The Lot of a Lichnik
The Lot of a Lichnik is the preserved literary memoir of one Kazimir Harkavin, an officer of the Minarborian crown tasked with maintaining the propriety and social supremacy of the undead in the Lichgraviate of Novodolor (roughly corresponding to the territory of present-day Lachdolor). The memoir was written in eight segments, each detailing a case of interest during the author's career. It won the 2016 FNORD Award for Literature.
The work is set between the years 97 and 133 Anno Libertatis (978-1337 in the calendar of the time), extending from Minarboria's late pre-Imperial era to the fragile aftermath of Harvestfall Revolution. In doing so it offers an unwittingly intimate window into the empire during its peak and depicts in detail a society shaped at every level by the tenets of State Phylacterism, the creed of the undead Rossheim Dynasty which held that the necromantic energy sustaining their membership conferred with it the divine right of kings. The eventual extinction of this societal outlook - which once prevailed across most of southern Benacia and southwest Cibola - has rendered surviving works like The Lot of a Lichnik into sources of historical value which could never have been foreseen by their original authors.
Harkavin's prosaic style, dry humour and personal philosophy - which the works of his national descendants have never been able to fully replicate - allegedly met with the approval of none other than his sovereign empress Lyssansa, to whom the earlier portions of his work were leaked without his knowledge. Lyssansa is said to have cited the work's merit in offsetting her own scribes' inclination toward saccharine utopianism with a fortifying dose of social realism whilst avoiding the hazard of overshooting into the stuff of nightmares.[1]
The fate of Harkavin - or his assistant Shepilov - remains unknown, lost among the millions of undead who staggered, lurched and eventually crawled to scattered places of rest during Minarboria's final collapse.
The tales
(readers are advised to refer to the Index of Minarborian Terms when encountering unfamiliar words or phrases)
- 1 - The Case of the Fruity Inspector
- An industrial accident is not all that it seems.
- 2 - The Case of the Singing Confessional
- An assassination plot is confronted.
- 3 - The Case of the Scampering Lichling
- An undead child and a search for answers.
- 4 - The Case of the Potty-Mouthed Zombot
- A hunt for the creator of a swearing automaton.
- 5 - The Case of the Sick Lich
- A microbiological threat to lichdom emerges.
- 6 - The Case of the Siren Metropole
- A call to the Minarborian capital.
- 7 - The Case of the Dazed Dilettante
- A lich is intoxicated by something more than lich gravy.
- 8 - The Case of the Mushroom Maniac
- A teacher has an unnerving attachment to fungi.
References
- ^ It is unknown whether Lyssansa fully appreciated the metaphorical presentation of the third instalment (which subsequently gave rise to its own religious sect) whose events were selectively emphasised and their most memorable participant pseudonymed from folk legend as a veiled critique of the other Rossheims' dynastic hubris in adding their own far-flung realms to Minarboria. The lengths to which Harvakin, a nominally devoted minion of the Empress, went to cushion his apparant dissent with such layered allegorical fluff is a revealing social portrait in itself.
