Five markets to sell and buy undead in the Known World
by Pol Ginés from Threshold Magazine issue 29
Lesser undead are useful: they never tire as
workers, servants or fighters. They need neither food nor air. An
entire business enterprise has evolved around them, great trade
networks that produce specially trained or specially resistant
undead, and sell them around the Known World. Most of these networks
operate by sea, and are related to smuggling, piracy and the slave
trade. Most governments, demihumans, druids and churches actively
fight against this unholy trade. But there are powerful entities—evil
Immortals and their priests, and human powers, governments and
businessmen—interested in keeping it alive.
Zombies and skeletons can never learn new things. In fact, they forget many things that they used to know. When a highly-skilled mounted bowman dies and is raised as a skeleton rider with a bow and a skeleton horse he can still ride and shoot but he is no longer highly-skilled (no weapon mastery higher than Basic). Skeletons cannot work in trained squads of pikemen, except for those who were trained pikemen when they were alive. They maintain their military training, their military formations and some tactics with weapons. Any 8th level cleric or 9th level magic-user can cast animate dead on dead peasants and give them crude weapons, but only former soldiers will be able to use bows or halberds as zombies or skeletons. In the same way, you need former sailors to obtain zombies and skeletons that work as an undead crew for a ship. Only former miners, dwarves and gnomes are useful working underground in a mine. All corpses are not of equal value: those who can be animated with interesting skills are of greater value.
Also, some evil clerics and wizards, and their evil guilds, are especially good at creating undead. Using certain old, secret and forgotten techniques, if they bring bodies to special evil places and animate them with special magics, those zombies, skeletons and sometimes even ghouls and mummies, are especially strong. They are perhaps a little more intelligent, have maximum hp or get a bonus to Saving Throw against Turning. Perhaps these undead are especially strong by night (+1 or +2 to hit and damage) or as long as they are in their pirate ship or near a magical banner. All of these hardened undead are not destroyed by dispel magic (the undead created by a simple animate dead are vulnerable to this spell). Of course, these specially powered undead are more expensive to the buyer.
Anyone can buy these “undead packs,” usually already equipped with weapons and armor. The place of delivery, usually by ship, can be a neutral spot in a remote place. Or buyers can go to the “undead warehouse” when they are told that their undead servants are ready. It is quite similar to buying slaves. Traders usually give control to buyers simply by ordering the undead to be obedient to their new masters. Most “elite” products (such as mounted bowmen, or skeleton packs of lions, or troglodyte bands, or giant zombies) are produced with a “security back door:” the producers can destroy them simply by pronouncing a keyword, so that buyers cannot use them against their former masters. Even if the buyer is a vampire or powerful undead lord with a pawn-and-liege control over the recently bought minions, the producers can activate these keywords. Some Entropic Immortal magic usually protects these keywords from magical divination or scrying, but heroes such as the PCs can quest in secret places to obtain them and stop undead hordes. Producers and distributors focus usually on physical undead such as skeletons, zombies, and sometimes ghouls, wights and mummies, because incorporeal undead are very difficult to keep, control and transport. You can produce wights in cells and farms, and transport them with chains and cages and locks, but you can’t do so with incorporeal wraiths.
Let’s read now about the five main places to buy, sell and produce undead servants in the Known World: Grukk in the mountains near the Broken Lands, the hidden pirate port of Cave Harbor in Minrothad, the shady Port Tenobar next to Malpheggi Swamp, the dusty port of Surra-Man-Raa on the coast of Ylaruam and the pirate outpost of Caerdwicca, in the southern coast of the Isle of Dawn, a plague for the Alatian Islands.
1. Grukk, the jewel of Orcus in the Known World
Grukk used to be simply a great and remote enclave of orcs in the mountains between northern Darokin, the Broken Lands, the Ethengarian southwestern border, and Alfheim. Darokinian legions from Fort Nell and elves used to keep the orcs penned in the mountains. But a few years ago the human cleric Orguz Rammaster (C30 of Orcus, C) came to power and changed it all. Orcus enjoys both brutality and undead, and Orguz, his human priests and a few goblinoid wokani, have created a great emporium of undead trade, with a surprisingly cunning net of partners and allies. Ethengar is only 20 miles to the north. There, Orguz buys yaks, horses, big goats and bulls from the Taijit clan. He also buys dead Ethengarian warriors and their equipment. Yellow Orks and Hobgoblanders from the Broken Lands bring Taijit warrior corpses to Grukk, usually with living horses. Sometimes Taijit warriors bring their defeated enemies, Yakka clan warriors, to Grukk. Orguz also buys dead wargs or giant wolves and goblin wolf riders, either from the Gostai horde in Yugatai lands or from Hobgobland. Hobgoblander shamans of Yagrai and Wogar are utterly opposed to giving or selling their fallen to Grukk so this is not a frequent source. But both humanoid Khans, Hutai Khan and Moghul Khan, are happy to sell their own dead warriors, or enemy prisoners (from each other’s hordes or from other neighbors) to Orguz, who will pay with obedient skeletons and zombies, sometimes of ogres or monsters.
Orguz works hard to procure lizardman corpses or prisoners from The Mucks, as they are useful as underwater fighters and guardians. Yelloworkians usually raid their neighbors of Gnollistan to obtain valuable gnollish prisoners or corpses to sell. Hobgoblanders, as a result of Orguz’s suggestions, have developed a strange alliance with their neighbors of High Gobliny to conduct trade with unscrupulous Glantrian wizards. Selling strong undead minions is a good business in Glantri: there aren’t churches nor clerics opposing it, and many wizard nobles feel that undead warriors are a lot cheaper and more reliable than human soldiers and guards. In Klantyre and Boldavia many lords are ready to pay for zombie ogres and bugbears, and good skeleton bowmen, as well as for all kinds of monsters.
Skeleton bulls and yaks from Ethengar are useful both as draft animals (to move corpses and orcish artillery and other things through mountains and hills) and as a charging and quick attack force. They are easy to obtain in Grukk. Boldavian vampire lords are quite tired of Yugatai Ethengarian raiders and they would like to invade their lands with a herd of undead bulls, yaks and horses. They would also like to use undead horse bowmen, but those are more expensive. Skeleton foot bowmen are very useful as guards for Glantrian wizards. Orguz is also paying for dwarves, gnomes and shadow elves, that is, races with abilities for underground building and mining. Those are useful for mines and underground warfare and also for wizards that need workers to build dungeons under their towers. Grukk is also developing a really cheap product: giant rats in skeleton or zombie form, very useful for undead lieges, and easy to pack and hide. Many customers would like to buy skeleton tigers and cougars, lizards (tuataras, chameleons, dracos, geckos), bears, boars and giant boars, but these wild animals have to be hunted. Also, rich customers are ready to pay for undead giants, especially in Glantri: they can be used as artillery and for construction and hard work. To obtain these products, Grukk has deployed teams of hunters. To produce especially resistant undead, they have to capture these creatures alive and then kill them in the ritual chambers of Orcus. Hunting these creatures alive is not easy. Many creatures are now going to hide in Alfheim and druids in the forests and the elven frontier have already discovered that humanoids are strangely dedicated to the capture of live bears, cougars and boars. Orguz asks Glantrians for magical objects as a payment for his undead: magic arrows, potions, and magic items that his wokani can use. He also accepts money that he can spend on powerful items (you can buy lots of things with money from Darokinian merchants).
Orguz’s next plan is to animate a great horde of skeleton goats, horses, bulls and mounted bowmen, with some undead ogres and giants, and organize it with able cleric sergeants and captains. He will then set an ambush on the Legions of Fort Nell. He hopes a legion or two will go into the hills thinking about fighting orcs, but they will find mounted bowmen and fast moving troops surrounding them in a deadly ambush. He plans on locating and killing the clerics of the legions first. Then, he will animate the dead legion and will have 2,000 or more undead skeletons trained as a legion with pikes and rapiers, to conquer Fort Nell. If he succeeds, all the orcs in Dast, Xorg and the mountains, and his allies of Yellow Orkia, Hobgobland and other areas of the Broken Lands will march under the banner of Orcus. They will convince Kol and Ogremoor to mount a decoy attack against Corunglain, but the real army of Orcus will bypass this heavily protected city and move directly against Favaro, which is very rich and not well protected. Again, their dead—and food and animals—will become part of the army of undead and humanoids that will march on Darokin City.
2. Port Tenobar, your place for strange monsters
Grukk is an evil place working for the glory of Orcus, bringing undeath and destruction, with a regional importance but territorially limited. Port Tenobar (pop. 12,000), next to the Arbandrine River, Malpheggi Swamp, Atruaghin forests, and far from real civilization, is a nasty port to do nasty business. The Night Hand is a criminal guild that has developed an alliance with evil clerics of Nyx and some well-paid magic-users to create and provide undead to customers of Darokin, Sind—their main market—and all the southern coast of the Known World. Their real factory of undead is somewhere near the Arbandrine River and the swamp. There they receive human warriors and prisoners from Atruaghin. Usually, these are prisoners captured by the Clan of the Tiger and sold to the Night Hand. Some of them can pay a ransom and save their lives.
The Night Hand business is really about monster zombies and skeletons that they hunt in the swamp. They specialize in lizardmen, giant lizards such as tuataras, lots of crocodiles (of all sizes), troglodytes, bears, hydras, some great worms, toads and humanoids from the swamp. They also hunt griffons and hippogriffs in the hills and tigers, panthers and bears in Atruaghin, or buy them from Tiger warrior hunters. Nets, traps and sleep spells are useful to capture these creatures alive. Dark rites make them especially strong undead. Many customers come to Port Tenobar to buy these kinds of creatures. The Night Hand can deliver a ship to any coastal place with a shipment of crocodile, troglodyte and lizardman zombies for a good price. They are not good at providing weapons or armor, just simple maces and primitive weapons from these victims. The Night Hand is a business that uses bribes and murder to keep it running smoothly. They are in serious negotiations with their rivals in Cove Harbor, in Minrothad, to avoid a war. Probably the Minrothaddans will ask for exclusivity for undead trade in Thyatis and the northern countries, and the Darokinians are ready to accept it.
3. Cove Harbor, good service and deliveries
Cove
Harbor is the main pirate settlement in Minrothad, protected from
magical scrying and with a strong industry of kidnapping and ransom
and selling stolen cargo. The same ships that take these purloined
goods also do business with undead. Cove Harbor sellers are good at
tailoring their trade to the demands of the international market. If
somebody asks for 30 gnoll zombies with plate mail and pikes, they
try hard to find them and bring them to the customer. They can locate
business niches in wars, when they can be asked for undead bowmen or
crossbowmen. They are also really good at finding undead sailors and
rowers to power ships. And they have strange ties to Undersea tritons
and perhaps devilfish to work together in dark businesses. They work
mainly in the Thyatian black market—in Ierendi, Ylaruam, and
Karameikos too—but their ships travel as far north as Alpha in
Norwold, and they have customers in the Isle of Dawn. They ask their
pirate friends not to throw enemies to the sea, but bring them to
Cove Harbor. If a ransom is not possible, their undead body can be of
use. They have mercenary wizards and clerics that are not as devoted
to evil or entropy as they are to their personal enrichment. Their
ship captains think this is simply another business line of work,
similar to smuggling or selling slaves.
4. Surra-Man-Raa, the dust queen of undeath
Everybody suspects that Surra-Man-Raa, on the coast of Ylaruam, is an evil place, probably related to very old evils, but when someone visits the location it looks old, dusty, rather small and even sleepy. There is little to no activity at port, and the market is of little interest. But for those engaging in undead trade, Surra-Man-Raa is of utmost relevance. There are three very ancient families involved with this trade: one is devoted to Hel and specializes in creating wights and ghouls, another one is devoted to Thanatos and creates skeletons and zombies, and the last one is devoted to Nyx and creates mummies. They have all been working together for centuries and have formed a good relationship. They like things that do not change. They know quite a lot about old Nithia and its curses, and about ways to make undead more resistant.
The family devoted to Thanatos is the most
interested in market trends and military (and destructive) needs. If
somebody needs skeleton heavy cavalry with lances, their agents in
Thyatis City speak about a war or a crusade in Soderfjord against
gnolls and organize a group of crusaders (usually followers of Halav)
asking them to acquire that equipment. Then, they bring them to an
ambush in the Soderfjord hills where gnolls, evil clerics and some
undead are waiting for them. This is the way they obtain the
specialized troops and equipment they will sell. There are some
gnollish tribes that have been working with them for a long time and
some places well tested for ambushes. If the customer asks for undead
sailors able to fight at sea with axes and swords, they bring
Vestlander ships into the ambush. The ambushes take place not far
from the coast and the rivers so they can easily take the corpses to
their ships and to Surra-Man-Raa to perform their special rites.
The
family that produces wights has a simple technique: in their “farm”
they just make captive wights touch and kill victims who then become
wights. With nets, chains and cages they can put them in ships to
anywhere. Some customers simply ask them to throw 20 or 30 wights on
some island or coastal colony to destroy an enemy. They also have a
secret way of producing ghouls, which is a not very common kind of
undead and not easy to find at the undead market.
The third family, devoted to Nyx, sells expensive mummies to selected customers. Sometimes they sell old mummies from forgotten Nithian tombs that they can find and control. Other times, they create new mummies, even animal mummies such as great cats, boars or crocodiles.
Those three families have total control over what is happening in the city. They conduct business, but they are sincerely devoted to their Immortals and some strange Entropic appreciation of making time be slow and undeath nearer to life. They will never deal with Glantian wizards nor put their tradition at risk by making powerful enemies.
5.
Caerdwicca, the port of the undead privateers
Thyatis asked Thane Uthgaard McRhomaag (F20, C) and his McRhomaag clan to bring as much havoc and chaos as possible to the Alatian Islands and make sure that Alphatians were not free to attack Ochalea or the Pearl Islands. Uthgaard asked for undead ships, undead crews and undead pirates. And Thyatis paid for it. Through secret and non-official ways, Thyatian officers buy and train some low-level clerics and some evil pirates to use undead crews or mixed crews (some alive, most dead), with Caerdwicca as their base and training ground. In this small and nasty place there are some avengers and clerics of Alphaks that animate dead and make undead a little bit harder. Sometimes, pirates from Ochalea and Ne’er-do-well bring victims here. Captains, evil chaplains on board and MacRhomaag clansmen enjoy their stolen treasures and attacking Alphatian ships and colonies.
McRhomaag spends part of this money in buying better undead, such as giant zombies. Other times, he launches raids into the interior areas of the Isle of Dawn to hunt humanoids that can be used as undead. He is mainly interested in clans of hobgoblins or bugbears that are proficient with longbows, but those are not easy to find nor to hunt. Thyatian officers are seriously studying the limits of using undead soldiers and sailors to damage Alphatian frontiers.
This is quite a secret operation and military orders and churches in Thyatis know nothing about it, or dismiss any rumor of Thyatian undead pirates as Alphatian propaganda and silly legends of drunken sailors. There are also rumors that Borydos Island in Thyatis is a base for further investigation of this strategy and is building undead resources against Alphatia.
***
Suggested market prices of each undead (always gp)
These are market prices for skeletons unless otherwise specified. Zombies are usually less popular than skeletons, and they are 25% more expensive. Normal wights are usually 2,500 gp each. Mummies are expensive, about 12,000 each. Good clients can bargain for some discounts. Specially resistant undead can be 50% to 100% more expensive.
Equipment (weapons and mounts) not included
Kobold civilian skeleton 10
Kobold warrior skeleton 20
Kobold archer skeleton 30
Kobold trained with crossbow 60
Kobold rider (without mount) 140
Ethengarian horse warrior (without horse) 300
Human light horseman 200
human heavy riding lancer 400
Human civilian, orc, hobgoblin 18
Human fighter, orc, hobgoblin, 40
Human sailor 30
Human trained pikeman 80
Longbowman or crossbowman 100
Skeleton artillery 100
Trained miners (human, gnome, dwarf…) 40
Gnollish warrior 70
Gnollish archer 130
Gnollish pikeman 110
Troglodyte warrior 120
Lizardman (they know more weapons) 130
Bugbear warrior 130
Bugbear pikeman 200
Civilian ogre 180
Ogre warrior 250
Ogre pikeman 320
Skeleton horse 100
Skeleton warhorse 120
Skeleton goat or ram 15
Skeleton big dog 40
Skeleton wolf 80
Skeleton bull or yak 200
Skeleton boar 120
Skeleton warg 170
Skeleton cougar, or gecko lizard, or black bear 220
Skeleton tiger or tuatara lizard 700
Skeleton hill giant 1,200
Tigers and lizards are in great demand because they fight well and do not need weapons. Bulls are cheap and quick and do not need weapons, either. Many customers ask for zombie pikemen (ogres, gnolls, hobgoblins and bugbears): they are slow at initiative, but strong. Kobold crossbowmen sound odd, but they have no penalty (-1 to damage) if they have been trained in this weapon. Training and then killing them to animate them as undead is a way of having courageous and obedient kobolds.