In as isolated a place as you can find.

Your cave is... reasonably defensible. There's only one entrance, and it's near the back edge of the swamp, but you decide it's still too risky; it's a well-known spawn for a quest mob, even if most heroes doing the quest don't bother with you. The moment you build this lair of yours, it'll be all over the Players' 'wikkies', and you'll have a huge target on your back. Better to find somewhere less well-known.

You still stop by the cave, of course, but only for long enough to eat and rest, you lie to yourself. In reality, while you're resting up, you whittle together a crude ladle and comb out of some of the loose branches you've gathered, and use them to start cleaning up your new zombie while you have her sort your forage bundles by type of goods. It's... almost meditative, really, using the tiny spring to wash the mud off of her body and out of her hair, before moving on to combing out her raven tresses. You carry on despite breaking the first comb, in fact, and you're positive that you've spent far, far longer sitting around than you'd intended to by the time you've finished bathing her.

You're invigorated now, though. Quickly, you load the (sorted) bundles onto her back and strike out for the very edge of the Swamp of Gnym, until the ground dries out and gradually rises into foothills at the very edge of the zone. It's quick travel; the more peripheral the area, the less things spawn, and while there are no trails here (though you do follow a tiny creek that empties into the swamp from the mountains), your Levitation makes quick work of the rough terrain. You've risen above the trees by the time you hit the point where the mountains are too steep to climb-- it's here where you thrust the Claimant Crystal at the heavens, as if to challenge the Gods, and [Use] it.

Claimant Crystal Used
Gnym_Border_Hills_137.6_Location_0
Claim land?

The popup floats before you, half-embedded into the mountainside, and an ephemeral golden ring seems to demarcate the area that you'll actually take ownership of. It's...

You're not sure what you'd imagined, but it's a bit smaller than you thought it would be. You're certainly not the ruler of all you survey, anyway. You decide to cancel the prompt, and the crystal drops unceremoniously back into your hand; A little further back down, you [Use] it again, dramatic flair spent, to try to get some more workable space.

Land Claimed by Brambleheart
Claim type:
Monster Lair
Resources detected:

The list is... long, given the bullshit you spent most of the morning collecting. Branches, reeds, vines, a few herbs that might be useful, some fruits and berries, a handful of toads and snails, small stones... When you scroll to the end and see the 'add to stockpile' prompt, you promptly palm your face, since apparently having your zombie sort everything out was a complete fucking waste of time. You palm your face with your other hand over top of the first when you hit accept and almost all of your belongings vanish into the aether, leaving you to poke around the hillside blindly until you manage to trigger a building prompt. There's an option to dig out an entrance in the mountainside, and...

It requires Stoneworking.

Fuck.

You can't seem how to figure out how to craft new tools or withdraw things from your stockpile yet, either, so you eventually settle on building a small shack behind a rise, where it'll be concealed from the treeline. Your zombie does not have woodworking anymore, unfortunately, and you don't have a hammer, so the two of you spend a somewhat inane amount of time beating at the build site with your fists until it finally springs into existence. Once that's finally done (it's a good thing you picked a spot with a water source, since your stamina is still quite low), you throw a small table together to serve as a workbench, and that finally lets you make some basic tools while the zombie labors away at a small bed. Things speed up once you have a pair of stone hammers, but it's still pretty labor intensive; By the time the sun sets, you have little more than a squalid little hut of your own, with a rickety door, straw floor, and not much else to speak of in the way of amenities. What legend didn't rise from ignominy on the back of his own blood, sweat, and tears, though?

You're clearly going to need more hands, or at least more specialized hands, if you're going to put together some kind of fortress before DOOMFCKR666 and friends fly in to smash you and everything you've built into tiny, tiny pieces.

Tomorrow, though. You stash the few valuables you have (the Human's healing potions, mostly) under the bed, and then curl up to use your zombie as a plush body pillow. It's chillier up here, especially being nude, but the stick and thatch walls do an okay enough job of blocking the wind, and by the time you wake up, you've shared enough body heat to momentarily forget that your summon's undead. Not one to let a good thing go to waste, the first thing you do after you swing your legs off the bed is lube up your morning wood with spit and set her tits to work on it while you check your Fame to see if anything's developed. Apparently, things have:

Fame: 13
Rivalries:
Natalie Greenfield +1 (Expand)
Recent activity:
A Quest has been issued! + 5 (Expanded)
First Quest Bonus! + 4
Quest Accepted! + 1 ( 5 – 4 (Escort Quest)

You frown. Partly because the zombie's clumsy and lacks initiative, so she needs constant guidance, partly because you didn't expect there to already be quests out for you. It's good that there's only been one person to pick up on it so far (probably Greenfield herself), but...

Well, at the very least, you can afford one of the Liegelord upgrades now. It seems everything else is locked behind these, so they're an obvious first purchase, though your intuition tells you you can probably only pick one.