Erastus 4713
Imperator Pax
Talon Master
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Erastus 4713
She had been working most of the morning, as she did most days with her sister swapping over after the midday. The details might slipped by her... probably had slipped by her in previous months, but today was a little different.
Kanerah looked at the ledgers, stopped, and went back to check the ledgers of the previous month, and then the month before and only stopped there as Valerie entered the hall. She would have brought it to Eire, but... the blonde would do. The red eyed tiefling woman lacked some of her, well really any, of her sister's bright bubbly personality and faking it was doable but annoyed her and thankfully wasn't necessary instead she rushed forward to insist the Chancellor come over and insure she was reading the reports correctly.
"Look at this,"
Each of the volumes were heavy black tomes, they had volume numbers in gold script corresponding to the month, and in block script also the last two digits of the calendar year. This process of recording information had begun with inauguration of the Cathedral of Iomedae, which had drawn first with its planned construction, and then with its completion, migrants from the Inner Sea nations. Each monthly volume was inked with the names and origins of each new immigrant who arrived in Shrikewall and came to the seat of Eire's power after his coronation in 4710 of the Arodenite Calendar.
This had officially superseded the earlier record keeping that had gone into effect after the Restov coronation. In practice with the creation of the printing press the baronial ledgers had been gathered up and copied for administrative records, but those were less fancy books, manufactured and bound for scribes to reference from any of the, still nascent, ministries of the crown.
At the time the printing press had been finished there had still had been a view that the population was not necessarily consuming enough material that it was necessary for subjects to truly need a domestic printing industry of such capability. The press was for the sovereign's affairs more than anything... and probably in no small part to the amusement of the halfling bard. The press besides records also had allowed the promulgation far and wide of the realm's laws, especially once the kingdom had been proclaimed.
It was thus no secret that the realm had attracted a growing, and diverse population since the barony had been founded. That Eire presided over, organized, and directed settlement of the wild lands of the narlmarches, and the kamelands of the original Brevic charter. The ledgers made it easy to establish that many immigrated from the nation of Cheliax. What Eire described as a push factor, versus the pull factor of the new barony's promised freedom, and potential economic success for new subjects.
Valerie moved around the table and looked at the books, all of her immediate concerns about relaying the message of the Iobarian wizard Mitharius temporarily superseded in prominence in favor of Kanerah's observation of the realm's migration.
--
There were all sorts of metals civilization needed in order to make tools, and goods. This place was an example of that. The steam power turned belts that ran all the way up to the ceiling... but this was not just some kind of workshop, this was a temple to Brigh... and amusedly it was one of the few proper temples to the minor goddess in all of Avistan, save perhaps in Numeria to the north west.
Given the way that her clergy acted... it was hard to take the claim that goddess was one of industry... or rather industry in the terms he tended to think of, but he would not argue the point. Still Brigh's clergy had been useful in a variety of things really since Arsinoe had introduced them. Though he wouldn't phrase it as such he'd almost argue that they were probably more useful as problem solvers than Abadar's more numerous clergy were... but that was probably being unfair.
Abadar in his modern church was more a god of law than the Azlanti god of commerce and urban settlements that he had been before the great cataclysm of Earthfall. That wasn't to say he wasn't still a god of those things.. but the Master of the First Vault's church was less important to Narland than it was in Brevoy, and Brigh's church provided a kind of specialized labor. It drew wire and handled complex metallurgy. Things that the kingdom needed that Abadar's church just wasn't involved in.
No what really made the distinction was while Abadar's clergy did actually happen to have a form of double entry book keeping it was still a medieval form of it. No denying that was better than nothing, but it still lacked financial mechanisms that defined centralized banking and other organizational details that made a national bank a functional institution. There were institutional hurdles to clear, and potential conflicts of interest from banking and mercantilist interests that didn't exist with Brigh's clergy.
The result of this was that the Realm was willing to extend certain recognition to an otherwise minor faith. This temple this grand workshop of artifice and metal working differed significantly from the churches of the inheiritor. That was perhaps even an understatement for how different this building was.
Copper pipes. Steam cases. Vices, and punches. There were tables to work crafts, and drafting tables with protractors and paper. It was not an assembly line, but one of the things that royal administration had provided to both the Church of Abadar and Brigh were standard imperial weights and measures. The difference was what the two institutions of faith used them for... and in Brigh's case what their church did was manufacture printing presses.
They weren't to interchangeable parts yet, but they were moving in the right direction. They'd go to templates, and large batch production and work from there. They just needed more time. Time was in general what the realm needed to grow as immigrants continued to come, and so satisfied with things he returned outside.
There were other projects that needed to be done. He wasn't going to legally enshrine a royal monopoly on textiles... or silk production for that matter... but the truth was he didn't expect he would need to. The first was that he doubted there would be much natural occurring competition in the private ... not any time soon... and the second was that with steam power, with water driven power from the rivers the looms to turn silk would slow come up to the level of processing reaching early 20th century levels in machinery terms... but there was no way he'd have sufficient silkworm production to meant refinement capacity... so he wasn't in a hurry there.
Abadar's clergy didn't mind the patronage of Brigh's church... so far as he could tell... and they didn't mind the dirt, or grease.. but Sheyln's clergy didn't seem to share that opinion. In the fall of the previous year one of Sheyln's paladins, and specifically Valerie's former mentor within the church, a brevic knight had crossed the border in search of the Shrine of the Golden Grove. A marble wrought domed shrine built in the traditions of classical Taldor. Due to its geographic location, and not helped by its small size, it had been lost to the wilds far from civilization as it was. So, Ser Fredero Sinnet had decided to take it upon himself to ride south cross the border and find this lost shrine and restore it...
... well that wasn't precisely a well thought out plan, even without considering malicious factors... like Tulvak the hag who had migrated at some point from southern Brevoy earlier still after she had been driven out from the village of Nivakta's crossing on the south rostland road that ran along the banks of the Shrike river. In a world where gods were a tangible presence reclaiming a shrine was more than simple piety. It was not that the church of Shelyn was particularly belligerent, really the opposite the problem was the divine signage associated by the reclamation of the Shrine which created the institutional pressure.
Much as how Varnhold's subjects, who were predominantly Brevic expatriates had wanted churches to Pharasma to see to their spiritual needs... and most likely how he would need clergy of Abadar, Shelyn's church was a popular fixture of attendance and interest to migrants from the Inner Sea... that was in part due to the obvious. As the core of the royal territories took shape in the kamelands... and with agricultural reforms ranging from steel blows and seed drills... the settlements were urban not agricultural rural ones that would have other religious inclinations.
Not that he'd considered something like central opera houses but that might need to be considered at some point down the road... but at the moment he could hardly guess what Shelyn's church was particularly interested in doing... and he wasn't the only one. Valerie was not happy about the situation. Intruding, and intrusion had been thrown around, even as Linzi had wanted to praise the church ... admittedly she was still apart of the Church of Shelyn's congregation... but she could no more answer questions about what the church wanted than they could.
It was a rather bothersome... but it was part and parcel of the system.
--
Given the geography on which Shrikewall was built, with the cathedral on the prominence of the hill, and with the lake to its south, with the Shrike and the skunk rivers to its east and west, and indeed with the hills that the shrike cut through to the north east there were very few places to attack from... one had to come through the Tuskdale. He hadn't considered it all that important to raise a stone fortification ... a castle immediately.
That was less true of his Kameland settlements. The grassland steppe between the Gudrin and and the Shrike was arguably the most martial settlement of the realm. This was not Hereford, or any of the fortresses along the long abandoned dwarven road of shields. Here the baronial... now royal horse could be grazed, and raised, and indeed it was a place of organization. It was a place of administration and record keeping.
There were no farms tended by individual families. The whole given area belonged to the crown in a way that served a stately purpose. That would change with time. The variety of purposes for horses divided herds into specific specimens. Some pulled heavy steel plows, while some were intended for messengers, and others would be trained for military purposes. The majority were for the first, the most important factor in efforts or adjacent.
The rich thick black soil was plowed, rocks carved from its depths and relocated and careful measurements taken. It was not a collective farmland. It was a large organized royal farm, and unlike the original baronial farms in the Tuskdale there represented a step closer still to late 19th, early 20th century north American farming in terms of equipment. It had been here that the first bushels of Iobarian wheat grown in the kingdom, winter wheat had been harvested. Winter wheat, Eire mused that that was something of a coincidence given Queen Elvanna's idiocy this year... and that he still needed to contend with the Irrisen problem... for he had a month until they needed to be in Mendev... for the opening of Armasse. Valerie was clear that from the sixteenth on she should conduct Armasse in his stead through the end of the month preparing and maintaining the realm's defenses, and that he would return from his journey to the crusader kingdom once matters were underway.
He looked over the summer fields, that far from the Narlmarches forests had not been touched by the Irrisen winter, and nodded, "We're doing well, you shouldn't need to contend with this," Actually well was an understatement. He'd have been happy with just the progress of their first year, but it was improving, still beyond the level of cultivation of the first world flora.
The almanac for this year's summer temperatures and rain would have to include a foot note marking this year as an anomaly of course. It would be important to make sure people knew that, that it was remembered... even if it was kind of annoying to the process of creating an almanac and giving them some idea of average rainfall.
There was one another matter here, Eire stepped away from the terrace overlooking his project and towards Jaethal, who would also be remaining behind. The elf frowned, "Valerie has sent word that the wizard Mitharius requests an audience at your earliest convenience. It would seem that he has upheld his bargain, and carried word to at least some of the dragons of western Iobaria, and the windswept wastes,"
"Oh?"
"I have a second letter from Amvarean saying she has been contacted by a silver dragon that she is on epistolary terms with regarding both his watching over Galt, and also Mitharius's contact with his convocation of fellow silver dragons at high summer. This dragon also apparently reported a portal to Irrisen is active in galt."
Eire nodded, and regarded his farmlands. He had questions about Iobarias nearest draconic populations... but of all his draconic neighbors the one he needed to concern himself the most with was slaying the black dragon Ilthuliak.
--
Notes: obviously this is a direct series of references to the shard and the perks from Crusader Kings 3 notably effecting the kingdom, what I am doing is using the Kingmaker perk of having kingdom effecting powers gradually take effect, in contrast to CK3's explicit test of 'You start with 500,000 refugees who may come from different regions from the setting.' rather than a large and increasing migration and perks taking effects, now that latter half of text, that is very much in effect, its just they're not showing up at the start in order to build shrikewall.
Otherwise Eire wouldn't be complaining about the manpower he'd be complaining about the logistics of feeding such a population... never mind the formal faith population. [I will hopefully be updating Out of the Dark this month, but also posting the text for the Drow Cyoa perks... and I also need to go see if the drow of the underdark jump ever got finished.]
She had been working most of the morning, as she did most days with her sister swapping over after the midday. The details might slipped by her... probably had slipped by her in previous months, but today was a little different.
Kanerah looked at the ledgers, stopped, and went back to check the ledgers of the previous month, and then the month before and only stopped there as Valerie entered the hall. She would have brought it to Eire, but... the blonde would do. The red eyed tiefling woman lacked some of her, well really any, of her sister's bright bubbly personality and faking it was doable but annoyed her and thankfully wasn't necessary instead she rushed forward to insist the Chancellor come over and insure she was reading the reports correctly.
"Look at this,"
Each of the volumes were heavy black tomes, they had volume numbers in gold script corresponding to the month, and in block script also the last two digits of the calendar year. This process of recording information had begun with inauguration of the Cathedral of Iomedae, which had drawn first with its planned construction, and then with its completion, migrants from the Inner Sea nations. Each monthly volume was inked with the names and origins of each new immigrant who arrived in Shrikewall and came to the seat of Eire's power after his coronation in 4710 of the Arodenite Calendar.
This had officially superseded the earlier record keeping that had gone into effect after the Restov coronation. In practice with the creation of the printing press the baronial ledgers had been gathered up and copied for administrative records, but those were less fancy books, manufactured and bound for scribes to reference from any of the, still nascent, ministries of the crown.
At the time the printing press had been finished there had still had been a view that the population was not necessarily consuming enough material that it was necessary for subjects to truly need a domestic printing industry of such capability. The press was for the sovereign's affairs more than anything... and probably in no small part to the amusement of the halfling bard. The press besides records also had allowed the promulgation far and wide of the realm's laws, especially once the kingdom had been proclaimed.
It was thus no secret that the realm had attracted a growing, and diverse population since the barony had been founded. That Eire presided over, organized, and directed settlement of the wild lands of the narlmarches, and the kamelands of the original Brevic charter. The ledgers made it easy to establish that many immigrated from the nation of Cheliax. What Eire described as a push factor, versus the pull factor of the new barony's promised freedom, and potential economic success for new subjects.
Valerie moved around the table and looked at the books, all of her immediate concerns about relaying the message of the Iobarian wizard Mitharius temporarily superseded in prominence in favor of Kanerah's observation of the realm's migration.
--
There were all sorts of metals civilization needed in order to make tools, and goods. This place was an example of that. The steam power turned belts that ran all the way up to the ceiling... but this was not just some kind of workshop, this was a temple to Brigh... and amusedly it was one of the few proper temples to the minor goddess in all of Avistan, save perhaps in Numeria to the north west.
Given the way that her clergy acted... it was hard to take the claim that goddess was one of industry... or rather industry in the terms he tended to think of, but he would not argue the point. Still Brigh's clergy had been useful in a variety of things really since Arsinoe had introduced them. Though he wouldn't phrase it as such he'd almost argue that they were probably more useful as problem solvers than Abadar's more numerous clergy were... but that was probably being unfair.
Abadar in his modern church was more a god of law than the Azlanti god of commerce and urban settlements that he had been before the great cataclysm of Earthfall. That wasn't to say he wasn't still a god of those things.. but the Master of the First Vault's church was less important to Narland than it was in Brevoy, and Brigh's church provided a kind of specialized labor. It drew wire and handled complex metallurgy. Things that the kingdom needed that Abadar's church just wasn't involved in.
No what really made the distinction was while Abadar's clergy did actually happen to have a form of double entry book keeping it was still a medieval form of it. No denying that was better than nothing, but it still lacked financial mechanisms that defined centralized banking and other organizational details that made a national bank a functional institution. There were institutional hurdles to clear, and potential conflicts of interest from banking and mercantilist interests that didn't exist with Brigh's clergy.
The result of this was that the Realm was willing to extend certain recognition to an otherwise minor faith. This temple this grand workshop of artifice and metal working differed significantly from the churches of the inheiritor. That was perhaps even an understatement for how different this building was.
Copper pipes. Steam cases. Vices, and punches. There were tables to work crafts, and drafting tables with protractors and paper. It was not an assembly line, but one of the things that royal administration had provided to both the Church of Abadar and Brigh were standard imperial weights and measures. The difference was what the two institutions of faith used them for... and in Brigh's case what their church did was manufacture printing presses.
They weren't to interchangeable parts yet, but they were moving in the right direction. They'd go to templates, and large batch production and work from there. They just needed more time. Time was in general what the realm needed to grow as immigrants continued to come, and so satisfied with things he returned outside.
There were other projects that needed to be done. He wasn't going to legally enshrine a royal monopoly on textiles... or silk production for that matter... but the truth was he didn't expect he would need to. The first was that he doubted there would be much natural occurring competition in the private ... not any time soon... and the second was that with steam power, with water driven power from the rivers the looms to turn silk would slow come up to the level of processing reaching early 20th century levels in machinery terms... but there was no way he'd have sufficient silkworm production to meant refinement capacity... so he wasn't in a hurry there.
Abadar's clergy didn't mind the patronage of Brigh's church... so far as he could tell... and they didn't mind the dirt, or grease.. but Sheyln's clergy didn't seem to share that opinion. In the fall of the previous year one of Sheyln's paladins, and specifically Valerie's former mentor within the church, a brevic knight had crossed the border in search of the Shrine of the Golden Grove. A marble wrought domed shrine built in the traditions of classical Taldor. Due to its geographic location, and not helped by its small size, it had been lost to the wilds far from civilization as it was. So, Ser Fredero Sinnet had decided to take it upon himself to ride south cross the border and find this lost shrine and restore it...
... well that wasn't precisely a well thought out plan, even without considering malicious factors... like Tulvak the hag who had migrated at some point from southern Brevoy earlier still after she had been driven out from the village of Nivakta's crossing on the south rostland road that ran along the banks of the Shrike river. In a world where gods were a tangible presence reclaiming a shrine was more than simple piety. It was not that the church of Shelyn was particularly belligerent, really the opposite the problem was the divine signage associated by the reclamation of the Shrine which created the institutional pressure.
Much as how Varnhold's subjects, who were predominantly Brevic expatriates had wanted churches to Pharasma to see to their spiritual needs... and most likely how he would need clergy of Abadar, Shelyn's church was a popular fixture of attendance and interest to migrants from the Inner Sea... that was in part due to the obvious. As the core of the royal territories took shape in the kamelands... and with agricultural reforms ranging from steel blows and seed drills... the settlements were urban not agricultural rural ones that would have other religious inclinations.
Not that he'd considered something like central opera houses but that might need to be considered at some point down the road... but at the moment he could hardly guess what Shelyn's church was particularly interested in doing... and he wasn't the only one. Valerie was not happy about the situation. Intruding, and intrusion had been thrown around, even as Linzi had wanted to praise the church ... admittedly she was still apart of the Church of Shelyn's congregation... but she could no more answer questions about what the church wanted than they could.
It was a rather bothersome... but it was part and parcel of the system.
--
Given the geography on which Shrikewall was built, with the cathedral on the prominence of the hill, and with the lake to its south, with the Shrike and the skunk rivers to its east and west, and indeed with the hills that the shrike cut through to the north east there were very few places to attack from... one had to come through the Tuskdale. He hadn't considered it all that important to raise a stone fortification ... a castle immediately.
That was less true of his Kameland settlements. The grassland steppe between the Gudrin and and the Shrike was arguably the most martial settlement of the realm. This was not Hereford, or any of the fortresses along the long abandoned dwarven road of shields. Here the baronial... now royal horse could be grazed, and raised, and indeed it was a place of organization. It was a place of administration and record keeping.
There were no farms tended by individual families. The whole given area belonged to the crown in a way that served a stately purpose. That would change with time. The variety of purposes for horses divided herds into specific specimens. Some pulled heavy steel plows, while some were intended for messengers, and others would be trained for military purposes. The majority were for the first, the most important factor in efforts or adjacent.
The rich thick black soil was plowed, rocks carved from its depths and relocated and careful measurements taken. It was not a collective farmland. It was a large organized royal farm, and unlike the original baronial farms in the Tuskdale there represented a step closer still to late 19th, early 20th century north American farming in terms of equipment. It had been here that the first bushels of Iobarian wheat grown in the kingdom, winter wheat had been harvested. Winter wheat, Eire mused that that was something of a coincidence given Queen Elvanna's idiocy this year... and that he still needed to contend with the Irrisen problem... for he had a month until they needed to be in Mendev... for the opening of Armasse. Valerie was clear that from the sixteenth on she should conduct Armasse in his stead through the end of the month preparing and maintaining the realm's defenses, and that he would return from his journey to the crusader kingdom once matters were underway.
He looked over the summer fields, that far from the Narlmarches forests had not been touched by the Irrisen winter, and nodded, "We're doing well, you shouldn't need to contend with this," Actually well was an understatement. He'd have been happy with just the progress of their first year, but it was improving, still beyond the level of cultivation of the first world flora.
The almanac for this year's summer temperatures and rain would have to include a foot note marking this year as an anomaly of course. It would be important to make sure people knew that, that it was remembered... even if it was kind of annoying to the process of creating an almanac and giving them some idea of average rainfall.
There was one another matter here, Eire stepped away from the terrace overlooking his project and towards Jaethal, who would also be remaining behind. The elf frowned, "Valerie has sent word that the wizard Mitharius requests an audience at your earliest convenience. It would seem that he has upheld his bargain, and carried word to at least some of the dragons of western Iobaria, and the windswept wastes,"
"Oh?"
"I have a second letter from Amvarean saying she has been contacted by a silver dragon that she is on epistolary terms with regarding both his watching over Galt, and also Mitharius's contact with his convocation of fellow silver dragons at high summer. This dragon also apparently reported a portal to Irrisen is active in galt."
Eire nodded, and regarded his farmlands. He had questions about Iobarias nearest draconic populations... but of all his draconic neighbors the one he needed to concern himself the most with was slaying the black dragon Ilthuliak.
--
Notes: obviously this is a direct series of references to the shard and the perks from Crusader Kings 3 notably effecting the kingdom, what I am doing is using the Kingmaker perk of having kingdom effecting powers gradually take effect, in contrast to CK3's explicit test of 'You start with 500,000 refugees who may come from different regions from the setting.' rather than a large and increasing migration and perks taking effects, now that latter half of text, that is very much in effect, its just they're not showing up at the start in order to build shrikewall.
Otherwise Eire wouldn't be complaining about the manpower he'd be complaining about the logistics of feeding such a population... never mind the formal faith population. [I will hopefully be updating Out of the Dark this month, but also posting the text for the Drow Cyoa perks... and I also need to go see if the drow of the underdark jump ever got finished.]
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