Waking up in Darkness

The Village of the Mage has been prosperous ever since it was established by the Mage herself. All the leaders the followed her had been kind, generous, and wise. They made sure to keep the village running well and even made improvements; the village could practically be called a town. The village has experienced its Golden Age for 500 years and it would have continued on if not for the previous chief and his son, Felipe. Felipe’s father was a wise leader but her wisdom was not directed towards the improvement of the village, he used it for his own gain.

 Having seen for himself how healthy the village is, Felipe’s father started to want it for himself and his family. He started to device ways to subtly increase taxation from the villagers. He would make up building projects and other activities that would require quite a bit if funding but in reality would only need very little. He started to fill his personal coffers using the money from the citizens. And when the citizens could not keep up with the tax, he would and equivalent amount of their products instead.

“Look at this, son. Look at how easy it is,” Felipe’s father told his son as he showed him the tax collections for the month, “these villagers are fairly simple. You show them something intangible and they will not question the increase in taxes.”

“That is good, but,” Felipe replied, wondering, “is this quite enough?”

“This is enough,” his father said, “You do not want the villagers to despise you. If you ask for too much and they start to question your decisions, your rule will start to crumble. The village is our lifeline, we get our sustenance from the people and the fields. If take from them too much, we will end up destroying them, and thereby ourselves. We can fool them into paying more than what is needed, but we could never take more than what they can give. Do you understand?”

“Yes, father, I do,” Felipe answered, still doubting the mountain of coins and the crates of produce in his father’s office.

Felipe was not convinced, he can see the fields, he can see the smiles of the people, and he has been to every harvest festival. The village is too progressive, it is way to wealthy and he knows that he could still take more than just a mounds of gold coin and a few dozen crates of produce that he could trade off for even more gold. When his time comes, he will make sure to get all that he can. He will not be satisfied with just this paltry amount of offering, he will be the village chief and he will own the village and its people, it is only right that he gets his fair share of its wealth.

And so the village chief kept on overpricing his projects and collecting from the villagers. Leaving them with just enough to get by and have some little luxury, while the village chief and his family’s treasury began growing steadily. No one can voice any complaints. They could see the projects, it is obvious that they are priced way more than they actually do but the village chief would only give them a lame response like the materials are top class or the artisans and planners are experts from the capital and they need require more fees. After all, the village deserves the best, doesn’t it?

“Don’t you think the villagers will finally realize hits, chief?” the chief’s secretary asked while they were counting the month’s collections.

“You are paid for your services,” the Village Chief answered, “just do your money’s worth of task.”

“U am spry for talking out of line,” the secretary responded and went silent.

“And I personally think that they have already figured it out,” the chief continued, “They just can’t do anything about it. They see the projects, they are still living above average lives, and the harvest are still way above expectations. They are yet to complain about it.”

The secretary did not respond. He did not have to. He understood fully well how cunning the village chief is. Everything he says from here on out will only be debunked and he won’t have a winning chance with any argument. This person is a very good politician through and through. He steals from the people but he does it by the book, only someone with a string sense of justice and is brave enough will stand against this person. But even then, he will fail because the villagers will always choose the chief over some strangers who is forcing his own sense of justice upon them.

As Felipe grew older, he has learned the ways that his father ran the village. The routine checks on the fields, the visits to the stalls, the consultations with the representatives and other villagers. He has also learned about the dark side of running the village. The black market deals, the assassin squad called “The Village Guardians”, the hidden vault, and the nobles and other politicians who are privy to the chief’s activities. He even learned which of the council members are in favor of the chief and are under his payroll.

When Felipe turned 29 his father grew sick. Although he could still make decisions for the village, he was physically too weak to be able to stand up for a long period of time. The visits to the stalls and the village along with the other responsibilities like meeting with the council and the other nobles and merchants were left to Felipe. He saw this as his chance to build a foundation of his future rule. He focused his attention to the equally crooked nobles and merchants. He started to familiarize himself with the black market traders. He even started to keep a part of the collections in his own personal vault.

In less than a year, the village chief passed away and Felipe took over. It was not an easy transfer of power because the white council – the council members who opposed the previous chief’s corruption -presented a representative for the position of village chief. The first thing that Felipe did was gather his loyal subjects, the council members who supported his late father’s corruption. Of course they willingly supported the son. It was not battle; Felipe won by landslide. It was because of the support of most villagers thinking that he will be a better leader than his father, and because his supporters from the council members bought off some of the villagers that were considering the other representative.

No sooner after he was put in position did he begin his secret activities. On the surface, Felipe seemed to be running the village the way his father did. And he did so for a year. Underground, he would trade majority of the produce through his black market channels and his friends from the nobility. He started to propose irrational projects like a marble statue of him and his father beside the Statue of the Mage in the villager square. He has become bolder in collecting high taxes.

Felipe even hired mercenaries to guard him and to act as guards for the tax collectors. At first, it was to intimidate the villagers into paying the unreasonably high tax, and if not, to take and equivalent amount of produce from them, sometimes even more. The effects of Felipe’s deeds become visible in just a year. The villagers have grown poorer and they are unable to keep up with their daily needs, much less the high taxes. They soon sold their unnecessary belongings just to be able to survive. Those who did not have any valuables, resorted to begging.

As soon as the villager were not able to pay, Felipe started to order extreme measures. He gave the mercenaries power to beat the villagers into paying. If they cannot pay, he would take their daughters as maids or their sons as soldiers. Of course he would not pay them salaries, these children would become debt slaves – working all their lives without getting paid. It is from among these debt slaves that Felipe would find his future wife. She was the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen and despite their great difference in age, he still took the girl as his personal maid.

He soon married the girl after a year. He wanted to have a child, someone who will inherit the lands that he has destroyed and corrupted. He kept trying with his wife but they never were blessed with a child. Five years has passed, Felipe is already 35 and there was still no progress. They called a doctor from the capital and they had themselves tested. They were both supposed to be healthy, this is a very rare case. Felipe started to think that this is his punishment.

Not only have they failed to have a child, the village fields also started to produce less and less. He can’t keep up with his mercenary upkeep anymore. He can’t even keep his previous lavish lifestyle. He started to have weird dreams. For days on end, he would go to the Dark Forest alone and would return confused and dirty. His wife and servants started to fear that he might have gone mad from guilt and conscience. Then one day, 10 years after he became the Chief and got married, Felipe suddenly returned from the woods smiling.

He soon called his loyal council members and had a very long discussion about how they could revive the village. The council members thought that he has gone mad at first, but they soon found results. And so the village had more harvest that year, soon after, Felipe’s wife gave birth to a girl. It was the beginning of the Village’s return to progress and they celebrated that every year during the Harvest Festival.