“Really, depending on the region, sometimes you’d skip town for like a decade or two, and return only to find whole new cities where a town used to be. The pace of development, especially amongst the shorter-lived, can at times be jarring for our senses.” - Taeyalendil Esaciz, Elven bard and traveler.
“This is a pretty large town,” noted Celia as they walked the streets of the town – rather unimaginatively named Asconix, after the nearby fort’s former name – and took in the sights. The town was just as populous as it looked from afar, with at least a couple thousand people living in it, as well as many businesses that were essentially trading outposts, inns, and other stuff catered for travelers.
It made sense, since given the town’s proximity to the fort, any traveler headed further into the empire would likely stay there for the night. The trading outposts on the other hand were aimed towards those merchants who were trying to make a quick profit while minimizing the effort and risks they needed to undertake, selling for cheaper at Asconix so they could return to the Lichdom to make another trading run as soon as possible. It was naturally more profitable to bring their own wares further into the Empire and sell it themselves while cutting off the middleman, but that took more time, and came with greater risks.
“I know, pretty impressive considering that it couldn’t be more than a few generations old,” mentioned Aideen as she nodded in affirmation to what Celia said. The atmosphere of the town as a whole was relaxed. People from all races and walks of life mingled in the streets, much like in the Lichdom, though there were notably more humans, which wasn’t unusual that far east in the Empire. “There was no town here when I last visited around a century and a quarter ago or so. Just a few small villages.”
“Huh, another case of things changing quickly then, eh?” asked Celia, to which Aideen nodded. “I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, given how much my own home village changed in half the time.”
“That’s just how it is when you live longer, Celia. Better get used to it,” said Aideen with a nod. “We probably never considered being able to witness changes on this scale when we were still alive back then, but now that our lives are much, much longer, it will become more and more a common sight for us. Progress and change are inevitable things, after all.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” admitted Celia with a nod of agreement. “Back when I was still living in the village, most of the time all we could worry about is our crop and harvest, and whether we would have enough to pull through the next year after paying our taxes. We never had the time or chance to look at things further ahead, as they’re just… not practical for us to worry about.”
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“Things like the lord changing, that was usually something we’d see once, maybe twice in a lifetime, and I guess now I’d be around far longer than most lords out there would be in power… excepting the esteemed Bone Lord, of course.”
“Hah! You got that one right. Grandpa Aarin had been in ‘power’, if you’d call it that, since before the First Elmaiya Empire had even existed. He’s already outlasted many, many nations out there, and I don’t think he has any intention to change that anytime soon,” replied Aideen with a chortle. “It’s something most everyone here in the southern continent has come to accept as a fact of life, I guess.”
“What is?”
“That the Lichdom is eternal and isn’t going to go away, no matter what they thought about it,” said Aideen with some amusement. “I mean, think about it. Grandpa has been around from before any of the current countries in the continent had even been raised, and had outlasted many of them as well. Even when there was a much stronger prejudice against necromancy in the past, during the early age where Ur-Teros was mostly a place where various tribal warlords reigned and fought each other, the area around where Tohrmutgent now stands had been Grandpa’s, and nobody was foolish enough to contest him about it.”
“Why so?”
“Because Grandpa doesn’t like being disturbed and isn’t above sending out a literal flood of skeletons to bury whoever bothered him, that’s why!” replied Aideen cheerfully as she laughed. “And that was just back then, when Grandpa was using the skeletons he kept with him and the ones that died in his territory. Now consider that thousands of years have passed since then.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Grandpa said that the first residents of what would become Ptolodecca first settled near him around… two thousand five hundred years or so ago. Now consider how much that population has grown over time. How many generations have lived and died on lands Grandpa Aarin claimed as his?” Aideed said, building up to the concluding question, “How many skeletons had Grandpa accumulated over those thousands of years?”
“Two and a half millennia… with a constantly increasing population over that period of time… Holy hell… That’s going to be a lot of skeletons…” said Celia as it dawned upon her just what sort of astronomical number Aideen was hinting at. “Wait, that many skeletons must have taken a lot of space. Where is the Bone Lord keeping all those?”
“Everywhere, Celia,” said Aideen with a smile on her face. “The skeletons used as sentries and other duties in the Lichdom that you have seen are but a fraction of the whole. I think you must have seen how skeletal motifs are prominent in the decoration of the buildings in the Lichdom, no?” she then asked, to which Celia nodded. “Those aren’t carved. Most of those decorations are real skeletons embedded into the walls.”
“At a single command from Grandpa Aarin, the entirety of the lichdom would rise to arms, and we would showcase to the world what it means to literally drown the enemy in a flood of bodies,” Aideen continued, just as nonchalantly. “Well, I guess the bodies in this case would be skeletal, but I think the point still applies.”