Village

Village is a typical place where villagers or farmers are known to inhabit within the New World. Particularly, villages can vary from human nations like the Re-Estize Kingdom to tribal villages with a demi-human origin.

Background

Village made its living from the resources of the forest and agriculture that they harvest. Apart from doctors and herbalists who came to collect herbs, the only visitors to the village were the yearly tax collectors during the autumn season. Village life was very busy even in the early hours of the morning. Villages did not possess the magical illumination of [Continual Light] which could be found in cities, so the villagers would rise with the sun and work hard all day until the sun went down. After the wheat was harvested in the field by villagers, the tax collectors would come around the village to collect it. Normally, they would need to pay taxes to the landlord of the land they were grazing on, but fortunately, Carne Village did not need to do that. The reason was that the Great Forest of Tob was the dwelling place of monsters, and was not ruled by humans.

In the Re-Estize Kingdom, copper and silver pieces were considered as the basic units of currency for their villages. Such villages from that nation don't utilize gold pieces compared to the two types of currency aforementioned. Based on the weaken state Carne Village was in after it got raided by enemy knights, the highest amount they could only produce in cash were 3000 copper coins. It can be noted if a village like them paid more than 3000 coppers, they would not be able to survive the coming winter. The same applies to the products they created. Many wheat fields will have to be abandoned because they lack sufficient manpower to work them.

This problem shared among villages that have manage to survive a raid will resort to paying their customers or other sorts of people like Ainz Ooal Gown by installments. For villages to acquire the valuable currency, they gathered up substances like herbs for profitable sale though, for some, it may be served as a temporary income at best. All villagers like Crusch should know at least have some knowledge about herbs and where they grew. In that regard, herbs happen to make up a major portion of Carne Village's income.

When a village sustains an attack by external forces, every villager household will have increased difficulty in taking care of their own crops. The survivors of destroyed villages tend to immigrate to other untouched villages and make it their new home. Village chiefs are tasked with welcoming the newcomers who are planning to stay in their village. There are also some former villagers who chose not to migrate to a new village again because it happens to be a frontier type which is considered to be dangerous for them. Frontier villages are described as the kind of place where the monster appearance rates are at an all times high. The only villagers who would likely move to a frontier village are those who hailed from a previous frontier village that was raided.

In a frontier village like Carne, everyone in the village are required to work together like they were family. A frontier village life involved villages helping each other out during their time of need. If they did not do this, there would be no way for them to survive. They shared their farming implements and even took turns to use their community cows to till the fields. Because of this, the care and feeding of the livestock was a group activity.

There is always known to be a village chief residing in a small community of villagers. While so, acquiring the position of village chief can vary between communities. For the lizardmen tribes who lived in villages, it is a matter of combat or through the process of undergoing cultural tradition. In the case of Carne Village, a meeting of the villagers are arranged to discuss their opinions on who is the best fit for the village chief role. It requires unanimous acceptance from every villager to be approved of. Nonetheless, what sets apart the human villages from the demi-human type is that they have a local lord who has an extensive influence in their area which even Ainz wants to avoid getting into contact with.

If one of the villages belong to Eight Fingers, it most likely housed the cultivation of many drug productions such as the Black Dust. These drug bear origins from the illegal plants that have been growing it in their villages when it was supposed to be outlawed by the Kingdom. Even by simply burning the plants, it can still end up producing poisonous smokes which can badly affect the well-being of villagers who inhaled the toxic smell. At the same time, villages that depended on growing the drug for a living will suffer from its loss financially. According to Blue Roses's investigations on the matter, there were twelve large scale village plantations in the Kingdom that has spread throughout the nation’s lands. It has also affected people in the Baharuth Empire too.

Despite their efforts to reduce the drug epidemic, it won't be enough to put a dent to the Eight Fingers' operations. The nobles of this land who shared connections with them will claim that they did not know that the plant could be used as an ingredient to drugs. While so, they may accuse the villagers of acting on their own volition in order to shift the blame. Public denouncement was ineffective and trying to forcibly curb the circulation of the drug was almost impossible with the organization bribing the nobles with influence over the distribution channels. That was why the only option left for the opposition was violence, burning the fields as a last resort.

As of late, their nation's villages have been facing poor harvest seasons due to the yearly wars they have had with the Empire. It was revealed that the Empire chose the harvest season of the late-ripening wheat to conduct the invasion, causing a loss of men in the villages who got themselves conscripted from the Kingdom's side. The villages were on the worst receiving end of this war as it served to only further delay the harvest of wheat and other grains.

During the winter season, villages all over the Kingdom had their bulk of the workload transited from outdoors to indoors. Fewer villagers ventured outside now, and not many people were still working the crop fields. The coming of winter was harsh for small villages to endure. All they could do was pray for the coming of the warmer seasons while weathering the cold days in their homes. If spring was late, or if the harvest in autumn was meager, they might be forced to eat their seed stock, and people would still starve to death even if they did so. Although the fields did not need to be tilled in winter, village life was still closely associated with the words "activity." There were many tasks to be done indoors, like tending the livestock and maintaining the farming tools. Besides, their homes, huts, and stables all needed to be cleaned. There was simply no time for any villager to rest. Additionally, the hay for the cows must be stored in small huts amidst the winter season.

Birthing five children were the average rate for a farming village family. In tough times when it was hard to survive to adulthood, this number would go up. On the other hand, they buried the corpses of fallen villagers in a nearby communal graveyard and held a ceremony for them. They would recite verses in the form of a prayer to ease the spirits of the dead.

Normally, everyone who used the Kingdom’s roads had to pay a toll in a similar manner to that of a passage tax. However, charging residents this money would cause trade to grind to a halt, and as a result, every village was issued travel permits with which they could enter the city like E-Rantel free of charge. Still, since there were different nobles in each region, there were bound to be different rules regulated for each region too.

In every village, an apothecary who could prepare medicines in case of disease or injury was indispensable. They are said to be important enough that the villagers would plead, "you don’t need to do anything except make medicine for us." This remains true in the case for villages which had no access to priests who can use healing magic. For larger villages, priests would double as the village apothecary. If the villagers could not pay for the cost of healing, then they would offer up their labor instead. Under the Temple of the Four Great Gods' influence, the Adventurer's Guild had to enforce strict regulations such as not allowing their adventurers to use healing magic on commoners from villages.

Meanwhile, in the Slane Theocracy, there were quite a few divine magic casters residing in Khajiit Dale Badantel’s own village. In the past, there were a group of demi-human beings known as the Srush that are known to hide within the borders of the Roble Holy Kingdom. Quite a number of the Holy Kingdom's villages have been lost to the Srush demi-human beings because of them. Despite the incident, the villages of the Roble Kingdom were known to be far better protected than those of other countries. They could also function as military outposts and bases.

Whereas for the Sorcerer Kingdom, they are using the Sorcerer King's summoned Death Knights to help in building new villages with the denizens of the slum district. The people who ended up being residents of the slums were typically the second or third sons of a family in villages: those who did not have their own farm to work. Ainz promised to grant such people a plot of land and sent them out there. They were sent to the ruins of villages that had been burned down by the Theocracy. Since they had fallen due to external reasons, all one needed to do was to clear the rubble away, seek new villagers, and the village would naturally recover. Because they had been attacked in the past, Ainz have also permitted the Soul Eaters other than Death Knights to go with them as guards. He would also be ordered them to help the villagers with their farm work.

There is a deeper meaning behind doing all this as Ainz’s aim all along was to build the villages back up within a year, and allow them to achieve basic self-sufficiency. They would then begin a regular harvest in the second year once it unfolds. However, the aim of rebuilding the villages was merely to collect their produce as taxes and dump them into the Exchange Box, where they would become YGGDRASIL gold coins.

Human Villager's Way of Life

For instance, the first thing the oldest daughter of a family like Enri Emmot did after getting up extra early in the morning was to carry water from the nearby well. Hauling water was a woman’s job, and once they got done filling the big water tank in the house, that chore was complete. By this time, they or their mother would have to prepare breakfast for one's family. Breakfast was barley or wheat porridge, as well as cooked vegetables. Sometimes, they would have dried fruit as well.

After breakfast time is over, parents and their children would need to go ahead and participate in tending the fields together. This would also include going into the forest to gather firewood or helping someone out with the field work. An example from one of the many tasks other than it were the work of villagers who are responsible for cutting down trees in order to make logs. Nevertheless, villagers are committed to fieldwork, tilling the crops as part of their everyday life.

When the bell in the middle of the village square rang to signal noon, everyone would take a break for lunch. During lunchtime, there would be black bread baked several days before, as well as soup with some shredded meat jerky sprinkled in. Fieldwork would resume after lunch ends, and when the sun set they would return home for dinner. For tonight's dinner, villagers would have the same black bread that they had for lunch, as well as bean soup. If the village’s hunters managed to acquire prey, they might be able to get some meat to go with their dinner. Once dinner time is up, a village family would gather around the light of the hearth-fire to take care of household chores, such as mending worn or damaged clothes. They would go to sleep around 8.

The fruits of a villager's hard labor were known to be taken away by the lord of the land. According to Zach, it was hard enough for any villager to survive on 40% of the harvest of the crops as they will be facing poverty along the way. If they only had 20% left, their lives would end up becoming extremely difficult during the process. Not only that but for children like Ninya's sister Tuare and Zach's sister Lilia, they are known to be sold off to Slavery by nobles. These enslaved female villagers who are forced to leave their own home village against their will are put to work as slaves as well as becoming the target of rape. Vice Captain have even used to reside in a village where the lord of the land didn’t bother to pay for adventurers in helping villagers like himself combat the threat of monsters. According to Gringham, with enough fame acquired for oneself, one could go as far as to marry a beautiful girl that they would never be able to find in a regular village.

On the other hand, Demiurge has been kidnapping multiple people from random villages for conducting both his Healing Experiment and the creation of low-tier scrolls. They have also been treated as food to be eaten by Nazarick's residents such as Entoma Vasilissa Zeta.

Whenever the Re-Estize Kingdom periodically mobilized its armies against the Baharuth Empire, they would round up all the able-bodied men in the villages and send them to the battlefield. Although a month's worth of absence among strong young male villagers had dire consequences within the communities, some people in the villages were grateful for this conscription. Some villages felt grateful for them to get drafted as there would be fewer mouths to feed from now on, as well as the less supply of food the families that get depleted over time. No matter how hard a villager fought in the war effort, they would never be able to receive any reward unless they had made outstanding accomplishments that deserved recognition. Once the war is over, the conscripted soldiers returned to their villages, only to face the despondent reality that the harvest was poor.

For the Roble Holy Kingdom, the local villagers who are part of that nation possessed enough fighting power to hold out until the regular army could arrive to save them from invaders. This was due to their home residences above a certain size being fortified. However, when the Demi-Human Alliance led by Jaldabaoth successfully invaded them, they had captured many of the survivors of their onslaught. The demi-humans have imprisoned them in the captured villages and cities of the Holy Kingdom that were converted to detention camps.

Culture

According to Enri Emmot, there are dancing circles during harvest festival nights for village couples to do their performance together.

Known Villagers

• Brain Unglaus
• Chief of Red Eye
• Crusch Lulu
• Donbass
• Dyel Gan Zu
• Enri Emmot
• Fluder Paradyne
• Gazef Stronoff
• Go Gin
• Head Hunter of Green Claw
• Head Priestess of Green Claw
• Head Warrior of Green Claw
• Kyuku Zuzu
• Lilia
• Neia Baraja
• Nemu Emmot
• Ninya
• Pavel Baraja
• Rororo
• Shasuryu Shasha
• Sukyu Juju
• Tuareninya Veyron
• Vice Captain
• Zach
• Zaryusu Shasha
• Zenberu Gugu

Layout & Features

In a human village, it can be said that several walls, wooden houses, huts, and watchtowers are built there. In addition to that, a village is known to possess a farmland or wheat field for harvesting crops. At the village central square, was also a bell utilized to draw a signal from villagers who are working to stop what they were doing and gather together. Normally, a village-made wall would encompass the residential buildings or storage warehouses while the fields were spread out outside. Plowing the fields inside the walls would require an incredible amount of work in order to surround all of the vast farmland.

List of Villages

• Belmous Village
• Carne Village
• Lizardmen Alliance's Village in the Great Lake

Strength

According to Jugem, an ordinary villager was level 1. He estimated that some of the villagers who trained themselves with weapons like a bow and arrow style could have made it to level 2. Marques Raeven knows of a commoner who used a village militia to defeat an attacking goblin force that was twice their size. In a way, this goes to show that even some villages out there can be turned into powerful military fortresses by building sturdy walls to impede any invaders from reaching into their land. More so, depending on the kind of village one come across, it can harbor either magic casters, archers, or warriors. The most recent example was Carne Village's Goblin Army led by Enri Emmot that has easily repelled Prince Barbro's Troop to the point that the latter was forced to make a full retreat.

Trivia

• There also exists demi-human villages, each kind dedicated to different entities like lizardmen and goblins.
• Lizardman druids and warriors are affiliated with the lizardman villages as members of their respective tribe.
• Several villages were raided by the Slane Theocracy's soldiers disguised as the Baharuth Empire's knights.
• Gazef Stronoff and his Warrior Troop left the royal capital city to protect the Re-Estize Kingdom's villages from invaders.
• According to Gazef, life in a village is difficult to live by for villagers as their home is known to be attacked by monsters. If a village does not have the money to hire adventurers to deal with monsters, all they can do is hunker down and wait for the monster to leave.
• Overcome by his lewd desires, Londes Di Clamp had once tried to rape a village girl and failed, seeking help from his companions after he got into a fight with her father. After that father was pulled off from him by them, Londes vented his anger by stabbing the father with his sword.
• The Sunlight Scripture had attacked several villages and murdered defenseless, innocent villagers belonging to the Re-Estize Kingdom, all to lure Gazef into a trap and then assassinate him.
• According to the guards of E-Rantel's Cemetery, they had experienced burying human corpses in their own villages, but they had never heard of the undead appearing that often there unlike the Katze Plains.
• Bards have also spread the legendary tales of the Thirteen Heroes in villages like the one Igvarge hailed from before leaving to become an adventurer because of it.
• In Ainz Ooal Gown's mind, he thought that if the New World truly possessed Longinus, then he considered the possibility that it was likely possible for all the Floor Guardians to be eradicated at the price of a villager’s life if they are not equipped with a World Item.
• The Great Tomb of Nazarick's Army of Death have once attempted to eradicate all the lizardmen villages in the Great Lake and failed.
• Carne Village have been faced with multiple invasions from 1st: the Theocracy's knights, 2nd: monsters from the Great Forest of Tob, and 3rd: Prince Barbro's Troop, but all ended unsuccessfully for the latter.
• Some villages from countries or tribes have been used as military strongholds/bases.
• Eight Fingers are in control of some of the villages that have been raided by the adamantite adventurer group, Blue Roses.
• After Nazarick got transported into the New World, they have created a village on the 6th floor to house new residents recruited from outside the tomb.
• Many villages situated in the rural areas of the Kingdom don't know what Gazef Stronoff looked like.
• When Carne Village refuse to follow the orders of Prince Barbro, the latter thought of killing the villagers and then hang them on the village's walls to show everyone the final fate of anyone who was foolish enough to defy the royal family.