The troll of the thorn forest clearly knew how to build things, small houses, fences and tools, such as axes and fishing rods, they definitely held some level of skill in that department, so having them build a boat shouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities, unfortunately, communication was difficult, they actually seemed to understand Loimos more when he spoke in the death tongue than the pale tongue.
Those guys were awfully silent at all times, actually conveying things to one another by staring at each other and doing some eye movements, sounds meant nothing to them, so they actually got more of the undead's intent when he uttered words on the language of the dead, it carried more of his will, one might say.
It still wasn't going well however, none of the dispersed groups of trolls seemed to have experience in nautical travel, curiously, none had thought of going fishing anywhere further than the shores, but Loimos only needed something that floated and could support his weight, the equivalent of a piece of flotsam really.
Nothing too fancy, but with how unwilling his building partners were being, Loimos might just get proficient enough with his rot to create his own approximative boat before any of those trolls got the message, from afar, the undead looked like he was trying to communicate with a bunch of chimpanzees by making broad movements, and growing mouldy eyes to try and replicate their communication methods.
When that failed, and no progress was made, Loimos calmly made a troll home vacant with the help of his fists, tearing to thing down, he gathered the rough planks the monsters created and simply began to try and create something himself, he had no knowledge but he might was well learn, the trolls already had the required materials for it to work out, by being graciously given said materials, the undead went to build up multiple attempts, which really where just a few planks tied together.
But Loimos, whilst unaffected by heat on a surface level, might actually catch on fire, not undeterred by the prospect of becoming a skeleton torch, move forward and it didn't take too long for the intense warmth to intensify even further within the desert, the air visibly distorted to hardly imaginable degrees.
However, there was one advantage that Loimos had in the desert, in the uncivilised portions of the desert, which included the entirety of the outskirts of the empire, most of the population situated closer to the center of the desert, where cities had been built around flourishing oases.
But on the spans of sand, where death was common for both the local wildlife and visitors from afar, undeads naturally rose from the sand, said to be swarming ancient ruins buried in the sand, sealed vestiges of the past containing untold amounts of corpses animated by death force.
"Follow me" the corpses that wandered the desert even in daylight were mindless, and followed their fellow who could utter word in the death tongue without question, this way, Loimos didn't have to worry about the monsters that also roamed the lands of the empire, together, they had the numerical advantage in case of problems.
On his way to Tochi, Loimos was planning on taking some time to visit the buried ruins, whilst Pezerx was an empire much too young to be known to Faraday, the great desert had been there for seemingly forever, it had been a land prone to death for a long time now and used to be under the watch of undeads trusted by King Nitok, the ancient forts and monuments erected by them had been destroyed and had sunken in the sand, so the odds that any of them still remained was slim, but not impossible.