Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

With much manpower already at work on every minute thing available and hefty patrols everywhere, quite a few of the undead warriors had nothing to do due to the order to remain on camp until the mirages stopped showing themselves, which led to them finding other ways to occupy themselves, such as checking if their equipment was in a good state, trying to invent board games, trying to invent new spells for the mages, trying a whole bunch of things, although, one group of a dozen or so undeads stuck out from the rest who were at least trying to do something productive or come up with new stuff.

"Flesh, or no flesh- That is the question… Which do you find most appealing, my bony friends?" they were all skeleton and seemingly using the full extent of their untiring minds to think about topics that could hardly be answered with one concise response.

"Depends… Does Lady Ir'Houwl still have flesh or not?" spoke one of the more daring ones.

"I suppose that she does, how else would her mask still hold on to her face otherwise?" theorised another one.

"Then flesh it is!"

"What is you lot doing?" suddenly, a familiar dead tone of voice rang out from behind them, at one point, the first elite mage to have entered this realm had showed up behind them, hold a small stone tablet covered in runes to enhance stealth, seemed like their hierarchical superior had come to check on what they were up to now that they didn't have any orders to go through.

"Debating the concept of physical attraction as naturally born undeads" one said, making it sound like a grand philosophical concept.

The mage just stared at them in silence, they had set up in a part of the woods, so everything was naturally flooded with darkness right now as no moving sun were rising up to create a few rays of light to peer around some of the trees.

He just looked at the sort of board they had set up, which featured a rather well-done chart that detailed the very fine steps in between undeads with very-well conserved flesh, and bare skeletons, with even the names of particular female undeads so that everyone could visualise it.

The mage wasn't certain how the ladies featured on it would take it, but he had to admit that these guys were awfully committed to this, which was only natural, they were undeads, no matter how weird the pastime, they would take it with an incredible amount of seriousness.

"Mmh… Your chart is missing a lot of details and variations, not all rot is the same, and not all flesh is comparable, my friends… We, naturally born undeads, who emerged from the soil, take on the appearance of possible corpses that could have occurred across the lands conquered by the empire, which includes all of those who have passed since the dawn of time, but being naturally born, these can be mixed and matched…" hearing the mage go onto one of his tangents, the other undeads all listened attentively, expecting some high-level wisdom.

"...As such, any of use could be modelled after the remains of any of the species that passed across the lands and seas under King Nitok's Dominion, this means that you humans, elves, beastfolks, monsterfolks, monsters, beasts, creatures of all sorts, demons, and many others- Are possibilities"

"And as you should be aware, each species is different, and any given species has countless sub-species and the likes, for example, although we say 'elf', it is a bit of a shortcut on our part, as the elves on Viridis for example, aren't technically just elves, some are precisely, Elfen Viridisis amongst a few others…" he stopped as though trying to recount the original point he was trying to make before trailing off track.

"...Species can be compared, but can be entirely different, the flesh of a regular demon is of much a different kind than a regular human's, as such, they rot differently and will have differences throughout the stages of decay and a different reaction to various environmental hazards… Which is to say that this chart, whilst not incorrect, grossly under evaluate the diversity of our fellow undeads"

Tapping his weathered hand against his palm whilst speaking, the mage crossed his arms.

"Also, no flesh is clearly the best, the skeleton women are sweet and gentle, like Lady Yuolrt" ending with a very personal opinion before the other undeads could react, the mage casually began walking away.

The mage instead headed near the edges of the oasis to check if a mirage would still manifest in his vision, and indeed, a large manor built out of dark wood, covered in vines, one with nature as trees and bushes were allowed to grow near and even upon it.

'Not today either' having learned like all others that stepping under direct sunlight would ensnare you into an incredibly realistic illusory space of sort, he didn't even stick out a single toe and stepped back, it had been his routine for the three days since the pale blue sun went away and the mirages started appearing, he would walk around, check on the undeads that had no order to fulfill and check if it was now safe to go out.

Continuing to look across the horizon, he spotted movement, believing to be an extension of the mirage for a moment before realising that it was instead a small group of livings that was crawling out of the sand and walking around with interest, collecting the glass that often formed across the desert.

With their six legs, compound eyes and dark red chitin, this group of wolf-sized ants were hard at work, trying to fit as much of the fragile glass in between their mandibles, lifting it off the ground before carefully crawling back into the sand where they had come from.

'That could be problematic' thought the undead.

Ant beasts and monsters were rather well know to be a pain in the coccyx, especially the larger ones who could typically ruins entire areas with their frenzied digging, and also due to the fact that even if weak, they were typically a whole slew of them that might as well be called unending depending on just how efficient their queen or queens were at laying eggs.

These in particular seemed pretty good at handling the incredible heat of the desert, as of right now, only three suns were up, but it was still impressive as most other creatures they had encountered would hide from direct sunlight under the sand or otherwise cover up to protect themselves.

It would be best to prepare for a possible fight against them.