Dread Marfila
It is wrong to call far-flung Marfila the Kingdom Of The Restless Dead. The title it is known as around the civilized countries is false in one important count. The place does not have a king. To someone used to the natural and divine organization of civilization, the make-up of Marfila is chaotic, startling.
Marfila is a country where ancestor worship is taken to an insane degree. While most homes have a shrine to a heroic ancestor, in Marfila everyone believes their ancestors are still around. Their spirits join into the Oversoul, which watches and guides them as they live. Everyone will join it one day, every single person in the country.
Their body, though, remains behind, and that is where the largest oddity of Marfila comes into play. Once someone dies, their body enters the labor force. Funeral practices strip the body of all flesh, leaving behind a pristine skeleton. Necromantic forces animate the skeleton, and it rises to serve the people.
Fields are tilled, animals are shorn, buildings are raised, mines are dug day and night, rain or shine, for only the dead labor in Marila. Crowds of them move about the countryside as messengers. Wherever a normal society would have someone working to earn their bread and rent, Marila places the dead. The living who make the choice to toil do so out of love for their labor, a passion for what they do.
Marfilans do not leave their borders often, as the countries surrounding them rightfully punish their dark arts with a death more permanent than one they find in their home. They do accept guests freely, welcoming them with open arms and open homes. That is how I was able to research this report.
Instead of working for their betters, Marlins spend their day in study, in art, and society destroying acts of leisure. Their libraries are gleaming, beautiful edifices filled with finally made books. Music fills the cities, as the people there sing their joy. Sheer chaos and anarchy, without the order of a proper society like this must not be allowed to spread.
They are not kept in line by the need to get their food from their betters, either. Lines of the dead, bearing baskets full of food, march every moment of the day into vast storage halls, where it is free for the taking. Their streets are lined with stands, where food made by passionate cooks is free for the taking.
Homes too are built everywhere. There are a dozen empty homes for every single person in Marila, as the work crews of the dead are working every hour. From chopping down a tree to putting up a wall, the labor of the dead is continuous. People will ask the Oversoul for a new building, an addition, a shed, and a squad of the dead will soon appear and raise it for them.
This reduces their crime, of course, which is the only testament to their national morals. What is the point of stealing bread or breaking into a home when you can go to a local supply depot and take whatever you need? They think this makes them better, even as they practice their darkest of arts.
But this comes at the cost of order, of discipline. How can anyone know where they stand in such a society? Nature has decreed some men to be the better of others, and grants them more. A beggar in a city has an important role, to be the one to remind everyone where they could fall. Marfila has no beggars, as no one has a place to fall.
The dead are celebrated there. The people bedeck their dead in flowers and art, with many sketches placed among their ribs until they fall apart. Skeletons of beloved family members are bedecked in gold and jewels by their descendants, for such things have no value in Marila outside their beauty. A fortune spent on the dead, as the people in Marila think they have no need for it.
The blasphemous arts of necromancy are everywhere, in that city. The children learn it in schools, and learn that it is acceptable to live among the dead. It is not an uncommon sight to see a skeleton nursemaid pushing a pram while the parents walk, hand in hand, singing. It is unconscionable that the gods allow this.
The greatest of their cities houses Mill Park, their most sacred place. It is there that skeletons that are too badly damaged to be repaired by bonecraft and magic are taken. They are placed on a mill wheel which grinds eternally, with no wind or water to source it. The bone meal that is left after is spread amongst the flowers and trees of the park, which is tended by both ardent fanatics and idle dilettantes, as a place of terrible beauty.
The libraries there are also top-notch among the world, if you can stand to stay among the people. The idle people fill their time not just with stories and songs, but research and study. Though any mage who goes there to learn must be suspect in the greater world, for who knows what dark arts they picked up in that fell and terrible place?
For all this corruption and evil, we dare not march against the canker that is Marfila. The work crews of skeletons who labor to buy them this corrupt and shiftless life of ease are as ready to take up a spear as they are a shovel. Each enemy they fell joins their ranks, as every living Marfilans are all proficient necromancers. This protects the evil place from the wrath of decent, gods-fearing countries.
It is my belief that Marfila must be done away with by a coalition of all truly good nations, to stop their malign influence from spreading. Even now, stories are attracting away the children of their neighbors, stories about a life of song and beauty. Corrupting the youth like this is their greatest sin, and for the good of civilization and the natural order of the world, we must crush them.
