The next morning Tia woke everybody up one by one, having finished the last shift of an uneventful watch, and after preparing for the day, they went downstairs and found Aratos already outside waiting for them.
"Do you ever sleep?" Gagaran asked with a grin.
"Do vampire's need sleep?" He asked, giving them a sudden shock that prompted them to reach for their weapons.
He raised his hands with a laugh, "I kid, I kid, don't worry, I'm a human, it's just a joke. Yes I sleep, I just don't sleep very much."
The weapons went away slowly as they didn't much care for the joke, and he said, "Come along, the priest is running late today so I'll start off by showing you the training."
He began to walk towards the town gate when Lakyus fell into step beside him and said casually, "You've mentioned 'the training' as well as 'the turning' and we heard the priest the other day mentioned 'the unlife to come' but can you explain more?" She asked. "I have to admit its unsettling for adventurers to be in the dark about so much still."
"Well you'll get to see what we're talking about soon, but to start with, 'the training' is learning the combat style of our faith. It was developed by Neia Baraja at first, but then refined during her time in the realm of the Sorcerer King." He said.
That set them all to some measure of noticeable wariness. "Don't worry," he said, "Outsiders who do no harm, will not be harmed. It is the will of the god of justice that only the unjust come to harm, and the peaceful be welcomed in peace, as the social contract states."
That term again...social contract. "We had questions about that too...Commonton people mentioned the 'social contract' to us as well. But we didn't get many details before we moved on." Gagaran asked.
"Well...to finish answering your first question first...the combat style relies on mixing bow use and a one handed sword method, the free hand is used for grips, holds, throws, taking opponent's weapons, and even arrow snatching...but that last one is only the most advanced users." He said.
"To answer your second question, the social contract is a teaching of the Sorcerer King. He has said that all who are part of a society, whether one they are born to or one they chose, have agreed to live according to the needs of society, which require peaceful coexistence. I must not harm my neighbor, nor my neighbor me. I must treat with others honestly as they treat honestly with me. I must contribute to the support of our society, just as my society provides me with security and prosperity in return. What is done, must be returned, and in so doing, we are all the better, safer, and stronger for it." He replied.
"What about those who don't want to be part of it?" Gagaran asked skeptically.
"How do you mean?" Aratos asked.
"Well, for example criminals, or slaves?" She elaborated.
"Well criminals are punished, they can either be part of society honestly, or they are removed from it. And we don't have slaves. The Sorcerer King hates slavery, and he has expressly forbidden anyone in his kingdom, or his followers beyond the borders of his nation, from ever owning another intelligent being." He paused, and they could see he was remembering something, "Who seeks to own his brother or sister, father or mother, or their neighbor, be they next door or as distant as the end of creation, is unworthy of me. You shall not own other peoples as property."
The five women blinked. "The undead said THAT?!" Lakyus said in utter disbelief. Gagaran's jaw dropped. Tia and Tina looked at one another in surprise, their usually neutral expressions now matched in the same way with another feeling, and though her mask kept her face hidden, Evileye felt herself being more than a little impressed.
"Please do not dismiss him as a simple undead." Aratos said patiently. "It should be clear by now, that he is far more than that."
"I'm sorry." Lakyus said sincerely and bowed her head briefly, "Its just...that sounds uncommonly noble, something we're not used to out of the undead."
He looked at her simply and said, "What do your gods say about this subject. Are they OK with ownership over others?"
Evileye heard the question, and she knew full well that he was not asking out of ignorance, having had a priest for a mother, there was no way he didn't know, the old gods had never forbade the practice, not for humans or for demihumans.
Lakyus lowered here eyes and didn't answer.
"So...if the undead are evil, all of them, why does this one show more care for the state of living beings than the six gods or the four?" He asked.
Lakyus didn't have a good answer to that, and he probed further, "More than that, the gods only seem to care for humans, except on occasion for Surshana, but the Sorcerer King looks at all the same way. You visited Commonton. You saw that they had children, laughter, happiness, just like we do, did you not?" He asked.
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Lakyus remembered the snakewoman with many heads who talked about her children and how happy she was that they were safe and no longer being eaten. She might have been a human woman had Lakyus been blind and had only words to go by.
"I did." Lakyus said.
"If I grant that it is suitable that I live peacefully and free from harm because I am able to think, feel, hope, dream, love, lose, and have all the features of humanity...how can it be justice to deny that same privilege to other beings simply because they are of a different flesh?" He asked.
Lakyus did not have an answer, none of them did.
"Here we are." He said, and they noticed that they'd been so deep in conversation that they didn't see that he'd taken them all the way out the gate and to the western wall of the town. There, hundreds of people were engaged in drills against one another. Some of them were in teams of four or five, others were practicing alone against wooden men, others trained against each other as individuals, still others were practicing with bows, and among them all walked others with white sashes who periodically stopped and critiqued someone. It fell into place for them in an instant.
Why the peasants they'd seen, man and woman alike, had seemed not only uncommonly physically strong, but martially inclined and especially proud, with none of the downcast and desperate look so common in the villages and cities of Re-Estize. "You've been built up." Lakyus said.
He looked at her curiously. "What was that?" Aratos asked her.
"Its been bothering me since I got here, the weapons everybody had, the unusual degree of pride, the obvious physical health of your people...every member of Black Justice undergoes military training, don't they?" She asked.
"Every single week." He said with a note of pride.
"But...wasn't that always the case in the Holy Kingdom?" Evileye asked.
"Yes, but those were annual cycles, we train every single week, we have one full day dedicated to it, and one day off after that, and one full week of whatever other work we do. A few gain exemptions for specific tasks, such as the person tending the inn right now, they'll train on the off day and then have the day after that off, this way we overlap and cover each other. The very best among us are highly honored, and Black Justice villages and towns organize overlapping militia groups that cooperate to secure their regions. That is a more recent development though, and so far its only the towns and villages that are expressly dominated by our beliefs. We're not as strong as paladins, but we're better than the old national service system." He said with a considerable amount of pride in his voice.
"Come, walk with me." He said, and he moved down into the training area, and Lakyus looked on with an impressed expression as a peasant twisted a wrist and slammed someone else face first into the dirt and seized the blunted wooden dagger from his partner's hand, then stuck its side to the back of his neck. "Again." The one on the bottom said in a confident voice that one didn't usually find from those who had the taste of dirt on their tongues.
"Neat trick." She said. "You can win a lot of fights in a hurry if you can take weapons away.
Aratos grinned back at her wolfishly, "That's the point. We can't count on being stronger than whoever we have to fight, but we can be clever, we can be cunning, we can out maneuver, out think, and take others by surprise. You're an adamantite level adventurer, the pinnacle of humanity, but if there is a quarter inch of steel in your neck, are you going to live?" He asked.
"No...short of immediate use of potion or magic, I will die in short order." She said.
"Same as anyone else for the most part," he said, "even the strongest can be taken down by something they've never encountered before, and since we can't be ready for everything, we try to be ready for anything, we mix our combat method from ranged to close armed to close unarmed. We're not as good as the elites that follow Pope Neia, but..." He laughed, "I wouldn't want to be a group of ordinary bandits thinking we're a tempting target."
As they watched the martial spirit exhibited by the training grounds, Blue Rose was united in their agreement that he had a good point.
After some time walking around and watching the unusual maneuvers, and quietly memorizing a few to practice among themselves for later application, they grew more and more eager to find a chance to speak with Neia Baraja. At last they'd seen everything the training field offered, and he lead them around the wall to another side of the town.
There a group of people had gathered, they bore looks of sadness, the sort of sadness the veteran adventurers recognized as mourning. There were three middle aged people and several teenagers, and Lakyus quickly guessed they were at a funeral for their parents.
"Wait here." He said, and Aratos went to speak with the family, after a few moments, he returned. "They've given permission for you to watch, but you must remain silent and at a distance, this is an important moment for them, their father and mother passed away on the same night, and now they're going to be read the Cyclic Writ, as soon as the priest arrives with their bodies."
Aratos's voice had become soft, even though they probably wouldn't be heard from where they stood.
Lakyus leaned over and whispered in turn, "What is the Cyclic Writ?" She asked.
"The Cyclic Writ is a part of the last will and testament, we use wills just like you do, giving what we had in life to those we leave behind, but the Cyclic Writ deals with the disposition of the body. See, our priests have items that allow them to raise the dead..."
"Wait...they can resurrect people?!" Lakyus's voice expressed shock, because she was the only one in Re-Estize who could do that, if ordinary village priests could do that as well...
"No." Aratos said, shaking his head. "When a person dies they decide whether or not their body should be laid to rest, or if they should be 'turned' into a skeleton or other undead and if so, for whom. If they chose to be raised as some form of undead for their family, then in unlife they will continue to help their family with whatever they need. Be it protecting them, or farming, or mining, and so on." He said casually.
The entire team tensed, had Lakyus given the order, she felt quite sure they'd have attacked the funeral. The bodies were brought out, and the priest read the Cyclic Writ, and passed a wand over the bodies. The flesh vanished, and two skeletons got up.
Lakyus was frozen where she stood, a mix of horror, fascination, and awe came over her, as Aratos started to speak again.