A pious priest wandered the lands, as heroes are wont to do  He was very devout and sought a flock to enlighten  On his journeys he eventually came to a town.. a very populous town  There were people as far as the eye could see!  Such a large population!  The priest had never before seen the like  He stopped a peasant in the crowded street to ask how it was that so many could live in such a small area.

  The peasant smiled, and showed the priest to the edge of town  There the priest saw field after field of crops, stretching as far as the horizon  Peasants were all over the fields, working the land to bear its fruits.

  As the priest stared with his mouth agape, he noticed that quite a few of the peasants weren't so much toiling as feinting dead away  Being a holy man, the priest rushed into the field to give aid to a fallen farmer  He worked many magics to try to heal the peasant, but the poor soul was too far gone from much abuse.

  The priest stared up from the fallen peasant to see the one who has showed him the fields standing there, smiling still  The priest asked how he could stand there smirking when one of his brethren had just worked himself to death digging in the fields!

  The peasant smiled still, and told the priest that many of the workers died in these fields  Their sacrifice made the bountiful crops possible  Their deaths were honorable  The priest one more dropped his jaw in disbelief.

  The priest knew he must show these people the light, that this was not rightous sacrifice, but murderous toil!  The priest set up his temple in the overpopulated town, and tried to school them on the value of life.

  His sermons fell upon deaf ears, however  For when the goblin horde encroached upon the town, the peasants took up their sticks and marched off to war, smiling all the way  The goblin horde slaughted the peasants... until the goblins were overcome by fatigue and sheer numbers of peasants.

  As the priest presided over the mass burial, he once more implored the people of the town not to throw their lives away!  The peasants smiled their banal smiles, and told him that no life had been wasted, their fallen brethren had saved them all from the goblin horde.

  For moons the priest continued his attempts to educate the abundant populace of the town  But he could tell he was not getting through those insane smiles the peasants always wore  They firmly believed there was no problem they could not overcome by throwing bodies at it.

  When word reached the priest that the town was once more under threat by the forces of the dark, the priest took up his staff and sighed a heavy sigh  He lingered in the back ranks of the peasants, imploring them not to toss their lives away against this scourge  The sounds of the frey were distant at first, but grew ever closer as the priest begged and begged.

  The priest sensed that something was amiss, and turned his attention to the battle, wondering what was happening  A horde of zombi, led by a liche, were destroying the peasants  The fallen peasants were rising as new members of the zombi horde.

  This was horrible!  The priest could not allow this abomination to continue!  He cleched his staff between his fists and gathered his holy power  As he prayed, the zombi came closer and closer to his position with the last of the peasants.

  At last, just at the zombi reached the last pocket of peasants, the priest let loose a tremendous spell of Light  Each and every unholy zombi was smitten  The peasants were saved! ...at least, the one small girl who remained was saved.

  The priest fell to his knees, spent of his power  He lamented the loss of life, and his inability to save them  As the priest knelt there mourning, he heard a footstep that could not have been human  Looking up, he saw the Liche standing above him, its oak staff raised, ready to strike.

  The priest was spent of his strength, but he was not going to allow this horror to continue its existence  With the last of his strength, the priest thrust his staff into the heart of the liche, just as the oaken staff of the liche peirced his flesh.

  The pair fell, leaving only the small girl surviving from the melee  As the priest's spirit rose to join that of the peasant horde of that misguided town, he prayed that perhaps that small girl at least would have learned well a lesson that day:

  Sacrifice means nothing if nothing is gained.