!”

Lucius waved him off and waited for a coughing fit to subside. “Don’t worry about that,” the young lord said. “I’ll be replenishing your supply soon enough. Be it from Raymi’s war, or from my own. You might have to teach farmers how to mine, but the quotas will be met.”

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“But, with locals? They barely work enough to stay alive! They have no industry.” Worse than his fears, Lucius planned to send the most impotent of the archipelago; those who grew and smoked the kuku plant. “When we first came to the Misty Isles, we tried hiring them and it was a catastrophe. They scratched at the surface, but the moment they didn’t see an immediate glint of gold they could pick up with their hands, there was nothing we could do. They just left, bored!”

Lucius thought for a moment about the problem of money. He had never been an expert at economics, and I made the mistake of giving him some offhand comments on the subject without properly explaining concepts like purchasing power to him. Supply and demand was obvious, and I gave him enough lectures as it pertained to wartime logistics, to scarcity from raids and disasters and how to mitigate them, how to plan for them. The Misty Isles had a peculiar problem of a decrepit economy that he felt personally. Even with money there was frightfully little to buy. The beer in pubs was no better than swill made in one’s home. Under such circumstances it was little wonder the locals couldn’t be motivated.

They hadn’t been indoctrinated with the allure for gold, with the lust for luxury, with the taste of status. A most problematic state of affairs for an ambitious ruler.

“Don’t worry about it, we have weeks of backlog regardless. Our shipments will be regular soon and no one will notice. If I have to, I will return some. The injured perhaps. It’s more important that I root out this demon. Don’t worry, I’ll put them to good use, as is my right as governor.”

The warden paled and bowed as he backed away. The ship captains Lucius had brought with him had already been brought up to speed. He had two, one to bring himself back to Aliston, and another to settle them on another island. It was a shabby thing by design, more of a barge than a ship. It was barely fit to shove across a placid lake, and he liked it that way. He wanted the prisoners–that he was about to arm to the teeth–to know one hint of a storm would capsize the vessel, and take them with it. He allowed no thought of mutiny.

Then, he turned to the growing assembly, the self-selected wheat from the chaff. They weren’t all wheat though, not by a long shot. Many were old timers, those who had lost hope of ever leaving. Lucius’ speech had rekindled a thirst for life in them, memories of freedom. It wasn’t just the simple freedom of a serf however, it was the freedom of barbarous man.

Jacque Mordare had very wrong ideas about humans in the savage state. He presumed that such a man could not be found any longer, but in truth the regression to form is far too easily. There exists a thirst that lives in every beat of a man’s heart, perhaps hidden, perhaps at the reins. A thirst to do as one wills, a drive to power. A drive to kill and steal, to pillage and rape. It can blaze up like wildfire, feeding upon the deadfall clutter of civilized life. Even with the full knowledge that it destroys, that it begets revenge and sorrow, that it builds nothing to be proud of, there are always some who succumb to it.

When Lucius said the price of their freedom was to inflict violence upon others, he left that island with some three hundred men at his beck and call, a force almost rival to the garrison he took from Puerto Faro and yet to be augmented by an armada of privateers.

He loaded them upon the flimsy barge, commanding the warden to take stock and count, to log name and number of them. Their sentences would have to be officially commuted, and he needed to know who had answered the call that day because he knew a future day might come when he would have to levy the prison once more. Those fearful stragglers would likely not get such a good deal as these.

While the prisoners were settling themselves into rows and piles, clutches and huddles of sore flesh between the barge railings, the warden stepped next to Lucius with a frown. “Many of these men will be of little use to you.”

“In a fight? Perhaps, but what use would they be at the mine? Armies always have menial chores to parcel out.”

And with such brusque confidence, he shoved off the island. For many, that was the last they ever saw of the mine. It vanished into the mist as they traveled south and landed upon an island of weeds. Former settlers had clearcut the woods and tried to till the soil. The demon had consumed them however, and left behind house and barn like hollow tombstones.

Lucius disembarked with the men and marshaled them as barrels were unloaded. “Listen up, I need everyone who has military experience to stand over there, and everyone else to stand over there,” he announced. Shortly, all the men had shuffled to various groups and groups within groups. He split them up by training and nationality. He quizzed some on what their responsibilities had been, for he wasn’t of particular familiarity with the land forces of Aillesterra. To his surprise he even had a few men from Skaldheim.

The assignment of squads and leaders was the most precarious of work, because he had to split up any potential sub-factions from the mine and make sure their only uniting feature was their allegiance to him–contractual as it was. On top of that, he had to make sure each of them was lead by someone who spoke Vassish. The elderly and infirm of the army were distributed fairly as he could, and then he spoke to them once more.

“I hope you weren’t expecting to fight your first day. War is mostly about out-marching your enemy. Tonight you make camp,” he said, and gestured at some of the unloaded supplies. “Clear this field, set your tents, get cook fires and fill your stomachs. Tomorrow, I’ll return and if you’ve been able to put up a wall, I’ll bring extra rations. If you don’t know what to do, ask your squad leader. Dismissed.”

And then he left them on the deserted island with axes, tents, and a good deal of confusion.