u/OceansCarraway

The Aelish nobles usually make parties happen, and that's because they customarily throw parties when they meet. Curiously, this isn't a simple show pecuniary power, but an abrupt redecoration of space and time to become something that they preferred it to be. They had gentle blood, and gentle natures, and they wanted their surroundings to be suiting to their gentle selves. This often meant getting completely drunk on fine wine while wearing finery and talking about their fine selves. There were lots of variations on these themes, but a few of the nobility liked to put on airs likes being patrons of the sciences instead of readers of bizarre spellbooks and annoying gossips. These were the Midnight Readers, who his majesty King Al had personally just put in quite a lot of effort to appease. As a 'party', or group of nobles who parties together, they were worth appeasing on the surface.

More importantly, appeasing the Midnight Readers has given King Al a bit of a boost with another party: the 'Trade Lords'. This is not their real or chosen name, but it is what everyone else, from the Empire to Freeport calls them. They have to deal with it, but at least it gets them to their intended audience. They are the primary sellers of wool, exporters of grain, and bringers of fish to the inside of the country. Their consent to move goods is probably the biggest check on the royal power of deciding who eats and who starves, and they have been enjoying a guarded detente with the Crown for the past 3 and a half decades. The Crown's recently appeasing of the nerds has gotten plenty of attention: by managing to make them happy, King Al has stopped the Midnight Readers from being annoying in public, and so far done so in such a way that it has not cost too much money...yet.

At this party, King Al has rented a suite of rooms above a banquet hall-the Midnight Readers themselves rented the hall-and has set up exhibits of glass manufactures in Aelbaion. In the hall itself, the dishes and bowls were all made of glass, as were the drinking cups. Much of the glass was green forest glass, but substantial efforts had been made to make clearer products; this was only so-so. What the Aelish had achieved and then set the table with had noticeable yellow or green tints-or the inclusion of a significant amount of lead; this was evidenced in their more advanced products, which were displayed upstairs. King Al, however, remained downstairs for much of the event, but he had quite a presence upstairs. This presence was his son, Price Vespasian.

Vespasian, unlike his father, is an unusually quiet person, walking around with little fanfare. This is not because he lacks prestige; it is because he only deigns to set as much foot in the universe around him as he chooses, and he looks like a blonde cat. He is difficult to pin down on many things, including his gender and pronouns, and today is no exception. Right now, he is fine with acting like a man; he is even more fine with the wine that he is drinking. What he considers finest is the mirror that he is admiring himself in; it is also by far the most expensive piece of fine art in the room. And yet, Vespasian is not being especially vain. The mirror's large size allowed it's ornamentation, which was a show of skill and prestige for the artist.

In the center of the room is a nice big crowd of nobility, members of the Midnight Readers. A few of the regional Trade Lords are also cycling through. Vespasian has already exchanged words with a few of them, although he isn't that eager to talk. That could be interpreted by something like sociability on the part of the Midnight Readers, who have been trying to recruit him since he was first presented to court. To the prince, they are nothing other than supremely annoying, all eagerness without any appreciation for the difficulty of what they are doing, or knowledge of the heft of their actions.

'Your highness.'

Vespasian rolled his eyes in front of everyone. It was Lord Vanquemire De La Sanchois, or as he called himself, Pentalos. He often wore a mask that looked like a pentagram, and thought that he was the best at mathematics-based duels. More infuriatingly, he was able to understand the effort of getting things done-which others didn't.

'Mmr. Pentalos.'

'It is always a pleasure to meet you amongst the curiosities of the world, and the creations of Aelbaion.' Pentalos bowed very carefully. His clothing was liable to catch on surrounding objects. 'Are you enjoying the exhibits?'

'Indeed.' Vespasian tried to sidle past Pentalos and to the main set of attractions. 'They are some of the most unique and masterful crafts of Aelbaion in the past two decades, I believe.'

'Ah, but they pale in comparison to the Diptychs of Manetevi-'

'I cannot see the Diptychs of Manetavi because Manetavi is in seclusion, and I am also only 24. They are only viewable to people who have the age of 27, as you know.'

'I am most aware, your majesty. For now I seek to stoke your curiosity.'

The prince moved to the first table. It had several reading stones on it, with smooth bottoms and clear enough insides. Looking down at them, he could move them over some pieces of very small text; as he did, the text appeared much larger to him. Each stone had been made by a different glassworker, and their marks were present on the side of the stones. Carefully, he turned one over in his hand, looking at it.

'I think I'll be buying one, Pentalos. It will be most convenient. Have you?'

'My order has been placed, and I am waiting to hear from the craftsman in my home duchy. I predict that I will have it in four months.'

Vespasian put the stone down, then looked at the text sample. 'This was made by an engine, Pentalos.'

'Isn't it remarkable?'

'Extremely.' Vespasin put the text sample down in turn. 'We are standing on the precipice of a series of new ages. An age of engines, an age of flight, an age of great production.'

'We will see such miracles, your highness.'

'We shall see them.' The prince sighed, rearranging his hair. 'Whether we like them or not. Pentalos...'

'You should be delighted, your highness!' Pentalos raised his hands. 'Aelbaion-'

'All of these great devices originated from outside the country.' The prince sighed. 'Not-'

'The singing nun has singlehandedly described how the passage of heritable traits move through plants. We manipulate the essence of beer and bread. And everyone uses our weights to trade our wool.' Pentalos had a point. 'It is not so bleak as you sound, your highness.'

Vespasian raised a hand, and then held it for a second, considering. He changed his mind abruptly. 'More wine, if you please.' Pentalos eagerly passed him some. 'Flying machines, Pentalos. Airships. And we...are making dental tools.' A hand, not his, gestured to another table.

'We have pulled more teeth in a year than they do in five in the Harpy lands.' Pentalos used his apprentice's gesture to segway into Aelbaion breaking the Dentists' Curse. (1)

'How do you know that?' Vespasian raised an eyebrow.

'The Midnight Readers are versed in many mysteries of understanding.' Pentalos smiled under the stupid mask. 'I am aware of the GDP of the Empire of Six Cities-'

'What the devils are you talking about?' Vespasian looked confused. 'Stop making up nonsense.'

'Our secrets are not nonsense, your highness.'

Vespasian studied the dental tools. They were light, and made of good steel, with tiny mirrors attached. 'They are. Life is nonsense, Pentalos. Pure nonsense.'

'You, sire, need to go flying again.' Pentalos wasn't taking any of this.

'Perhaps. Water, servant.' He truly did seem dispassionate. 'Say, Pentalos...what's that on the stand over there.' Both of them knew what was on the stand over there.

'These, my lord, are spectacles.'

'I see.' Vespasian really didn't want to. 'Are they made here?'

'They are, my lord. This pair was made in Couroffe itself.'

'Huh.' The Prince looked at the pair of eyeglasses, which were mounted on a stand gilded embroidery. 'They were made while all of that absolute Lady-piss was going on outside.' (2)

'Yes, Prince Vespasian.' Pentalos smiled a little behind the mask as the prince turned away. 'Do try them on.'

Frowning, the prince picked up the glasses. They were heavy, with a wooden frame and especially thick lenses. 'These should improve my vision?'

'Yes, your highness. They improved mine-'

Prince Vespasian picked up the glasses and held them up, slipping them over his face. The world in front of him warped, then twitched-

'Ow.' Wincing, the prince put them down.

'They are powerful, your highness!' Pentalos was clearly grinning.

'Yes. Perhaps too. I may need a lighter pair, if I do.'

'This shall lead to another type of medicine, I am sure of it.' The Midnight Reader rubbed his hands together. Vespasian sighed, carefully readjusting the spectacles after he had put them back. 'Have you heard of the ideas of optometry, sire?'

'Yes. By the Lady, Pentalos, please stop that hand rubbing, you're fucking humiliating yourself.'

'Do I look like the scheming advisor, your highness?'

'Yes. And I am the drunk one, Penty.'

'Do not call me that!' Pentalos looked flustered. 'It is undignified!'

'Fine. Servants, water.' One of the staff brough his majesty a cup of clear water, flavored with lavender. 'Ah-thank you-' Vespasian sipped it. 'Oh. Just flavored. Thank you kindly.' The servant, one braid behind their ear, nodded. 'Pentalos...the consequences of everything...of all this.'

'The costs, your highness?' Pentalos did some more hand rubbing.

'Yes.' Vespasin threw back the water. 'Of making the items, of getting the supplies, of running the shops, and of making the crafters the people they were. This will...if it takes one town for each shop, Pentalos, you must understand...' There was silence as he drank the rest of the water.

'Yes, sire. I understand.' Pentalos stopped rubbing his hand. 'Will you meet with us in the Loft sometime?'

'When you air it out.' Vespasian looked for more water. More was brought. 'That place is stifling.'

Pentalos smiled. 'As your highness wishes. Your father has recently been looking at obtaining an ice engine. And we shall oblige him.'

Vespasian looked modestly surprised. 'You fucker.'

'Yes, your highness?'

'You've intrigued me, and annoyed me. I will arrive when you have that damn engine installed, and not before.' And then Prince Vespasian took his cloak and gave it false swirl-so as not to knock anything over-then strode from the exhibition room.

'Your highness!' Pentalos called after him. 'It doesn't go in the building...'

1. For decades, the Aelish had not ever been able to have a single person set up and run a dental practice for more than five years.

2. He means the ongoing paving projects in the capital.

The secrets of preserving ice have always been known to the Aelish...so much so that they might not as well be secrets. However, their ability to engage in widespread ice storage has been only partial-until very recently. Enough peace, enough agricultural surplus, enough free hands, and enough interest in constructing finer things had been coming together to enable things like sidewalks-so there was plenty of initiative in place for them to pursue other, smaller, but no less technically challenging projects. While the average builder was working on a housing project of some kind, or a rebuilt wall or road-for the rough terrain of Aelbaion would often challenge any engineer, doubly so if it was overgrown with greenery in some capacity-there was still plenty of work to be done on storage applications.

Ice forms naturally in the mountains of Aelbaion, and stays there under similar conditions. Even in the summer, there are little pockets of cold where the ice never melts. Said pockets of cold can be harvested during the summer, and re-seeded in the winter. The right of estover, for a tenant or serf on a lords land to take wood for their needs can sometimes be extended to ice; it is only done for important people, or to specific families, who will hold these rights to take and harvest ice as needed. In later days, the right of ice-taking will be deed out to specific facilities, such as ski lodges. But that is for later. In the meantime, the requirement for the tenant holding estover to renew that which they take is without question. Water is diligently maintained in these places in time for the winter, and not all ice is taken. This maintains much of the original supply of ice.

When it is time for harvest, ice is cut from blocks in the mountain ponds and brought down to specialized storerooms called icehouses. These ice-houses are smaller in size, typically located a ways away from buildings where people live, and are sturdily built with thick walls of stone and minimal windows. They are built out of the way of the sun, with groves of shade trees and obscuring backdrops. Light sources are typically carried in by people using them, as well as plentiful bales of hay. Hay is cheap, widely available insulator, and the Aelish will bring their ice down, place it on racks or shelves, and cover it with hay. This adds weeks of storage time to the ice, at minimum.

Far more helps to keep the temperature down. The first is that the Aelish have independently redeveloped the 'wind catcher', a feature where winds passing by are used to cool down the building. By entering through the top-most funnel and moving through the building, this airflow can be used for significant cooling work. Simultaneously, a stream of some kind-artificial or natural-is typically moving through bottom floor of these structures, taking away heat. While the earliest icehouses were built over streams, and many still are today-the burbling of a brook is a charming feature indeed-it is now possible for watercourses to be hewn from rock by the arrangement of sufficient labor. The broken terrain of Aelbaion can be broken open still further and then rebuilt to carry water. By cooling from the top and the bottom of the house, and blocking all sources of heating from entering it, the Aelish can make the ice house work as a long-term storage of ice itself. The most current versions have the airflow and the 'water line' meet, producing an even more potent cooling effect.

Ice is highly desirable as a product: it is beneficial for cooling-and the purest forms of ice make for excellent beverage refreshments. Making ice from the purest waters provided by the Lady is a sign of immense piety and good use of Her wisdom-and so the Church has been setting up ice caves. No one except for the major lords has the resources to pull this off, and while the great lords of the mountains have access to ice, they are operating on more mundane scales. In these caves, the Church is setting up small tours for buyers, packing whole crates of ice, and cutting multiple channels for waterflows that mesh with the upper airflow. The most beautifully-adorned facilities have turned their waterflows into salsabil-style fountains, which take up little space and demonstrate the skill of the artisans involved. Ice from these caves is taken to the Church's medical facilities, where it is used to help cool down fevers and treat heat illnesses, as well as improve the comfort of those stricken. Nowhere in recorded Aelbic history has this been done at scale, and while the treatment of fevers ice has been a historical practice, the actual costs of using this much ice has never been recorded before. Demand is shooting up.

All told, it looks like Aelbaion will need a lot of ice. Open ears turn to rumors of an ice engine.

After nearly a decade of renovation work on the Royal Palace, the Kingdom of Aelbaion has witnessed the opening of the Royal Gardens. The royal gardens, which are no longer going to be capitalized in this post because repeated capitalization is annoying, originally started out as a place for the royal household to relax while surrounded by flowers and away from the smell of Couroffe. Over a century and a half, they steadily expanded to include trees, water features, orchards, medicinal compounds, and even poisons. The stories that have unfolded from the garden could fill up to ten tomes of lore, and would take four weeks of song to expound; the royal families' baggage is all over the place.

And now it is somewhat open to the public-at least to the locals-and only four days per week-and definitely not on national holidays. Those who live in Couroffe, or those who are stopping by on a visit-and who can manage to make their way up to the palace past the annoyingly dense groups of workers who were bringing stone thither and yon, and then laying it down into well-made roads. Trying to rush paving is a recipe for disaster, and the Crown is not willing to risk annoying, traffic-snarling scandal in it's capital. Even worse, the most important city in Aelbaion having permanent road issues would cause a true hit to the Crown's prestige and it's ability to govern. So the lines of carts remain lines, and the common people all wait in them.

The biggest part of the royal gardens are the nine floral sections, representing three seasons, the Lady, two dead lords with reputations for growing impressive gardens, the Royal Family, Chivalry, and the Great Chalice. These all have a guided tour, where the language of the flowers can be explained to anyone who the tour guides didn't manage to lay hands on yet. After the guided tour, visitors may enjoy sitting by the fountains, or walking through an orchard featuring combinations grafted trees. Special plants are kept safe behind wire-wicker enclosures, and statues are adorned with ivy.

Those who want to glean more from the Kingdom will need to look beyond the exhibits. Prying eyes will probably focus on the extensive medicinal garden, the numerous beehives, the kitchen gardens growing lots of garlic, or the special walled gardens of rare, poisonous plants. Some of these walled gardens are specially designed to release heat throughout the night in the cooler periods; and a large staff is constantly busy tending to the plants. Irrigation has been provided for; and scholars can be seen occasionally answering this or that technical question for the Crown-or doing something private for the monarchy.

For those passing by, the royal gardens are a sign of wealth and power; a beautiful show of opulence that generates prestige. For those vaguely in the know, the garden is a deliberate show of plenty and skill that are the Crown's for their piety and adherence to the Lady's guidelines. And for those In The Know, the royal gardens is a combination of all three, a tasteful display of power. But if you're actually in the know, you'll know that the Garden is a place where the Crown can get some questions answered via a small claque of scholars. Of course, no one finds that interesting enough to mention.

King Aeldebaric and Queen Ethellebelle were taking a breather. They had spent all day playing tennis, and earlier they had spent most of the evening trying to figure out how to set up a travelling chess set that came in five pieces; this had ended in failure and lot of a laughter. They'd been surrounded by courtiers all day, and now they were retiring for the night. His Majesty had gone hunting a week ago, and many of the nobles had stuck around, enjoying his company. This had left the two precious little time to each other, and they'd been spending most of it blowing off steam and reinvigorating their relationship. Rulership took it's toll in the hardest of ways, and made people strangers to others and their closest loved ones.

It also gave them plenty to talk about.

"So, my dear. You've been continuing your father's legacy, it seems." The Queen was very studiously stretching before bed.

The King sat, rubbing his lower back. "I wish you wouldn't open conversations like this."

"I'm sorry. I find it fitting."

"It feels like you're taking a dig at me for how I exhibit rulership."

"What do you want, then?"

"Advice." He started off into the middle distance. "Just...advice...like he would have given me."

"I can't do that." The Queen tried to sound contrite. "But I can advise you how I would advise you."

"You're so aware of your limits." His majesty was completing wrist exercises. "I wish I was the same."

"I wish others respect your limits more." The Queen did have encouragement for him. "You would work yourself past any reasonable limit for the Kingdom, and then some."

"The world will not respect my limits." Aeldebaric stood, touched his toes, sat again. "So I will have to surpass them from time to time. The other side to that coin is that I do not respect it's limits, either."

"Is that why you're so intent on bringing blackpowder to Aelbaion?"

"Lady, no." His Majesty sighed. "I am intent on it because it will change the world, whether I want it to or not. So we might as well be the ones changing it."

"Well, that is a very fair answer to hear." Ethellebelle was putting her hair up once more, making sure it stayed in place. "It's much less worrying than what others might say."

"Kings are weird creatures, aren't we?"

"Yes. Extremely prone to bloviation, I do say."

"Oh, you're a lawyer-" His tone was teasing, and he smiled.

"I have taste." She faked a bit of annoyance. "And I have not been called to the bar. So I am legally trained, but not a lawyer."

"You're a lawyer to me." He was firm. "And I trust your acumen in it's entirety."

"You're a better judge of character than I am." She tried to change the subject. "Don't get around this with praise. Judge yourself."

"I am a middle aged king who is mostly satisfied with how his life has been going so far. I am scared of the consequences of my actions, and I am scared of my accomplishments being undone. I am afraid of my nobility, for they do not like having their power curbed, or thinking that they have it curbed. I worry about my son. I worry about my wife's death. I want to be done with it all. I know that when I act, things happen. I know that I have to make decisions that hurt others because I am a King, and I need to keep the entire edifice up, or else there will be a perilous fall."

Her Majesty regarded her husband for quite some time. "You judge yourself...fairly well. But you left out your luck, and your supporters."

"That's the blessing of the Lady, Belle. And I am trying to judge myself."

"I judge a man by the company he keeps. And your company...I did not think you would keep it so much when you came to the throne, but you did."

"It is because I am pious." He sighed. "I will pray when I wake, when I sleep. I will commission more churches and annexes and outbuildings than my father did before I die. I will keep Her tenets. I will plant a hundred acre woods. That will make the peasants love me, and the Church call me a great man, and the city folk not worry too much. They...they care about that kind of thing. They all gossip about us."

"You also use your piety and chivalry to bash the nobles over the head." She had a good retort. "And so far it's worked."

"I have been right, and I have followed your advice to yell loudly."

"That you have."

"Do you think it worked?"

"Oh, absolutely."

He finished stretching, sighed heavily, and clapped his hands. In moved servants, bringing bedtime tea. The royal couple had decamped to a private estate, one of a few that the Crown had deeper in the Kingdom for personal use. "Do you think this little venture is working? You've finally had time to conduct a thorough inspection of the books and the works. Have you been able to tell where the lost money is going?"

"It's going to making blackpowder weaponry." Ethellebelle spoke archly, with an undertone suggesting the obvious. "This is not easy to do. We are learning how to make powder as a people, and those learning how to make powder are learning how to make it as a team. We are likewise learning how to make the fire-tubes. This is for devices closed at one end that do not move. We are learning how to make rockets, and fire arrows, and color their emissions. This is not cheap, and cannot be." She said this with clear intent for the servants to hear.

"I believe you." The King looked wearied. He'd had a long day. "It is just irksome, you know. Vaneric achieved so much, it seemed, with so little effort."

"That is because he was focused on exactly what he wanted." The Queen was helped to change into her bed linens. "And you are less so. Perhaps it is because you want greater things. What your father did was simple: he learned of the bomb and the grenade. He found out how one might set up grenadiers on foot and on horseback. His scholars learned how to make small amounts of powder, and to cast iron shells. They taught these techniques to gallant men who were unafraid of being blown up; at the same time, he made sure that the foe were afraid of being blown up. He made bomb-throwers, and used them on several weaker forts-as examples. Everyone knew of his mastery of this foreign knowledge."

"Foreign knowledge." The King grunted. "Not of the Aelish, or of the Lady."

"Yes, darling. Foreign. But that only means that we must learn it ourselves before we use it. Then we can use it without issue."

"If you think that we are spending our coin in such a way that this is a learning process, I will accept it. But I will ask for you to explain why, and to also tell me what you think of the works."

Queen Ethellebelle stopped and thought for a moment-but only a moment. "Your father understood how men must use this artifice and how to use these men before he understood the artifice itself. He likely used the men better than the engines. By doing so, he avoided his weakness-and he trained his men. You are training different people, you are getting craftsmen familiar with this artifice. They are different than soldiers, they have opinions and are less disciplined-"

"They are men of the town, women of the city." The King nodded, understanding. "So I am training a city, and a town, instead of an army?"

"That is correct."

"Damn. That is always complicated. Shall we get into bed?"

"Finish your tea, dear."

"Ah, yes. Thank you." He drank. "So I am teaching a town about how to make hand-guns, and then having them build bigger and better engines. You had a look at the works, did you not?"

"I did. I think that the roads need to be rebuilt, twenty more sheds need to be erected, tool purchases need to be finished, 56 chests need to be bought, 5 more carpenters hired in-the usual. The charcoal works is fine, the sulfur purchasing needs to be sorted out, and the saltpeter works needs to be started on. The docks must be repaired, and the iron shipment is findable in the forest if they cut down all the trees. Oh, and they need a new barracks, and some drains. And to form their own band so that no one who is bad at music sings."

"Then we shall do that." The King drained his tea with a long gulp. "My inspection brought me to the same conclusion. How is the forge?"

"Adequate and cramped." She shrugged. "It is working for the production of hand-guns. It should be turned into a much larger workshop after you fix everything else there. The site was only chosen for the easy availability of a test firing range."

"Eh. It's probably kept some fingers on."

"That it has. But we are going to run the risk of a cholera outbreak if we don't fix it up."

"Damn. I'll hire in the contractors, then."

"The money will be well spent. But I have another recommendation for you to consider."

"Do go ahead." He had given the teacup back to the servants and was stepping into bed. "Your wisdom supersedes mine."

Another eye roll greeted that declaration. "Teach blackpowder to the town and the city for other reasons. Employ it for blasting away rock and earth in mines. Give them beautiful light shows with rockets. Both will be well received, and they'll learn on their own."

The King sprang right back up. "That's excellent! Oh, Belle, you are superb!"

She smiled, fully. "I try. Now, your royal highness...if I may make one request?"

"Please do."

"I would like a hand-gun."

He took her hand and kissed it. "As her highness wishes."

The nature of the geography in the land of Aelbaion has necessitated that the bulk of Aelbic calories in the countryside come from taking care of herds of animals. The bulk of these are goats and sheep, the former capable of living on anything, and the latter producing fine wool for clothing. Most of the ranching and herding done here is at the level of the village; the Dukes and Counts typically are the independent lage producers of animals and animal products. Economies of scale are only so realizable when those economizing are more interested in killing and raiding their neighbors than the logistics of a cattle drive, and the Horse Lords, as a group of people, have suffered from an almost social underdevelopment that has not truly been challenged until the start of Vanerics' peace.

The halting of raids was extremely beneficial for the population of goats, which quickly took over the country. This in turn was beneficial for the population of larger predators, which thankfully relieved the peasantry of the specter of goats destroying the local ecosystem. With the rising tide of religious certainty and legal change that had washed over the land, pasturing greatly improved and reasonable land use practices became ubiquitous. Goats were once a household herdnig animal, but in some places began to be scaled to village-sized herds, giving the peasantry more economic power and security. This was not something that the lords would take lying down, but they had much bigger worries: an increase in the Crown's power and the constant need to keep an eye on their neighbors just in case they're preparing for war is a big distraction from oppressing the peasantry.

But the peasantry are just like their goats. The Aelish goats have one thing going for them, and that is their abiltiy to survive in ultra broken, highly rocky terrain by climbing anywhere and eating anything. These goats can be regarded as semi-domesticated; they tpically wander around all day and come back home at night. Home used to be a small crevice or crag, now it is a sheltered pasture or a barn. Sometimes, they can be lured in more quickly by a pot of boiling vegetables. If a peasant has a shortbow and a good shooting spot, they can quickly bag a predator that might be drawn to ambush their returning animals. Once it is night time, the goats can be readily milked, and this milk drank fresh from the goat or turned into cheese.

Making cheese has become one of the most common means of Aelish food preservation-at least by individual practitioner. Pretty much anyone can lay their hands on some milk, prepare it, and lay it away. Some cheeses last longer than others; and these can go into storage for a long time-and sometimes become more enjoyable dishes themseles. The most common kind of storage is a cheese cave, and while these store mostly hard cheeses, the boom in cheesemaking has opened up culinary options and calories for the majority of the country that haven't truly been practiced on a mass scale before. Most cheese is 'cottage cheese' and taken by the worker on the go; herbs are often added for flavor. Cheese from cheese caves can be taken out and even shipped, and across the country there is a nascent market for cheese. Flavor swaps typically happen on foot, however, as herdsfolk exchange foods and cheese.

Despite the Aelbic passion for fashion, large-scale ranching for wool is only so developed. This is due to the semi-rarity of ready forage; despite the length and breadth of the lands of many lords and the size of their pasture, the south of the country is not hospitable to industrial animal raising. Land use policies have ameliorated the effects of these inherently challenging conditions somewhat; the widespread adoption of water-meadows and water storage has expanded areas of available pasture. The decrease in disease spread and the improvent in water availability have made sheep able to tolerate living across much more of the land. This has made some of the numbers line up, and it has also made it possible to make a lot more money off of sheep farming.

But to make money, you gotta spend money. Sheep made wool, and eventually this wool needed to come off during shearing time. To this end, the first sheep safety sheds, which were places where herds would be safely kept while the animals were being sheared. These sheds would be busy in the springtime, then shuttered when not needed. The raw wool would be stored until it could be picked up for cleaning and carding, which were the first labor intensive steps to getting workable thread. All of these had a network of dirt roads around them, which would disintegrate into mud during the spring. Even as it's sheep herding began to get organized under the banner of counts and lesser nobles, the country ran into the problems of logistics that would plague any industrialist. We will return to these shearing operations later.

There is one more star of Aelbic pastures: the cow. There are many breeds, but they are often divided into two categories: 'peasant cows', which have a lower center of gravity and prefer eating weeds, and 'noble cows', which are taller and prefer grains. The former can survive on substandard fare but do not really appeal to the eye, while the latter look majestic but can die of mold poionining in an afternoon if unlucky. Obviously, the former exist in much greater numbers, despite the annoyance that occurrs when the cattle need to empty their guts of something toxic but cannot vomit. Yes, these cattle get explosive diarrahea. But this is not solely why cattle herding is limited. Cows usually only provide milk on a regular basis, and the current limitations of fields down south cannot support massive herds of cattle. Beef remains extremely expensive, a food for lords or for those who personally own cattle to eat.

On top of this, the meat taken from an animal has to be preserved. While the Aelish were fine assembling slaughtering blocks earlier, those lords who kept herds of beef for profit would soon find that they needed to go further. A freshly slaughtered animal has to be properly butchered, taken for cuts of meat and organs, harvested for everything that humans can eat. In the middle ages, one can afford to waste nothing. This is the duty of the slaughterhouse, the unpalatable back-end to every boucherie and meat hall. After every cut of the throat, the butchers' staff get to work, taking everything that they can from the animal. Waste of one animal will mean that another one has to be killed, and that's a waste of a life. So the slaugterhouse stays busy. Bones are removed, sometimes dried for use as a material, otherwise ground up for fertilizer. Cartilege is taken for similar use, and organs are either turned into food or taken for alchemical components. Connective tissue is also taken for making glue, vital for binding together everything from books to bows. Fat is taken and rendered down into everything from ink components to fuels. Blood is likewise saved for fertilizer. Horns, the rarest part of the animal, are saved with significant effort and then sold to someone who can use them. Without access to petrochemicals to make polymers that can form long, stretchy materials, the Aelish must use aninals to 'make' the closest equivalents with their bodies; they cannot lose anything for lack of effort.

The traditional way to preserve meat is smoking. Trees are close by, and the oceans are far away. Bringing salt up to the south would not be easy. So far, there have been no big salt sources found in the hills, so mining will not provide much. Some salt comes up from the coast, but the Aelish will swear by the superiority of smoked beef, mutton, and lamb. They will hold great and fervent disputes, however, over how it should be smoked, the time and the species of the tree used; they will set aside wood specifically for these purposes and preserve it, they will spare no expense to build great smokers for all of their meat. As the peace came, the smokers only got bigger and better, a rare spot of full performance.

Fashion also requires leather in endless quantities and superb quality. The Aelish do not skimp here, either. Leather-particularly from 'noble cows'-is taken from the animal immediately after slaughter, then brought to the tannery drying racks as soon as possible. The best reagents and the most superb of tools are placed here; and unlike the other operations, which are seasonal, the leatherworks operate year round. Deep in the hinterlands, one will suddenly find bustling villages centered around a large compound with multiple buildings devoted solely to producing fine leather and leather clothing. These outposts of skill and artistic merit are rare drivers of development and wealth generation in otherwise dead-end places, and they are often centers of cattle deposition during the spring and summertime. In the fall, the finest cuts of leather and the best clothing go down the center of the country while the roads aren't washed out, to be paid for by wealthy lords and their tailors. With peace, ever more leather has been made, and ever more cattle have been dropped off, and the cycle repeats.

Some of the wealth and skill of the rest of the parts of the country have leaked into the south. This has been carried along the cattle drive, which has been the principle artery of wealth movement from south to everywhere else. The transit of cattle is an outlay of wealth from one area to another, and gains returns in capital and skilled labor. Depots of grain and hay can be drawn on, and after the cities in the Crownlands or the hungry mouths of the Trade Lords' market-bastions, the drives will end up in the villages before Freeport. The Horse-Lords of the south, as they often boast, feed the best people in the Kingdom and clothe all the rest; in return they get gold and a small flow of experts and knowledge. For example, Pipette-men are messing around with using the bacteria in the cheese to make better yogurts-but fermentation of dairy is still a touch and go effort at this point in time. Culinary breakthroughs are on the horizon, however. The Horse-Lords are enjoying their peace, no matter what they might say, and they are finding plenty of things to get occupied with. Right now, one of those things is enjoying prosperity.

The people of Aelbaion are known for their expression of artistic traditions in garb, not in writing or song. However, if someone is bored enough in any set of circumstances, they can easily be driven to break an artistic mold-or start up a new one entirely. Mme. Florence d'Elfantine, a woman pressured into taking cloistered orders at age 15 under fairly dubious circumstances, is one of those people. Her last name was changed to that of a cloistered order, the Fantine House, located up in the foothills of Aelbaion. It was here that she was initially devoted to a life of prayer and stonecarving. This was extremely boring, especially for a young girl growing up. While other members of the order made do by kissing lonely goatherds high up on the hills, Florence was stuck in the kitchen garden weeding and managing compost heaps.

But Florence was smart, and when smart people get bored, tbey usually try to bust that boredom by coming up with creative entertainment. Like any young lady with an echoing room, she tried singing, and she liked it. More importantly, it helped her remember things, like what state of growth vegetables were in so that she could apply the correct stages of care. It also really helped to keep her from going crazy when teasing apart peas that were coming off a trellis.

Anyone who studied genetics even glancingly can tell where we are going here.

Florence kept a careful eye on the thing she was growing, because she was going to be eating them. As she did, she noticed that a number of things about the pea plants occurred whenever they were crossed, or bred together, things that were related to traits. She was able to notice this because plants were grown in semi-isolated clusters and often required hand pollination, which she performed between these groups to prevent inbreeding. When plans were 'bred to the stables', they had certain traits remain preserved. When 'let out to stud', some traits would be spread, but only under certain circumstances.

All of these traits being spread or not spread lead to Florence recognizing that there was something doing the spreading: a genetic material. She wasn't able to use those words, instead developing term 'ledger of allegations'. In Aelish, this is 'ledger' d'allegationes', which was shortened to 'allegele'. Stablehands would later short it to 'allele'. Genetic traits are attached to alleles on Earth, too. Funny how that works out!

After she'd gotten some practice moving alleles around, Florence realized that there was absolutely a pattern that she could observe and quantify. She didn't really have the capability to take detailed notes, since supplies of paper were reserved for the copyists. Carving her observations into rock was a bit too much for a scrawny teen, and she couldn't make parchment, so she committed her observations to memory in the form of a song. By now, she was becoming ok at songwriting and coming up with jingles. Florence developed a catchy ditty called

'Florence's Flower Facts'.

Fact One: some alleles are noble, and some are common. Noble alleles will over-rule common all-ledgers. This is the Fact of Class, which we know as Mendel's Law of Dominance and Uniformity.

Fact Two: separation will occur during breeding and fertilization. The alleles for each gene will separate from each other, so that each gamete carries only one trait. This is the Fact of Ferrying, which we know as Mendel's Law of Segregation.

Fact Three: separation will occurr independently. Alleles containing the stuff of traits will separate independently when forming the gamete. This is the Fact of Splitting, which we know as Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment.

However, Florence recognized that her Facts were nothing more than a series of very insisted upon observations. They were not backed up by an actual theoretical framework, and while she had an idea of 'stuff moving around inside the plant while the seed was formed', there had to be some logic to the ledgers moving around. One couldn't just claim that miniature accountants did all the work, although that was a fine explanation for many servants of the Lady. Instead, she had to posit some rules for the ledgers. This is where thinking about the component parts of the ledgers was pretty helpful for her. Plants contained books illustrating how life was supposed to unfold.

Even looking from the outside, Florence was able to come up with five rough rules.

1. Ledgers outcomes are always defined. Traits following her rules will not be have a blending of things, they will always be either one thing or the other.

(Characteristics are always unitary.)

2. Ledgers have alternate forms of outcomes, and these ledger entries come from the parents.

(Genetic characters have two different forms, inherited from the parents.)

3. One ledger will always win out over the other in it's nobility.

(One gene is dominant, and expressed. One gene is recessive, and not expressed.)

4. Ledgers are recorded with the individual entries of the parents.

(Gametes are created by random segregation. Heterozygotes will have gametes with an equal frequency of alleles.)

5. Different topics of the ledgers are differently assigned.

(Genes are unlinked.)

All of this lyrical virtuosity Florence put to rhythm, then rhyme in a ditty called 'Laws of the Ledgers'. It was infuriatingly catchy, and it was best sung fairly loudly. She was fairly quick to start work on the heterozygote issue, and got fairly close to solving it by the time that she faced consequences of her accomplishments. For all of her skill at communicating her discoveries and recording them memorably, Florence had one fatal flaw. She was an alto. An *untrained* alto.

So obvious was her zeal and understanding of the wisdom that the Lady had bestowed on her througb toil in the garden, the cloistered group said, was that Florence qualified for Maidenhood. Everyone at the cloister knew how to breed plants for various traits that applied to her Facts. Now it was time to spread this knowledge to the world. With a letter in her bag, and a large L on her forehead, Florence was given back her last name-D'Ambechon-and virutally kicked out of the cloister.

It was time to take her songs to the world.

History has a history, and that history is in it's study: historiography, or the history of history, is a surprisingly long running human habit. It has been seen in the ancient Greeks and the Chinese writings, and on Ashagon it has doubtlessly been going on as long. There have been plenty of people reading and writing, and while book binding probably does not have the standardization of slapping an author's name on the spine of the book, authors will never neglect to put their name on something. This practice of tracking authors, and where they were active, has formed the basis of Aelbic historiography, until the period of killing each other got very, very intense.

A small aside is necessary. The 'uniter', King Vaneric was only really able to go around killing and cowing everyone in the first place because social order in the Kingdom had disintegrated that badly. Wars had collapsed into cycles of revenge killing, with larger field actions slimming down into raids called chevauchee, with a focus on devastation and theft to make up for having been devastated oneself. This was ruinous for the practice of scholarship, which required peace, quiet, and full library that wasn't on fire or being robbed. Much practice of history had collapsed completely before the Uniter started Uniting people by kicking everyone's ass, until Vaneric brought along his own historians to record his asskicking session.

This was a fairly smart move, because it helped to restart the actual practice of historical studies. Even better, the King made sure to have his great deeds bragged about publicly, and left a system for his successor, Aeldebaric, to talk about his great deeds, too. Aeldebaric has made use of the criers the most, to carry the word about how good the Great Charter has been for the Kingdom, and then about how to obey it and report the nobles if they weren't adhering to it's strictures. He also had some officials accounts of events sent out, and his own histories written-the King won't look a gift horse in the mouth much.

All of this history work has one big point: legitimization of the current ruling person. Legitimization to the masses is often just being told that the King is awesome and cool and kicks faces in, along with a side of extra charity food, some benign neglect, and their boss being paid off a little bit. However, legitimization for smarter people will require supporting evidence, and who can better provide supporting evidence than people who are dead and can't argue with you? Probably someone who actually performed research, and the King's historians have both: they're able to cite better people, and many of these people are dead.

This helps quite a lot if your practice of history isn't very good, or if it simply isn't very exciting. Not having too many people look at your work helps you get away with things until after you are dead...and there are a lot of dead Aelish scholars. However, citing older people means that you can also study them, and critique them, and if you want to do more than simply talk about how cool King Al is, you have to do some legitimate scholarly work. There's little to do besides natural philosophy or the study of songs, but if you have historical accounts around you, then you can start to work on those. Lo and behold, you're doing historiography again!

In short, the recovery of Aelbic scholarship here was entirely funded by royalty for state purposes, with the explicit purpose of making the King look even cooler. This allowed historiography to be restarted as a practice as a side effect-a pleasant side effect, but not one that had been sought. However, it was an outcome of improved scholarship, which was starting to bubble up under the surface. With enough funding and some good peace, King Al was living up to the propaganda he had paid to spread. And now people were writing the tales of it. Happy accidents were once again the order of the day.

Aelbaion, like everywhere else in Ashagon, is a low energy use society. This is not for lack of trying, it is a fact of living in the middle ages. There is no such thing as the steam engine, just water, wind, muscle, and some crude gunpowder that I really wouldn't touch if I was in your shoes. Yes, there is magic, but it comes with a price, and if you don't want to deal with that price yourself, it ends up with a price tag. This price tag cane be annoying enough to pay that it is worth looking into the more historically available sources of power. It just happens to be that one of those sources of power is water, and that means that employing it comes with plenty of strings attached. Water, after all, is important for everyone to survive and grow food.

The Aelish have historically cared quite a lot for their water. The Lady is often linked with water in some form or another; she is recorded as providing the Aels with safe drinking water on the eve of the Predecessor's downfall. They learned much from her techniques, and this is evident in their magical lore, the oldest spells are for purification of water and attempts to make potions using some of the techniques attributed to the Lady; it is worth nothing that they did not succeed in the slightest. It lead to better understanding of enchanting objects and weapons, and ultimately to infusion-but that's for another time. Now, we are going to look at water storage, and what it's used for. An essential caveat: this is for non-potable water. No one is going to be consuming this safely, and they're not supposed to.

Aelbic water storage right now relies on gravity or windpower to get it going. We will take a look at the storage of water in the countryside, where the vast majority of water is stored by volume. Storage typically takes place in converted lakes and ponds, which have been seeded with fish stocks in the past. Takings from these are carefully monitored, lest the valuable stores of fish and eels be troubled by low water levels. Because of this, a new wave of ponds and small reservoirs have been dug and enlargened. Typically located at the tops of hills, these reservoirs can be tapped by opening a reinforced sluice gate or activating a windpump and having the water flow down to it's point of use. Generally, these points of use are at fields or water-meadows, using this water to start the crops in spring, or turn a reawakening field into a riot of flowers and grasses ready for hungry animals to eat. As the season continued on into summer, there was a greater need for water when temperatures kicked up.

This was fairly common, but it also indicated a greater dedication to planning than had been done before outside of the Crown Lands. It is not to say that the rest of the country was not engaged in planning; rather that they were planning for things like war and famine, and that water usage management had not been practiced on a Kingdom-wide scale until very recently. Without warfare interrupting everyone, workers could quickly be recruited, specialists hired, and yet more basins dug out. Filling them was free, at least from rainfall-filling from rivers was charged for, and streams were off limits. Stored water, for many a farmer, meant stored freedom, stored money, stored power-and also stored safety. It was a hedge against drought, and potentially against any future violence if swords were to be drawn over water. The Aelish were once again building large things.

The second largest of these large things was a general purpose town nonpotable water supply. These water supplies were typically combined underground/aboveground shenanigans, with sideshows of surface-level storage. Locations were typically either central to the town, around a fortified location, or rarely in some important fields reserved for a cash crop or species. Typically, water was raised by a local windpump backed up by animal or manpower; sometimes by spells built around a clay tube for appearance's sake. By volume, most of the water was kept in semi-smelly underground pits; to be used as needed. The water kept in crude containers at the top of towers, however, was used to fight fires-it could be easily channeled into the buckets and barrels of a local fire brigade.

And here was the extremely interesting part of where trends in Aelish storage operations were going: they were no longer focused on things like more volume, or even specific climate control, but organization. The management of a water collection pond and it's storage of that vital resource were essential in order to not lose the effort that had gone into construction, collection, and fair distribution. Aelbaion was not just becoming more normal, it was becoming more functional, and able to address what it lacked...

King Aeldebaric was preparing for lunch when his Royal Guard brought the Charrid in. By then they had finished tracking it down, locating him in the closet, dragging him out, and showing him his invitation, the King had finished breakfast, held meetings, and set his agenda for the rest of the week. It was hard to make a Charrid duck it's head under the door, but the guest of honor had quickly gotten the message that the King wanted to see him, regardless of what he himself wanted. By the time the King was ready for lunch, the crabtaur of the hour was subdued, and even was willing to fake politeness...but not that much.

Servants bustled around, placing tableclothes and dishes, while a four-man band played. As the Charrid was seated, his majesty, King Aeldebaric of Aelbaion was escorted in by a small collection of guardsmen and retainers-clearly not following typical protocol for introducing a royal. A translator stood to the side, but their services were likely unrequired. Everyone knew that the Charrid spoke Aelish decently enough to run a multi-sport gambling ring for sophisticated players, and that they had managed to do so undetected until now. It was no surprise that the one who got caught would be a fairly high level operator-but it was a surprise that they would be brought before the King. Normally, potentates kept a remove from their problems.

"Mmr. Conchsith!" The King greeted his guest with a hale, hearty grin. "Welcome to Velforth! It is my pleasure to have you here, especially since you've come a long, long way. Are you finding this lunch to your liking?"

"No." The Charrid's mandibles moved fairly quickly as it started eating an entree. "I don't like eating lunch at spearpoint."

"My apologies." The King never stopped smiling. "Such is the nature of politics at times."

"You're a thieving shoe-user." 'Monsieur' Conchsith didn't care what his host thought. "You sent your soldiers to drag me from my house and make me come to this stupid lunch, where you are going to kill me."

"The people of Aelbaion don't like to see my feet." Said the King, contemplating how odd is was to say such a thing. "And I'm not going to kill you. That's not very nice of me."

"You want to kill me. " Said Conchsith, eating a piece of rotisserie chicken that the Aelish found a way to shoehorn into nearly ever mill. "Are you going to torture me with something but your terrible food?"

"I could make you play tiddlywinks." Aeldebaric was calmly eating some vegetables. "People don't ever want to play tiddlywinks with me."

"People don't want to do anything with you, you pathetic, paranoid fat bastard." The Charrid slammed down his fork. "Your son doesn't want to be seen with you. Your nobility doesn't want to form a party with you. Your wife doesn't want to lay with you."

Aeldebaric very slowly put down his utensils, swallowed his food, rinsed his mouth with some water. He looked around the dining room in the side hall of Velforth. Having a discreet seaside house meant that you could get up to all kinds of skullduggery. The man's right hand went to a large knife, with a ceremonial hilt. It was bright in the afternoon light.

"There's a funny thing about being a King." He said, appraising the blade. "Two people decided to fuck several years ago, one of them didn't swallow and took the load in her cunt instead. Nine months, give or take...and out comes the worst person to ever enter your life." Casually, he tossed it from hand to hand, looking the Charrid in the eye. "That's the person who popped out of that cunt, in case you're fucking confused. If it was any other belly, they'd be a nobody. But I happen to be the King of Aelbaion, and if I cut your limbs off and feed them to you, it will be an inherently righteous action."

"Might doesn't make right!" Conchsith blustered. "It-"

"Oh, of course not." The King had stopped assessing the blade. He'd seen that it would do. "It isn't might. It isn't the law, though that backs me up. It isn't the Lady, though she supports me. It is simply that I am King, and you are not a King. That is all."

Conchsith was quiet.

"Please do not bring my family into this." Aeldebaric had a small smile. "If you want to insult something related to me, you can insult Aelbaion."

"Fine." The Charrid seemed to have clammed up now. Having someone remind you that they can murder you and get away with it will do that. "Fine. I'll stop. I'll close up-"

"-I didn't ask you to do that." The King kept smiling. "Nor did I ask you to stop." He put the knife back down.

"What do you want?" Conchsith spat it out quickly. "I'll give you gold."

"A loan, to your usual rapacious standards, of course."

"We...we are not usurious-"

"As long as you remember not to produce any illegal offers. My wife's second title is Doctor of Law, remember." The King, pleased that he had married well, drank some wine and looked smug. "There are plenty of things that such a loan could go to. Would you like to know?"

"If...you wish...to expound on such..."

"The city of Couroffe requires repaving of all of it's roads. The citizens will raise the funds for the roads from a tax, and the city itself will raise the funds for drainage ditches. I will be putting up funds for signage and directional indicators. And that's where you come in: you will be funding the building of sidewalks. For the entire city."

Mmr. Conchsith groaned, and said nothing else.

"Please, sir, speak-"

"You're savages. I'm being extorted by savages!"

The King drank some more wine. "We are only savages on race day. And this is an excellent passive income stream for you as repayments come in."

"Don't lie to me."

"Would insulting the Kingdom help mend your feelings?"

"...I..."

"Why don't you insult our manufactures?"

"...what...do you mean?"

"I am giving you permission to insult our manufactures." The King smiled widely, a gracious host. "No harm will befall you if you do so."

"I...if you wish. I do not know your manufactures."

"Well, there is the Fashion-"

"No. I do not know them. We do not trade them. They are not spoken of, not shared, not sought out."

"Ah..." His Majesty visibly winced.

"You have the Fashion District, where producers of some nice clothes live. What else do you have?"

"We have the District d'Insturmentation des Aires, in-"

"Those are not items for export. They fit out their products. No one wants to buy a Pegasus."

"Perhaps you are aware of the grain-"

Concsith sighed. "Grain is a basic commodity export and simply. not. interesting. Everyone knows that Freeport needs to eat."

The King furrowed his brow. "We have significant sales of wool."

"That is not a manufacture." The Charrid huffed.

"...yes. You are correct. Hmmm. Well, we do have some beautiful glass works."

Mmr. Conchsith half choked on some bones. "That's beautiful? That-that stuff is beautiful!? Are you delusional?"

"I'm hopeful." One of the servants arranged some flowers on the windowsill, a simple but pleasing display of local shoreside flora. "There are also fine mirrors-"

"Those. Are. Not. Fine!" Conchsith went for the wine. "They're crude, not shiny, and barely reflective! And they're not square-"

"Longer ovoids are better for contemplating the form."

"They look like turds. You would know a lot about turds, wouldn't you?"

The King tried not to choke on his beverage. He wasn't expecting the Charrid to decry Aelbaic sensibilities in mirror design so thoroughly. "Is it truly that hideous-"

"Yes! It is! You lot are known for one thing around the world, Mr. King, and it is harvesting the dung of pegasi as it falls and then selling it to afford your stupid, stupid clothing!"

"Have you ever known hunger, Mmr. Conchsith?" The King gave him a look that suggested multiple things.

"No! Because we are not a people who like to be destitute! And you-are going the opposite way!"

"Enlighten me." Aeldebaric didn't seem to react.

"You are cutting off the entire country from entrepreneurs, you're stopping logging, you're halting herding, and you're confining food production to the Crown Lands-all for the sake of the airs and waters and land-which will be fine! Completely fine! If you keep treating them like this, because you'll all die off and leave them unmolested!"

Someone brought over a plate of fruit. The King contemplated it. "We have been experiencing much of the opposite, I'll have you know."

"No where else has had a Dentists' Curse that was so pronounced that it's being 'broken'-" Conchsith did his best to mimic the human gesture of air quotes, and somehow made it look more insulting. "-was the rumor across five cities! And all you needed for the dentist to not be horrible-you know what it was?"

"Do tell." The King's smile was only surface level.

"Mirrors! In the shape of squares! That let people look into mouths! So they don't fuck up when pulling out rotting teeth!"

"I see." Aeldebaric considered some honey, but didn't go for it.

"We did this over seven decades ago. For perspective's sake. And all it took-all it took-was to have some negotiated peace. Which you have achieved for the first time ever! Congratulations! The world has never seen you idiotic Aelish not kill each other before!"

"Thank you."

"You're fucking unflappable." This was the first time that the Charrid had sworn. "What is it going to take to get through to you? This reading stone? Hmm?" He took it from a pocket dramatically.

"It is a nice reading stone." One of the servants put down a fine cloth on the table, to protect the stone if it was used.

"Guess how much it cost."

"Oh, I don't know. It's a reading stone, what could that cost, 450 florins?"

"100 florins. And it was one from a batch of 20. I carry it with me to remind myself that the mercantile races-which the Aelish are not-are barbaric in focus."

"Well, that is one reason to-"

"In all of Aelbaion-" Mmr. Conchsith gestured out one of the smaller windows. "-there is not one single pair of spectacles being made. And-"

"Ah, not quite true." The King had a smile and a twinkle in his eye. "A woman of skill and wisdom is opening her doors next month, and has already made some demonstration pieces known on Promenade."

"One. Person. And it was in a fashion show."

"Still." The King steepled his fingers. "It is not an art unknown to the Aelish."

"I'm surprised."

"I think that lunch is ending." It was. The older wooden water clock was telling the time quite accurately. "Let's discuss what's next."

"King Aeldebaric the destitute." The Charrid spread his arms wide. "I am rich. You are not. I shall show you my generosity and lend to the Kingdom of Aelbaion- by your person-for this project of yours. May your city flourish from our cooperation."

The King nodded, smiled, and clapped his hands once. The serving staff began to clear away the remains of their meal. "Thank you for making the right decision, and supporting the lesser races, Mmr. Conchsith. Your charity will be rewarded."

But left on the table, even as three clerks took their seats, was the dinner knife.

King Aeldebaric sat in a sitting room with four other men and tried not to get drunk. He had likely screwed up a decent amount, but he had to pretend that he hadn't, for the sake of decorum-

"Didn't I do a good fucking job?" That was Duke Tremaine De Lechfois, the 'founding member' of the 'King's Party', and ostensibly His Majesty's bitch. He had recently dunked on the King really hard, after being bribed with a lot of internal development and the chance for his own revenge on 'King Al'. This he had done by changing the course of the King's political future for ten years and forcing him to be a homebody. King Aeldebaric had not taken this too well.

"You did." He said, and chewed on a piece of pear. "You very much did. But you are not the person in this room who has fucked me the best. I will be plain about that."

"Who, then?" Lechfois was trying to be dramatic, but he had drank too much beer for that. What we would call twink death was fast upon him, that moment of aging when the mind changes simultaneously with the metabolism in an interconnected process that is impossible to tease apart. "Who-"

"Richard." That was Richard de Larois, a Royal paladin and the former Sojourner. "Richard has fucked me over and under-"

"Haw! Haw!" Lechfois made a series of truly odd noises while trying to laugh ironically. "Did you enjoy it?"

"No. He's a tease. I asked to come back immediately for one thing, and he comes in with a fucking airriot. (1) I needed him for other pursuits. I have things to do-"

"I appreciate your majesty's thoughts." De Larois was polite, especially to his boss. "Now, metaphors of sexual pleasure aside-"

"No! Dicks out for-"

"Ladysakes, Tremaine, you're a mess." He tried to keep some form of decorum.

"Hah! I await your ire!"

"Await it. I must give orders to my subjects."

"...this could have been a letter, then..."

"Larois. You've been a pain in my ass, and now you're turning into a case of chafed thighs."

"I beg your highness' pardon. I had thought that bringing such a prize from a foreign land would have brought us much prestige."

"Sojourn is no foreign land, and we are not in search of prestige so much as skill." King Aeldebaric stood, and began to pace. "For long ages we have been the premier people with the ability to fly. Only those with wings have had a similar presence. And now it is done by vessels, magical ships-"

"No, not magic-"

"The Audoi airships run on magic. The next vessels down, the zeppeline (2) use magic and a gas that none know besides the Harpy. Even a balloon of hot air does better with magic than with sinew alone. Consider-"

"You posseses the most advanced flying craft in all of Aelbaion, Paladin Larois. It is not made here, and was not-you introduced it to the majority of the Kingdom. That you may be sure of."

"I understand that your majesty is concerned about our lack of skill with these-"

"Larois, we did not predict the existence of this devices. We were not attempting to develop them first and merely outraced, we had no concept of them, no ideas, no thought-"

"All of it was about the Damned Charter-"

"That Charter protects our lands, our people, our future, and it might just protect our Lady, too!" King Aeldebaric had caught the merest smidgen of proto-patriotism. "Without it, we ruin ourselves."

"His majesty speaks the truth." That was recently-retired former-Confessor, former-Housebisop His Holiness, Dr. Maudeline Laeventine. He carried around his titles like trading cards, but here he didn't need to. "If we neglect the lands and waters that the Lady brought into her possession and then gave to us, her followers, we are doing her great disrespect. If we soil them, then we are doing her a great dishonor. The former risks her punishment, the latter guarantees it. This Charter is our safe-keeping against such self-inflicted disasters, and following it gives us Her blessing and safeguards."

"Father! Forgive me, for I have sinned."

"Nah."

Lechfois sat up, looking panicked. "Huh?!"

"I do not forgive you, personally. You are a prick." Laeventine stood to the side, looking annoyed. "Listen to his majesty. You are in the King's Party."

Tremaine stood up, knocking over his chair and nearly spilling his beer. "I'm in the what?!"

"The King's Party." The fourth man, Duke Cauldwallere, got himself some more wine. "And I would like to join."

King Aeldebaric looked surprised. "You want to join the King's Party?"

"I do, your highness. You were acclaimed as King Al earlier, you still have the support of the city dwellers and the peasants after all this time-you can being the smallfolk to war or labor. You have kept this for decades. I know a great man when I see one."

King Aeldebaric smiled. The reasoning, the naked pursuit of transient power, the flattery...Duke Cauldwaller was in. "Welcome to the King's Party, my friend." Deliberately, he picked up an empty goblet on the table and filled it from the wine jug. Topping off his own cup, he made a toast to 'the health of my good friend and guest', then drank. This was one of the earliest Aelish political rituals, and they did it again.

"Welcome to the King's Party, Friend!" Tremaine had gotten his feet properly. "Together, we shall get bombed by some smelly dwarves, and then we shall get bombed by the dwarves after they have bathed-"

"Thank you!" Cauldwallere acted quickly to shut him up. "Your highness. Paladin Larois. Dr. Laeventine. I am honored to be with you in service to our King."

"So what's the catch?" Tremaine was a little too close to Cauldwallere. He smelled of wine that from a wineglass that he'd dramatically dropped on himself earlier to try and make an impression. "What's your angle?"

"There are some persons under my protection who have fallen into...traps of vice."

"Haw! Haw! Haw!"

"Are you well, sir?"

"I am well!"

"He's drunk." said his majesty. "Tremaine. Sit down. No more wine."

"Beer!"

"No. Cauldwallere, what are their difficulties?"

"They are known for their love of risk and danger, and they have begun adding gambling to their vices. There is a gaming ring set up, and they are...unfortunately in arrears to the book-maker. They also are caught up in their debauchery, and I cannot talk sense into them."

"What are they betting on?"

"Horse-racing, both ground and sky."

"We have airships in the world, and they are gambling on races...what fools." Larois voiced his opinion sotto voce. "They lack an understanding of where power lies."

"Foolish or not, the damage must be limited without the appearance of impropriety clouding everything."

"Why?"

"Because, Tremaine, we cannot risk this getting out and marring the Kingdom with scandal. Surely even you know that."

"What's a little scandal-"

"This is not little." Cauldwallere looked Concerned. "There are tens of thousands of florins in the hands of a Wuavreni-"

"You didn't mention that there was one of them involved-" The King looked Concerned as well.

"Well, no, I do not think that a being's species is quite as important. One doesn't want to lead to untoward assumptions being made. It is-"

"You are very enlightened, Duke Cauldwallere. Now, are there any other things you need to tell me?" The King's right eyebrow was now twitching.

"They are up to their eyeballs in debt, your highness. Their lands are all up for collateral-"

His Majesty's expression went alarmingly flat. "How?"

"They chase their losses with-"

"Damn. Damn damn damn!"

"Do you want me to apprehend the vile crab?" Cauldwallere could only avoid preconceptions for so long, it seemed.

"Not yet. No. This requires deception...at least to some degree. And class." The King paced a bit, taking water from a side table. "That combination is something that they will expect. Cauldwallere, you have said that these are all knights of the land and air. Honorable persons."

"Yes, my lord. Honorable persons."

"Honorable persons who would be grateful to donate their services to the Kingdom in leiu of tax payments, perhaps. And also to gain honor from their efforts."

"Indeed, your highness."

"Honorable persons who would not be too put out if they had to sacrifice pecuniarily."

"...perhaps, my lord. They would shed blood and tears for the good of Aelbaion."

"What about sweat?"

"Are you asking them to labor, you dog!?" Tremaine was the most drunk and could react the fastest, but he said what was on everyone's minds. Nobility, by dint of their gentle bloodline, did not really work in any way. Practically, they provided a semi-standing army by their cultural and social persuasions, but they did not labor in the fields or the woods, or anywhere that they could be seen to do so. Asking them to labor was to un-noble them. (3)

"Nay, I am asking them to teach." The King kept his calm, the water having sobered him up a little. "If I ever do that, the Lady would strip me of my crown in a fortnight."

"You had better." The belligerent Duke made to sit down, and Dr. Laeventine assisted him. "We are not your peasants."

"The state of air travel has fundamentally changed, and that means that the state of war has fundamentally changed." The King had drank more water from a blessed pitcher, and was creeping closer to sobriety. "We do not know how it has changed, however, or how it will change. What we must do, beyond preparing the sinews of war, is to prepare ourselves, individually, for it's conduct. Gentlemen, I have an assignment for you."

"You said we would not labor-"

"Oh, Ladysakes Tremaine! You have to go and talk to people about the Spring Jaunt! That's all! Have a party if you must."

"...you'll pay for it."

"I'll host it, and that is it."

"Everyone comes to Couroffe and drinks your wine."

"No, we should host it in the mansione Margrinne. The countryside is nice this time of year. We'll have board games and a new chapelle."

"You're generous."

"Thank you, thank you. You're far too kind." The King tried eating some grapes to disguise his annoyance. "Now, Duke Cauldwallere. You have a certain problem."

Cauldwallere nodded as he tucked in on some chicken. "I do. Please, sir, your wisdom."

"I am going to confiscate their racing tracks and stables and then turn those areas into an extension of the Ac-Aires. This is going to be used to start a school that teaches just one class. I am calling it HIGH SWORD. It's purpose is to teach air-to-air combat to the best of the best, and to prepare them to teach others."

Larois cut in. "My lord, if I may-"

"You may, but only two times."

"Instruct them in long-range navigation there. It is a crucial part of maneuvers before and after combat."

"...a good point. I shall see that it is done."

Tremaine grimaced. "You will expropriate their lands, then? Just for-"

"They'll be compensated, and hired in. We cannot lose such talent."

"And the Wuavreni?" Cauldwallere appeared nervous mentioning him. "What of-"

"Leave him to me." The King smiled, and it was not a good one.

1. Air chariot, made by Harpies on Sojourn as a custom vanity vehicle.

2. He means zeppelins.

3. I recommend Thorstein Veblen's A Theory of the Leisure Class.

The Aelish are a bread and meat eating country in equal measure, which is a bit of an oddity in a medieval country-unless one thinks of the nature of the land that has caused their agricultural developmental patterns and food transportation logistics to turn out that the way that they did. Outside of the flat, erosion-levelled lands of the Crown Lands, where there was mass agriculture and the people to make it happen, much of Aelbaion was rocky in some way. Often it was steep, and sometimes, it had valleys-which would turn into canyons if you weren't careful, and whoops, there goes a goat. Here, herding was the order of the day, alongside some terrace farming and the standard hunting party. And all of these wonderful products of Aelbic agricultural activity need to be preserved if they are to be made use of more than a week after harvest.

Traditionally, the Aelish have always dried their crops-or smoked them. Doing this has been a subject of intense cultural consternation, and over the centuries they have developed ever more refined ways to take care of their produce. While salt is the best way to preserve food in this time period, the Aelish did not have many sources of salt further inland, and it was fairly expensive to import. This made it not only economically viable, but a general imperative to adopt other methods of preservation-especially at scale. To do this, they constructed entire buildings and set up small supply chains; smokehouses and drying rooms ran nonstop at the end of each harvest or slaughter. While they varied in scale, the consumption of wood, charcoal, and peat was substantial enough to run at least one cart into the ground and tire out someone's uncle. In the 30 year peace, these buildings only expanded in size and throughput; afterwards, they sprouted like mushrooms. The need for drying and drying-related services was only increasing.

While further expansions or building extra houses was one option, this was not always the best option. House quality-whether for habitation or food processing-was continually improving as builders went about their work unstabbed. Cute cupolas, charming chimneys, and sturdy stone would all drive a builders' price up, and the Aelish were well past their migratory, disposable building days. It made more sense to pursue the benefits of quality, and after a series of design permutations had some promising results by enabling under-building air flow to prevent mold from growing and improve drying time, the Aelish attempted more ambitious architecture. The movement of air would ideally be done by tubes; this was originally carried out by making arches on the ceiling and putting an intake area on the top of a drying house. This was a good way to exhaust smoke, and was quickly duplicated on the ground floor to channel smoke around from an underground smoke source. From there, it was a relatively quick leap to hypocausts. These underfloor heating elements worked better in homes proper, and within two years of the innovation popping up, the Aelish were beginning to dry themselves across the entirety of the Kingdom.

In short, the Aelish were attending to their prosperity so that they could keep it. By doing so, they had found out how to live better, and they were actively pursuing it. However, the main event was in the amount of smokehouses and drying rooms being built out. Continually peace meant continual prosperity-and the time to prepare for disaster. For now, the Aelish in the farther countryside laid away stores and waited with semi-baited breath for internal conflict to pick back up again. It was only a matter of time, they thought, before a storm of swords brought chaos to their doors. However, they were missing something: only change was certain, but that didn't mean war.

The Great Charter of the Land and Commons has principally come into force by dint of the fact that when one lord signs for it, all of their vassals were also compelled to sign-and those underneath them, and so on. Their subjects, and their subjects' subjects were bound to it. After the signings were completed, it was the law of the land-and the law of their lives. Far across the land of Aelbaion, the mass of serfs in their small villages tending to their herds and farms only heard about this law after the fact. Normally, arbitrary impositions of laws would meet some resistance, but here the opposite happened: the peasantry have accepted these laws with no small amount of approval. This is mostly due to the ironclad protection of the Common lands that the peasantry depended on for their quality of life. For the vast majority of Aelbic peasants-even those in the agriculture-powered Crown Lands-the keeping of multiple animals was a common way for people to survive, with pigs, goats, and cows all popular animals to keep. Sheep were an important source of clothing fiber, and indirectly money. Outside of the Crown Lands, they were the direct source of most economic activity and most high-quality calories; the broken land of Ashagon does not support agriculture everywhere.

The Common lands are lands held in common, that is, for everyone to use. The largest amount of this is grazing lands, the second-largest is old growth forest. By dint of the majority of the population herding animals and tending tougher lands, the adoption of the new laws took place in the Commons set aside for grazing animals. Accordingly, these areas saw the most change first. Protections began with the watering holes; since animals both consumed large amounts of water and could dirty it with their hooves, their behavior at watering holes had to be carefully monitored. Limited access had to be maintained, at least for the animals, and as much effort to physically control where dung and urine ended up as possible had to be expended. Animals that were diseased needed to be quarantined, and overgrazing had to be prevented, by force if need be.

This was done by using an ancient human technology: counting. The primitive Aels had had a tradition of making stone markers for seasons and directions; after contact with the Predecessors, they developed stone calendars. The peace and presence of the Lady had helped develop these markers into a viable set of calendars for sun and moon, and those living further away from the Crown Lands had maintained and refined the practice. It was no surprise that they would turn to these tools to help keep track of land use, with the addition of counting stones to determine how many animals had used a watering hole, grazed in a field, or spent a night somewhere. Cairns were sometimes laid, other times, stones were placed in marking areas and moved forward on carved tracks to show how long animals were staying somewhere, and chalk marks were placed in endless lines to show how many animals were present. All of this, combined, formed a temporary-and yet long enough-record that locals could manage their lands.

These practices were not suited for simply producing as many animals and animal products as possible; rather, it was best suited to taking care of the land and to ensuring that it would be there for future generations. This did not mean that herd sizes and total usage of the land could not be increased; as the confidence of peasants and herders increased, they were willing to make long-term investments in things like better breeding stock and running larger herds. Taking care of the environment helped a lot with controlling animal diseases and other threats to transient wealth, it also made the impacts of disasters or inclement environmental incidents matter less overall. This, in turn, increased confidence further, and lead to some investments in permanent structures. Slaughtering blocks were always places fraught with some superstition and bad feeling, while animal breeding was often a cause for worry-a birth gone wrong could mean the death of both dam and calf.

However, with new laws in place, slaughtering blocks had to be maintained and kept safe; this meant placing them inside buildings, which would become slaughterhouses. Likewise, animal breeding needed to be done carefully, and delivery required safe pens. These structures went up in short order, but they were limited in their overall use time-which was similar to how the land was being used. Some intensity was allowed, even expected, but it was not to be sustained without very good reason and some form of documented responsibility that others would see. Everyone's extractive acts were now publicly visibly, and if someone attempted to hide them, they would be quickly found out and kicked off the commons. If one documented them, on the other hand, then someone's good reputation could lead to cooperation and more potential gains. This part of the Great Charter worked out-because the subjects wanted it to.

The Crown-Lands of Aelbaion are mostly split off from the rest of the country by a group of long, semi-navigable rivers, but there is a direct connection-through a tough, broken up forested area. This is the Duchy of Lechfois, the second poorest area in the country that is not a March (1). Hard living conditions made for hard social ills, and the counts are restive and often defy the Duke on small things; they go hunting whenever and wherever they please. This has long been a problem in the duchy, but there hasn't really been anyone interested in fixing it until now. King Vaneric, when he was uniting everyone, bypassed Lechfois to an extent, minimizing his interaction with the duchy and controlling it's contact with everyone else. But this hadn't solved the problem of the Duchy, quite frankly, sucking. It suffered from the commonest problem that many places: no one who could fix it giving a fuck.

Until today. His Majesty King Aeldebaric has crossed the River Pxyiae with his retinue and a couple of thousand suddenly borrowed men at arms, and is heading to Castle Carrefois, the capital. He expects to be seen, he expects to be prepared for-he does not care. He is the King of Aelbaion, and he is here to solve the places' problem. He also knows how pernicious the rot in the Duchy is; and his column is travelling with plenty of knights prepared for woodland combat, a strong advance guard with terrain scouts, good flank screen of skirmishers, and a rear armed just as heavily as the front. No one opposed him, but there were plenty of eyes following the King's path.

Most of them came out of the woods when his majesty arrived at castle Lechfois, his knights fanning out in a very nice looking formation that made the royal standard very visible to the growing crowd. This was a planned visit, of course, but pageantry was a source of royal power, and the King had to properly put himself on display when visiting. It was part and parcel of the job. A line of the Duke's own knights, bearing the coat of arms of the Duchy of Lechfois, met the King. There was much saluting and waving of flags, and the Duke descended from a balcony and embrace his feudal overlord, the two of them shaking hands and smiling. Various guards mingled, and Duke Tremaine bowed, but with a bow that said 'fuck you, shitlips'. Learning etiquette from a young age allowed one to pull off that kind of thing. Then, the two men, arms around each other's backs, entered the castle, and launched into a bawdy feast.

This is just boys being boys. After opening with a prayer of thanksgiving, the visitors and the locals drank, made merry, and enjoyed some really good live music. Thirty years of peace can help bring a lot of depth to a local music scene, and this was true that night. The Duke had plenty of good musicians on offer, an improvement from past years. This helped to cut some of the initial tension, but when the day dawned tomorrow, the duke and the king prayed together in the same small chapel, then climbed some stairs, and retired to a small antechamber in the medium sized stone castle.

They both dropped the act as they went to sit down at a wooden table in the center of the room. His majesty looked pensive, and Duke Tremaine De Lechfois glowered, clearly pissed off. Servants brought them light refreshments, and pure water from the nearby church font. Guards from both parties patrolled the room, making sure that they were seen, not heard. Negotiations were about to happen between powerful men, and protecting them from each other was something that sometimes had to be done.

'This Duchy is a disgrace.' King Aeldebaric did not mince words. 'And I am a part of that problem, and I bear a higher share of the blame than you. That is why, sir, I am here.'

'Not to insult me?' Tremaine grabbed a scone and cut it with immense annoyance.

'No, sir. To beg forgiveness.' The King swirled some water in his goblet.

'Well, get on with it.'

'Please, sir, if you find it sufficient, forgive your sovereign for his neglect of your lands and protection. Much have you suffered from my negligence. I beg your permission to rectify the faults I have created, and to make you whole.'

'You say that you are negligent, but what have you done?'

'I have not addressed the faults of the conduct of the persons here, nor have I given you guidance on how to execute my edicts and laws that have been put into force in this land. I have neglected your prosperity in the wider Kingdom, and your protection against the slights of other lords.' The King showed practiced contrition as he recited this statement.

'Well, that's a good start.' Tremaine looked quite surprised, but kept his demeanor mostly intact, shredding the scone a little.

'Thank you, sir.' The King nodded, currently more King than man.

'Now, apologize.' That scone was being turned into mulch.

'We are sorry, sir, for our neglect, for our indolence, and for the privation and ill-repute that this has brought to you. We, the Crown, do apologize to you, Lord Tremaine, for our conduct, and offer to make you whole by our efforts and by compensation.' King Aeldebaric bowed before his vassal, formally reversing the role of ruler and ruled. He'd thought that apology out very well.

'This...will...do.' Lord Tremaine de Lechfois was flushed, breathing heavily, swallowing repeatedly. He had not expected the King to apologize to him formally, nor to admit fault. He had been prepared to go on the attack, and then extract bribes from the King-or to give him grief enough to make him back down and pay up. Instead, His Majesty had the high ground. 'I...accept your...apology, on behalf of Lechfois.'

'You are truly merciful, sir. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. This is chivalrous conduct.' The King had a small sip of water.

'It is my duty.' Tremaine's jaw was grinding now. 'How are you going to make this Duchy whole?'

'Too long has the Duchy of Lechfois been cut off from the rest of the Kingdom. We will rectify that. Too long have to worthies of the country been forced to hold court in unsuitable structures. We shall ensure otherwise. Three bridges will be built to your lands, beginning with the completion of the Carrefour bridge that my father commissioned. The other two will be at Caspeierre and Loumont. We also shall build riverdocklands at Vinceignt and Pou-du-Lou. This shall ensure that your Duchy is reachable by water and by land.' His Majesty's attention moved to the nut spread.

'Your highness will know that all the river traffic in the world is not worth a damn if there are no good roads. That is where the Lechfois suffers.' The scone, now turned into a paste, was finally eaten.

'We know, and know deeply. That is why we shall pave every single road in this Duchy, using the resources and money of our own lands. We shall allow for up to fifty-five small bridges to be constructed. And for your peace, we shall procure all of the stone out of the Duchy and transport it to you. We-' His majesty spread his hands, looking generous.

'No. The stone will be mined here.' Tremaine cut him off. 'If you want to make us whole, you will set up the quarry and stoneworks in this duchy.' And that, Tremaine didn't state, would give him some control over the projects it made.

'Absolutely.' His majesty acquiesced without a second thought. 'Consider it decided. This will even help you make the best stylistic decisions for the various constructions we must make to ensure that the counts are properly set up to do their duties.'

'What are those?'

'Common courts, for peasants and low disputes only, are the most critical. They will need everything to do their work-post offices and local archives. You should have a good Duchal court building, it is only proper. Their men-at-arms should also be properly housed, and their castles built out fully. We should also have town halls for all of the towns, to stop the peasantry whining at you. You deserve some reprieve, after all.'

'It's so damn tiring listening to them.'

'I do believe you, sir.'

'You made me sign the damnable charter.'

'You did sign the Charter.'

'I am no longer free to manage the woods as I see fit. You have taken my control over my land, you bastard.'

'Then we must restore it by finding a new way to give you control..'

'You need to make me whole for what's been taken.'

'I will, sir, that is the purpose of my journey.'

'Every single subdivision, every border, every wood management-'

'I will hold a moot court to resolve all border disputes for good. The counts' feuds are petty and simple, they do not have any justification, and they are ignoble. Long ago should they have been decided by the King, but they never were. However, tarrying on account of age is even more ignoble, and I will not do so. The Crown has shirked it's responsibilities. For our border with your duchy, we shall make you whole by returning disputed land.'

His majesty watched Duke Tremaine cough and harrumph a bit. Historically, the Crown never did this. He'd just gotten free land from the King, and could coat himself in glory.

'Wood management, of course, must be carried out according to the Charter oaths.' The Charter of the Land and Commons dictated that the signatories firmly execute their duties of good land management, maintenance and improvement of the Commons, and protect the Lady's water. This mean that the entirety of Lechfois would have to conform to new approaches of it's land use-and that would require substantial adaptation, since the majority of it was old-growth forest. And that would cost money and result in reduced output...costing more money.

'You have charged me with setting up an apparatus of bailiffs, foresters, and trackers. All hunters must be licensed, the old law of poaching is to be overturned completely. My hunting forest is no more, my counts the same. In one stroke of a pen you have turned the lives of everyone in this Duchy upside down. I and four more lords would have raised their banners against you had you not held us all captive in the Cathedral!'

The King couldn't help but suck in a breath. There had been a conspiracy against him. He had learned of three, but this one was new. If Tremaine had raised a banner against him, then there would be the armies of four nobles ready to invade the Crownlands. The river barrier would not have held. He'd have had one, maybe two battles before Couroffe had been besieged...

'Did I ever tell you what the Lady showed me when she came to me in that dream?'

'...no.' Tremaine was grinding his teeth. Aeldebaric had used the dreams granted to him by the Lady (2) as political fodder. To deny these dreams was blasphemous, but he was once again cornered.

'She showed all of us in a Cathedral, signing something. Inspired by that dream, I brought us all there.'

'You told us that, and frequently-'

'But I don't know where the Cathedral was. I knew it was ours, but it was not Couroffe, or the Lake. I think it will be built, but I am not sure where.'

'If not for Her word, Her sake, I would have run. you. through. My people will suffer for this Charter, and yours will be fine-'

'Oh, the Crownlands will go bankrupt.'

'Bankrupt? We will starve.'

'I will ensure that your people do not starve. It is my duty. Sales of grain will be made at a loss.'

'Bastard.' Tremaine hacked up the word, spat it onto Aeldebaric's feet. 'You might have come out of Vergainne's pussy, but you're still a bastard-'

King Aeldebaric's own face tensed, and he stood. 'Marton. That's enough.'

'You've made us into whelps!'

The King's fist clenched, then smoothed over. 'I have. And I beg your forgiveness for it. If you ran me through, if you raised your banner in revolt, I would return the insult, and it would end in blood, but I would not be selfish in my fury. I understand how I have disgraced you, and that goes against my portion of the oath.'

Tremaine De Lechfois, whose nickname was Marton, gasped for air and then swallowed his fury again. He had not expected contrition, and had no words in reply.

'But please, do not bring my mother into this.' The King readjusted himself at their table, settling into his seat once more.

'Alright. Now make me whole.' Tremaine was less adjusted.

King Aeldebaric put one hand on his chin, thinking. 'Your third son is a man of good character and excellent martial skill. I think he would make a good paladin.'

'...really?' Tremaine was surprised, and took another sip from his cup to cover it.

'Yes. There will be more Paladins soon, too. I will let you in on that. I intend to double their number.' The King stared into space for a moment.

'Hrrm. Why?' There was some shuffling of the pens and paper.

'The Church's worthies believe it prudent. I shall do as they ask.'

'For that, we need a cathedral; we as in the inhabitants who live here. Not your cathedral of dreams, Aeldebaric. Ours.'

'It shall be done.' He nodded, smiling. 'What else.

'I want a mint. Not a royal mint. A duchal mint. Mine.'

'We may be able to do, but we are unsure about the supply of gold and silver.'

'Get me Rai-gelt, then. I care not. I genuinely do not.'

'I will see what I can do. There are many options.'

'I want an Aerie, for the duchy. And you will help me finish up the Duchy's stable management, as well. The Crown will keep it's hands off them.'

'Oh, of course.' Aeldebaric was amiably making a list.

'And the grain market. Deliver the grain. Drop it off. And leave. We will handle the rest.'

'That can be done, but I would like something in return.'

'What?'

'I would be happy if the timber exchange on the Penard could be opened again, and wood from there sent to the Crownlands.'

'No. Make official the wood market on the main river, and open it so that we may sell the to entire Kingdom, not just to the Crown. I will break down the Penard exchange's remains rather than see it be used by the Crown to control our merchants again.

'That is fair. I will visit the wood market for it's grand opening, and use that to put a capstone on all of the work being done.'

'If you use it to gloat, I will run you out on a boat.'

'...I will buy a boat from you, if you are willing to sell.'

'I'm a Duke, not a shipwright.'

'You are a man of many talents.'

'Flattery will get you nowhere. And it won't get you out of this.'

'What will get me out of this, Marton?'

'I want revenge.' He folded his arms. 'I want plain, simple, revenge. That will slake my thirst. And no evening the score.'

'I can grant that. Within reason. It must be against me. Not my queen, not my people, not the Kingdom-me.' The King crossed him arms right back.

'Fine. I will revenge myself on you with a plot.' The Duke uncrossed his arms, putting them on the table. 'You will survive it. The Kingdom will survive it. Her majesty will probably be nothing but annoyed. It's just a little revenge.'

The King mutely raised a hand to the Duke, and the Duke accepted it. They shook hands. He would have his revenge. The King would have a working Duchy under his control. The Duchy would behave, it would act legally and culturally normal, it would hold to the Great Charter of the Lands and Commons. Lechfois would also be brought out of it's doldrums by sustained, long term investments.

'Thank you, sir, for forgiving me.' That was the King.

'Thank you for making me whole.' The Duke nodded once. 'Now let's go hunting.'

1. Marches are not subject to normal taxation methods, or surveying methods; they are generally separated from measures of GNP and GDP.

2. Followers of the Lady often have a habit of consuming hallucinogens and interpreting dreams liberally.

The people of Aelbaion are have been taking their waste disposal fairly seriously for a little bit, in accordance with the Great Charter's codification of environmental protection 'laws' that required that water be protected and the Common Lands be replenished. All of this management and organization of dung and urine has made it possible for them to produce fertilizer at something like scale. This fertilizer was typically a mix of cleaned up dung, mixed with compost and some urine, and then applied to the field by plowing it under. For a few hundred pounds, the sweat of serfs suffices, but for large volumes, the Aelish would need to turn to the forces of nature to do their work. Turn they did, moving to wheels and pounding hammers and reciprocating beams moving up and down. Furthermore, by using a few tricks from the Rai, they were able to avoid overstressing the gearing in very torque heavy applications. There'll be more on that later.

By now, the ratios compost, proofed dung, and urine are well known. Making it in a mill just requires using specialized machinery that can be built with a couple of months of thought and some deft measurements. Forcing the compost through an array of rising and falling beams aerates it; a steadily rotating shaft serves as a crude timer, dispensing a mixture of diluted urine at regular intervals. Manure is broken up by a longer section of reciprocating beams, then dropped into a mixer by a bucket on a rotating chain lift to ensure that it doesn't clump together too much. Mixing up the disgusting stew is fairly easy; taking a water wheel and putting it on it's side can yield a nice mixing apparatus; reinforcing the beam driving it and popping in the right gearing will get a suitable mixer. A trapdoor in the bottom of the mixing unit can be opened, and the contents dropped into a wagon. This is how fertilizer is made, according to the Aelish, and it covers the physical element of production.

The Earthmill, as the Aelish call the building that makes this fertilizer, uses primarily physical processes to produce it's end product. The component ingredients are mostly chemically unchanged, aside from some residual fermentation prior to processing. Compost is mostly mature, but not yet inert; urine has turned into a disgusting mass that we need not discuss further, and the manure has either been delivered after baking down or will be heated clean of microorganisms. The only thing that occurs is mixing; after which the nitrogen-carbon-microbe supplement will be delivered to the farm. Sometimes, however, there are extra additives. Potash is the most common, coming from the rare ashery that processes tree ashes; guano is more rare still. Both come from domestic sources; wherever a domestic source is available, an Earthmill has rapidly been constructed to make use of this.

Right now, the Aelish are not aware of the chemistry of their fertilizer much; they can simply tell that more is better. However, their is always an opportunity to improve by hiring alchemists and millwrights, and to improve the inputs of their materials, or their transport-questions for hired scholar-nerds. In the meantime, they are reaping the benefits of these 'stinking mills' in improved agricultural yields and better soil quality. Fertilizer, while only as industrially produced as you can with a water or wind-powered mill, is now available for the Aelish. This is a powerful weapon against famine, and an even more powerful backstop against instability. By banking on local sourcing of materials and local use of the end product, the Aelish have a direct economic engine against disruptions to the food supply-and other worries. No matter how halting their success is, they have made it into a triumph.

There is one footnote here that deserves note: that of Ser Saggittois. On his errancy, the knight became very familiar with dung and it's processing. The first earth mill was already operational by the time he arrived back-but he, with a massive chip on his shoulder, took the nearby mill to be an immense personal insult. He marched up to the Master Miller and demanded satisfaction by a duel. The Master Miller, not wanting to be run through, offered him 35% ownership on the spot. Recognizing that coming back from an errantry nothing but experience beating dung was not good for his future, Ser Saggittois grumbled and accepted. With this gentleman so involved, the earth mill became slightly clean, money and names washing away a little bit of the stench.

And that would lead somewhere mildly interesting...

Aelbaion has enjoyed thirty years of peace in the past. Now it's enjoyed a few more years of internal agricultural output increasing, and the people have been seeing the results of their hard work. The Aelish have been getting quite a lot of resources from their land, and quite a lot of peace and quiet, which can lead to reliable flows of agricultural products...and a big need to process all of them. Break down plants by hand is really tiring and takes a lot of labor, but with things on the up and up, there's plenty of demand for labor-and thus even more for it's replacement. Aelbaion is in no position to import slaves, and it doesn't believe in doing so anyway. Migrant labor isn't willing to leave the City of Freeport, since Aelbaion is in no way the best place to live in. The various complications of society, and the lack of amenities, kept many people from even contemplating moving.

But work had to be done regardless.

The Aelish were not lazy, and despite the general rumors, they were not stupid, either. Knowing the demand for labor, and knowing what labor could do, they looked at what machines could do to replace scarce labor. There were plenty of gadgets out there, and the dawn of Arcanotech hinted at far more options-but the Aelish needed something more simple, something that could be built up everywhere without the effort of developing groundbreaking technology that required significant capital investments. These things are what people have been making for thousands of years: mills. The term mill is fairly general, but it encompasses a static building with a device in it that is designed to replace some specific, repetitive task. This device is typically driven by waterpower, but it can be driven by wind. The archetypical mill that we all know and love is the gristmill, grinding grains into flour.

It goes without saying that there are plenty more kinds of mills.

However, right now we are going to look at who makes the mills. As the Aelish have gotten busier and needed more tools to keep themselves busy, they have found it profitable to sell tools to each other. Some of these tool-makers have been able to specialize into making larger tools, and more specialized semi-machines that are perfect for installation into a mill building. These people were soon recognized as potential millwrights, and they were called upon to maintain existing mills-because a good round of maintenance with sufficient downtime management was never a bad thing. While they learned the hard way about gear production and endured the travails of timber selection, these groups of toolmakers were recognized as millwrights in their own right.

And soon enough, they will be very, very, very busy. Aelbaion is in a position to have a lot of produce to process....

King Aldaebaric and Queen Ethellebelle were settling down to bed. The chambers had been freshly swept, and some local incense lit. Their bodyguards had taken posts, as had their servants, and the two were still reeling from the political history that they'd made earlier, so a sex scene wasn't in the cards, you perverts-

'So what is your plan to avoid the Lady's wrath.'

'I plan to be a good and righteous king.'

'How.'

'Good maintenance first. Good stewardship always. Good governance next week.'

'Please stop being pithy.'

'No. I am sleepy, you know.'

'Well, now I can't tell what you're talking about.'

"The dining hall has fires stoked for four hours. Each of these fires takes a cart's worth of cords of wood, and each of these carts takes five men to fill it in the span of one day. Each takes...Lady knows how many trees, and each man is at risk of injury from an axe slipping. Three accidents likely occur a year. Of those, one is bad. A leg, or a life, is a price of this hall being heated each year."

"So how come we haven't heard about it, then?" Her majesty had an important question. "We heat much more than this hall. We import more food. Where is the charnel house of injured?"

"I am not sure. But I know that life is not dear in many places, and before that, that it works to keep itself alive. There are things against those fates, and there are enough peasants."

"Where is your destination with this?"

"Let us look in the hall, and find where we can make economies. Better windows, cleaning of the fireplaces, the use of brass reflectors. All of these will result in less wood burnt-therefore less wood needed-therefore less wood cut."

"And an economization here leads to more wood being demanded somewhere else, what then?" This was a very important question.

"I tell them to stop." And that was the King's answer.

'You can't be everywhere.'

'My rules can. And your law certainly will.'

'You are quite confident.'

'I am because I should be. During dinner, you were every inch a queen.'

'Thank you. Am I not one now?'

'You are currently a confessor to a weak man practicing accounting to hold off divine wrath.'

'I did not know I have taken holy orders.'

'By the letters we both have.'

'Some pair of priests we are.'

'Tuesday I shall be a travelling priest, Wednesday an arguing one, and Thursday a dialoging one. Friday, I think I am going hunting.'

'You'd better not get killed.'

'I promise not to get killed, Belle.'

'Thank you.' Someone was scattering down fresh rushes for them to stand on in the morning. They both waited until the servant went by. 'Now, we should sleep. There isn't much time left on the candle.' A very natural, practiced pause his majesty had known since he began courting her. 'Will you be bringing them a clock?'

His majesty was quiet. 'I do not think that there is a single water-powered clock in all of Lechfois. That place is...not well.'

'It is not. So what are you going to do about that?'

'What the Church of the Lady desires someone to do about it. I have the backing of the High Officers, in word and in coin.'

The Queen swallowed ever so slightly. 'Don't be foolish. I cannot dissuade you. But I will ask that of you.'

'I promise. I am taking my Guard, and five Royal Paladins.'

'Who?'

'Gestault, Elys, Marinfois, Zachy, and Taumbert.'

'They will do well. Take the poisoner, too.'

'A good idea, but you need them-'

'I will be fine. Take the poisoner.'

He squeezed her hand under the blanket. 'I'll take the poisoner.'

'He is a bastard, but he has given me three immunities. Now, you need to tell me about what you're doing with the castle renovations.'

'Oh, you know-I'm finishing my father's list.'

'Your father's list?'

'Yes, the list. Why, do you not agree with it?'

'It's just that...oh, Ladysakes, we have been over this! It's just a lost of renovations.'

'It is, and the castle needs renovation.'

'Roof repairs do not inspire greatness, even if they are the greatest re-roofing in all of the world.'

'...it is the greatest re-roofing in all the world.'

'Yes, it is. The tiling is beautiful, the vaults sounds, the leaks patched, the gutters guided, and the entire building now proof against fire and water and flying rogues who want to bomb it. We have moved 3,000 stone-tonnes of material thither and yon, rebuild the transit road and the main road of the city, remade the garden, renovated the royal library-'

'We are finishing the royal archives and the Third Great Hall. We have made 5 miles of walks, and I have walked every one of them.'

'Truly, a king of the people. What's going to impress a foreign dignitary?'

'The Great Hall.'

'When the paintings are done, maybe. The tapestry is still being set up for repair. The bedroom suites are being renovated now. This won't even impress our own worthies.'

'That's...' His majesty didn't even have much to say to that. 'Something I know. And something I am working on.'

'If you do not come up with a good idea, I am going to start buying statues.'

'Please don't. I hate it when you buy statues-'

'My taste is better than yours. You would waste the money on expensive water tanks-'

'It's just an idea!'

'It's a nerd's idea. You are a king, not a philosopher.'

'I resent that.'

'I apologize. I-'

'No, no-you did no wrong. I am a king. Not a philosopher. But if I could, I would be thinking as I plow. It is much simpler than this.'

'I understand. You are still the man I married that day when we kissed on the inner wall.'

'You are not the woman I married. You've become more impressive.' There was a twinkle in his eye.

She smiled, the slightly browning teeth conveying a look that is completely genuine. 'Then I'll tell the King of Aelbaion to go to sleep, for her has a greater distance to travel tomorrow than he might appreciate.'

'Yes, your majesty.' The candle burned to it's next stripe, and they both fell asleep.