Keeping Up Morale

Hand reached up from the earth as Nikraal walked by. He was careful to stop at each one, shake it firmly, and give some perfunctory compliment before moving on. It never hurt to keep the minions happy, even the gravelings. It would be a dangerous time indeed to need to pull them from the ground. But morale was morale.

Which, of course, lead to Nikraal's primary business of the day. The ghouls of St. Kapperlin's cathedral had gone on strike. It was difficult to blame them, inconvenient as it was. They had done their job too well. Kapperlinton was a barren waste. The people had been whittled down to nearly nothing. Most had been killed, either eaten or turned over to Nikraal's laboratory. The rest had fled. Only one man remained and he was so mad even Nikraal hesitated to interact with him.

So the ghouls were starving. They refused to move on, having established their families in the cathedral. They were demanding regular shipments of corpses in order to keep working in the field. And not just any corpses, of course. They had to be fresh. Some were even making pickier demands.

In ages past, Nikraal would have simply sent Bi'thoren to raze the area and call it a loss. Unfortunately, ghouls were getting harder and harder to come by. The Crusade of the Sun to the north had wiped out many families. Nikraal expected to need their specific skills in the coming months. So here he was, venturing on foot to this ridiculously sacred ground to play the peacekeeper.

Ha! There was an epithet nobody would ever put on his gravestone. Assuming he ever had one, of course.