Enlightened Empire

All this time, Corco had held dreams of city simulations. Now that his dream had finally come true, he understood the harshness of reality.

"No, King Corco, so far progress has been slow. Despite our best efforts, there have been some significant problems in the construction of the new sewer system. Even now, barely any progress has been made, especially close to the Mayura River. Thus, the workers are far behind schedule and will not be able to finish as planned."

His whole body a puddle of sweat, Wasikato the architect stood in front of Corco’s desk inside the king’s studies. As he explained his difficulties, a constant shiver governed his hands.

Back when Corco had taken over Saniya, he had given Wasikato, together with a number of other architects, control over the infrastructure planning within and around the city. After all, he himself had been too busy to handle these matters himself. He had only given them rough plans and left them to build houses and roads, comparatively easy projects they could plan and complete with their previous experience alone. However, now that he was back and in demand of more advanced building projects, things were going less than smoothly.

"So what’s the problem?" Corco asked with a frown.

"For one, the soil around the river bank is too... soft and there is too much water in the soil this close to the Mayura River and the Verduic coastline. We have found that carving out a hole below the city’s roads is quite the challenge. There have been multiple attempts in different places, but all of them have collapsed after only a few days. This mortal’s own project lasted five days, but sudden rainfall washed away the dirt and loosened the pillars we had erected inside. At least the incident happened at night, so none of the valuable laborers were lost. We cannot even consider building below the city until we manage to solve this issue."

As it turned out, playing city simulator in real life was a lot less fun than on PC. He couldn’t even set off a volcano or death robot whenever he felt frustrated. The whole thing was a wash. Corco’s head began to hurt as he thought about all the lost man hours, as well as the waste of money it represented. At least Wasikato valued the lives of his workers, though maybe only because they were irreplaceable cultivators doing forced labor.

After he had spent a good ten seconds to probe the recesses of his brain for a solution, a concept dimly entered his mind.

"You can’t put in any rods to stabilize the soil?" he asked, his mood brightened by the sudden inspiration.

"How... how would that work, exactly?" a nervous Wasikato asked. "Excuse this mortal, King Corco, but this is a technique that is unknown to this lowly one."

"Well, you know?" Corco asked as if everyone would. "If you stick a bunch of metal rods into soft soil, the soil compacts and the friction... improves stability? I think?"

The king’s presence disappeared into his own world while he tapped his upper lip to jog his memory. Meanwhile, his attendant who had sat to the side in silence all this time entered the conversation to help out the architect.

"Since Master Wasikato is unaware of this phenomenon, it would be best to do some experiments," Fadelio finished Corco’s thoughts, before he turned towards Wasikato. "Master, you have permission to use the testing beach on Chukru Island. There, you should create a small-scale model to test out this phenomenon before using it on a grand scale. We should also install some pumps inside Saniya like we have done along the Mayura, to lower the water table along the river banks."

"Yeah, that seems like a good idea, huh?" Corco said after he had returned from his own world again. He was thankful that Fadelio had brought them back on track, but his trip down memory lane still had yielded some results. Thus, he turned towards Wasikato and added some requirements.

"Anyways, if you’re building below the city, don’t forget to leave plenty of room for future infrastructure. Several different pipes and cables will run below the city in the near-ish future, so it’d be best to prepare early, right?"

"Of course, King Corcopaca," Although he was visibly confused, the architect still affirmed the king’s request.

"Later I’ll give you details on how much room to leave in what places. I’ll write you a little checklist, so just stick to it." Rather than force the architect to understand why they would have to future-proof the city, or what that would even mean, the king would simply instruct him to do as ordered. At the moment, he was the king’s contractor after all, and the customer was always king.

"Very well." The architect sounded obedient, but his legs shuffled back and forth on the expensive carpet to show his discomfort.

"If there aren’t any other problems, you can go now," Corco said and waved towards the door.

"Well," Somehow, the architect managed to look even more troubled than before, but he still continued after Corco impatiently motioned him to go on. "This servant has looked at King Corcopaca’s new plans for the city, and... not to sound too forward, however..."

"Yes, you’re allowed to talk. Rather, I’d prefer insults and curses over whatever this is." Corco waved in Wasikato’s vague direction to encompass the man’s indecision. Somehow, the architect amassed enough composure to get out his concerns.

"To be honest, the roads planned for the city just seem excessive, both in scale and volume... at least to the eyes of this humble, incompetent architect."

"That’s because you’re lacking imagination." Corco turned and looked towards Fadelio. "What’s our current population, around fifteen thousand?"

"That’s correct. We passed fifteen thousand inhabitants last week, when most of the soldiers returned from the war. With the constant influx of people from the countryside and the additional craftsmen from Arguna, we expect to add at least another five thousand by the end of the year."

With a "see", Corco looked back at Wasikato and spread his hands.

"At first, we had all that extra space in the city because the four thousand former warriors from Sawo’s army were out building bridges, beacons and water wheels. But now things are already getting cramped, even with all the extra construction that’s been going on. Even before the war started, people from the countryside started to move into the city. Then came even more commoners who came over from the north, people Pacha sent against our castle as cannon fodder. Now we’ve added even more with the craftsmen from Arguna. With all this influx of population, we’ll need more and more room. I won’t have the city grow on its own like weeds, that’ll only stifle our prospective growth in the future. So we need to be smart about this and prepare the living space in advance. I can’t care how the people want to stylize their own neighborhoods, we don’t have enough manpower for that. But at the very least, we need to guarantee that there’s some proper throughput of traffic, even once things get crowded."

Since Corco had explained with such patience, it seemed like Wasikato had finally found his spine and offered his own opinion.

"While I understand King Corcopaca’s reasoning, the project is still far too large for Saniya’s current architects to handle. This mortal lacks money and manpower to accomplish the task, both in large quantities. Even with the generous budget from King Corcopaca and with support from the warriors in the labor camps, we still have far too much work to do."

"Ah, that reminds me, we need to add some extra space south of the main town somewhere. I want you to dig a ditch and build a proper burial site for our fallen soldiers. That’s top priority. The grievance time for their families is almost up and they should be buried underground already, so you should take care of that before anything else."

Although the final battle had happened almost three weeks ago by now, Corco hadn’t been in a terrible hurry to bury his soldiers at first. According to usual Medalan ritual, the dead would first be left out in the open for a while. This way, their spirits would remain with their bodies, which left their family members enough time to say their goodbyes. This was generally considered the grievance period, something Corco had missed out on for his own father, so he was eager to grant it to his soldiers’ families. However, as soon as he heaped another project onto Wasikato, he could see the poor man’s sweat multiply. At this rate, the architect might die of dehydration if the king didn’t offer some relief as well.

"Don’t worry about it." Corco laughed. "Didn’t you hear what we said? The city is growing at an exponential rate. If you don’t have enough people, just hire more. If you can’t find enough even with all the new faces rushing into the city, hire them from outside the territory. That way, the city will grow even quicker, and all these fancy roads and sewers won’t be excessive anymore. Isn’t it nice how things work out sometimes? As for the money, I’ll simply increase your budget. You’ll be informed later by how much. Go do your work now, I still have to take care of some other issues."

Once the architect had given his thanks and left, Fadelio walked around the table and sat on the seat for guests.

"Laqhis... I know you don’t want to hear it-"

"Then don’t say it."

"-but we’re already spending way too much. Yes, we have all these new production lines to make money, but most of our early production of glass, dye, soap and Chutwa glaze was used to trade for grain with the Verduic islands and Chutwa. Inside Medala, be it the north or the south, Brym is running all over the place to install our shops, but the level of distribution is still insufficient. According to the man himself, it will take at least a year until we can stop investing in new shops and start selling everything we produce. Only then will we get an actual return on our investment... but despite all of that, we keep adding to our already tight budget. Especially now. The southern lords already spent most of their money from last fall’s harvest on our luxuries, and they can’t spend any more until next fall, which is still three seasons away. Put simply, with the new manufactories up and running, we are producing too much too quickly, and the high wages we pay everyone under the crown can’t be sustained at this rate."

"Okay, so how far away are we from breaking even?" Corco asked. All this time he had properly held back on new projects, so this couldn’t be too bad, could it?

"During the victory banquets, the southern lords spent most of their fall harvest on luxuries in Saniya. As a result, we earned around 2.000.000 Sila last month."

"That’s pretty good, isn’t it?" Corco asked. A Silo was the standard currency of Medala. Within the empire, most grain was stored inside large pots of clay called Sila, which was where the term originated. If converted, one stone of silver – about six kilograms – was worth twelve times twelve times twelve, or 1728, Sila.

Of course, the various Sila coins inside the empire were never made of pure silver, so their actual material value was around half that. Still, 2.000.000 Sila could buy around six tons of pure silver.

"Although the income is great, our costs have risen by a lot as well. Right now, we are spending more than 600.000 every single month on wages and materials alone. However, we won’t have that kind of income every month. As I said, the southern lords are out of money and can no longer buy our goods, no matter how much they want to."

"So if we’re lacking markets, we just have to open up new ones."

Just like any proper businessman, he would just outgrow his debt rather than scale back production. Corco looked at the weaved map of his kingdom he had hung up in his study. In the east, there was an unpleasant dark spot, an area controlled by the people he least wanted in charge of his people’s lives.

"Don’t the Arcavians control Port Ulta now? All this time, their goal was to get access to fancy trade goods from Chutwa. So let’s give them what they want. Genuine Chutwa glaze, genuine Chutwa tea and silk... and of course, genuine Chutwa dye. All of it produced straight in Medala, though they don’t need to know that. I’ll need you to organize a convoy for me. First I’ll make a quick trip to Cashan and clear up some issues, then I’ll go to Port Ulta and negotiate a peace with them, or at least a ceasefire. They get to have their trade, we get to fleece them of all their precious gold and solve our liquidity issues in the process."

His eyes narrowed as he looked forward to the future negotiations. He was really looking forward to meeting his old friends again. Maybe playing city simulation wasn’t so bad after all.