Valkyrie's Shadow

Empire in Chains: Act 1, Chapter 8

Empire in Chains: Act 1, Chapter 8

Chapter 8

?Mistress??

?Yes??

?Just checking.?

It happened every hour or so. Ludmila wasn’t exactly bothered by it; she was the one who had asked Ilyshn’ish to find out if there was a range limit to their telepathic bond, so it would hardly be fair to become annoyed at her. The Frost Dragon had crossed the imperial border that morning aboard a horse-drawn merchant caravan, meaning that there was a bit over two hundred kilometres between them.

The ‘potency’ of the bond was a surprise for Ludmila. She knew that a Ranger’s bond with their companion facilitated a sort of telepathy that allowed one to communicate with creatures that normally couldn’t, such as Beasts and many Magical Beasts. What she had never considered – and she doubted anyone else but Lady Aura knew – was what having a highly intelligent companion meant.

Lady Aura could call her pets from wherever they were using this telepathic bond, but Ludmila wasn’t sure what the limits to a regular Ranger’s bond were. She had a sense that she could only form a single bond without becoming a Beast Tamer or something similar, but everything else about her new relationship would require thorough investigation.

“Lady Zahradnik?”

She turned her attention towards a young woman’s voice. Not far away was one of Germaine LeNez’s apprentices: a slim, freckled girl who was not much older than Florine and Alessia.

“It’s Pam, isn’t it?”

The apprentice’s expression brightened. Her blue eyes sparkled and a rosy hue appeared over her tanned cheeks.

“Y-you remembered my name, my lady?”

“I often wonder how I manage to remember my own,” Ludmila replied warmly. “Did you have any problems coming over with your shipment?”

“We couldn’t bring a wagon with this old road being how it is,” Pam said, “so we ended up making a litter for two Death Knights to carry between them. Another one, uh, carried me here since I was walking too slow.”

“How long was the journey?”

“They only went as fast as they could keep things stable, my lady,” Pam replied, “but it still only took a couple of hours.”

Ludmila looked over at the litter stacked high with crates. A temporary workshop was being built at the construction camp in the Upper Reaches, and Pam had come along with all of the equipment required to operate it. A proper workshop would be completed by winter, but, for the time being, she would be working and living in a tent.

“The men have set up your place in advance,” Ludmila gestured over to a pavilion raised near the middle of the camp. “Will it be sufficient for your needs? Miss LeNez didn’t state anything in particular.”

“The tables and equipment should all fit. It’s all just apprentice work here – cataloguing and testing samples, maybe some minor potions. I’ll be sending our findings back to Warden’s Vale along with any excess inventory.”

“I see…I heard as much, but Miss LeNez made it sound like any sort of space would work.”

“Our equipment’s tougher than it looks,” Pam said. “It’ll be fine as long as we can keep things clean. And…”

The sandy-haired apprentice scanned the surrounding forest.

“We…we won’t get raided or anything like that, will we? I saw some Death Knights watching the place, but things can still happen…”

Ludmila smiled at her caution. Even with the protection afforded by the Sorcerous Kingdom’s forces, she wanted her subjects to be aware that there was no such thing as perfect security. Having a healthy respect for what dangers there were was the first step to preventing harm.

“That’s right,” Ludmila told her. “Things can still happen. The camp’s sentries should be deterrent enough against major raids, but you can have animals and monsters that simply don’t care. Some individuals from the local tribes might try their luck at sneaking in and stealing something as well. Until order is established in the Upper Reaches, many of the expectations you might have brought with you will not apply.”

“I guess that’s the frontier life we hear about, huh,” Pam grinned, then stopped. “Erm, my lady.”

“Something like that,” Ludmila replied. “For your part, make sure that things are locked up tight when you are not using them. You may want to figure something out for falling or flying objects, as well.”

Pam looked up at the cloudy autumn skies.

“…falling objects?”

“If there is any way for the equipment to be damaged, that would be the most likely. Demihumans can send spears, stones or arrows into the camp from concealment. There are also flying magical beasts: Wyverns and Manticores can be found in the ranges to the west. Wyverns probably won’t bother us, but a hungry enough Manticore might come after the iron used in the camp. They can drop metre-long spines from high above, which come down with enough force to pin a man in plate armour to the ground.”

The Apprentice Alchemist swallowed. She looked back at her pavilion.

“How do you stop something like that?” Pam asked.

“We have Bone Vultures patrolling the skies over the area,” Ludmila told her. “They will attempt to intercept any approaching threats. If something gets past them, the Elder Lich overseeing the camp will issue a warning. Make sure you pay attention to what’s going on around you and observe the appropriate procedures.”

“I thought Dame Verilyn lives nearby…”

“That’s true, but Dame Verilyn is often away performing other duties. Now, was Miss LeNez able to fulfil our request for supplies?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Pam walked over to the litter, directing the Death Knights to unload the crates of alchemical supplies. She lifted the lid of each, displaying minor and lesser healing potions, antidotes, salves, and ointments. Ludmila’s territory still had no temple staff, so her people were reliant on alchemical products. The salves and ointments would be used for skin irritation from local foliage, minor cuts, and bruises, while potions were distributed to be used for serious injuries.

If it were the city, using consumables in this manner would be exorbitantly expensive. Out on the undeveloped frontier, however, they were surrounded by more alchemical reagents than they could use. Furnace slag provided glass for bottles, which were then reused. There were still the costs that came with production, but rates for mana were fairly standardised between the cost of producing curatives and temple healing. The price of alchemical consumables in cities and towns mostly came from the limited supply and procurement costs associated with the materials that went into them.

Additionally, having potions on hand was better when it came to emergency healing. Wounds could be treated on the spot. Fatalities resulting from critical injuries would be averted in every case outside of instant death. There was no carrying people off to a Cleric for healing or waiting for them to come to treat those on the field who couldn’t be moved.

The fact that fast-acting potions were essentially liquid spells meant that every potion could be treated as stored mana. Since injuries that required healing potions were fairly rare, the constant stockpiling of potions effectively ‘stockpiled’ mana. This, in turn, would absorb the stress to local mana pools when the demand for spells that could otherwise be imbued into potions was high. An overarching ‘mana economy’ had taken form in Warden’s Vale: something that only occurred as a side-effect of local economies elsewhere.

In this sense, Warden’s Vale was better equipped to deal with certain emergencies than any other territory in the Sorcerous Kingdom. This was in part, of course, due to having a relatively high ratio of alchemists compared to the rest of the Sorcerous Kingdom, but she planned on carefully maintaining the balance of her population and their surrounding environment as her demesne grew.

While healing was a matter of least concern in her territory, it didn’t mean that the demand for temple staff was low. She still needed them to see to the spiritual and cultural well-being of her people. Ludmila could do many of the more administration-oriented tasks that temple staff performed, but she was only one person. Also, having an Undead being conduct matchmaking, officiate weddings, and help with family planning felt just a bit off-kilter.

Pam continued opening crates, and Ludmila’s gaze fell upon one filled with long metal strips with clasps on each end.

“So that’s what they look like,” she murmured.

“I thought every shop and home in the harbour had heating already,” Pam stopped and looked up at her.

“They do,” Ludmila said, “but my household installed them while I was away and they’re cleverly hidden out of sight. They don’t look as bad as Miss LeNez made it sound.”

With the imminent arrival of winter in the highlands, Ludmila had prioritised the production of items for magical heating. Germaine LeNez seemed less than satisfied with what they could produce, stating that they weren’t anywhere near as fancy as the ones in E-Rantel’s Shining Golden Pavilion. Ludmila, as a rule, did not like such decadent establishments. She replied that they need only be functional and cheap.

And thus, with much grumbling from Germaine LeNez, the first original magic item from Atelier Zahradnik went into full production. It was made available for sale before anyone could figure out what to call it. In the end, they used what the people called it in absence of a name, which was a ‘heating hoop’. Essentially, that was what it was: an enchanted strip of iron that turned into what resembled a barrel hoop when the ends were clasped together.

Rather than working as a stove did, these items magically altered the temperature of a certain volume of space. It wasn’t absolute, however. Extreme temperature differences could only be mitigated due to the relatively low power of the item. Different types of materials took different amounts of time to reach the same, uniform temperature.

Bodies were insulated against the effect in the same manner. The body heat produced by warm-blooded beings worked in opposition to this effect, but cold-blooded beings like Lizardmen were subjected to the same temperature regulation that the item had on the air and materials in the vicinity. This made them strangely popular with the scaly folk. The effect of the item was not cumulative, so the dangers associated with having many ‘covering’ one place was nonexistent.

According to Miss LeNez, since they changed the temperature rather than producing heat like a fire, it meant that they would work to cool spaces down, as well. A better model of the item was in development – one where temperature and affected area could be adjusted. The list of potential applications for them seemed to grow longer with every weekly report.

Her subjects had grown accustomed to seeing the long-term savings that came with the use of magic items for lighting and food preservation, so they needed little convincing to buy something that would save money on firewood. After two years, the Heating Hoops paid for themselves in cooler places like Warden’s Vale. When she brought one of them to show Clara, her friend had asked in a no-nonsense manner whether she could purchase 250,000 of the new models that would eventually see production. Ludmila put the thing away and changed the topic after that.

With lighting and heating items in production, a significant percentage of household fuel consumption was being taken care of, reducing the burden on the forests around them. The next research task that she had set her atelier to was something that could replace cooking stoves and ovens. After that would be the substitution of charcoal for her territory’s forges. Heatstone was an option, but it was expensive and required imports from the Azerlisia Mountains.

“Is everything in order, my lady?”

“As far as I can see, yes,” Ludmila replied. “Did Miss LeNez ask you to pass anything along?”

“Nothing that hasn’t been a problem for the last two months,” Pam said. “Our production is lopsided due to how the atelier strictly divides tasks between employees. That, and our storehouses for reagents are nearly full.”

“She should know the answer to the former,” Ludmila told her. “As for the latter, I can allocate another warehouse for storage. What we can gather before winter is what we’ll be stuck with until everything matures again late in the spring.”

Pam curtseyed awkwardly before leaving to prepare her workspace. The crates with magical lighting, heating and food preservation items were carried off to the Elder Lich overseer for distribution. Ludmila twisted her lip over Germaine LeNez’s continued push to ‘optimise’ industrial output.

Though the vast majority of her subjects were followers of The Six, a few – like Germaine LeNez – had not migrated to Warden’s Vale with the recommendation of the E-Rantel Cathedral. Practises that followed the sacred tenets of her faith often made little sense to these individuals. The note about ‘lopsided production’ was but one of several aspects of her decision-making that the Perfumer often questioned.

Following the tenets of The Six, Ludmila had divided the workshop’s apprentices into two groups: Alchemists and Artificers. Alchemists stuck to Alchemy, while Artificers only worked on creating magic items. It was much the same everywhere else in her territory: every tenant adhered to tasks related to their vocation. Doing so was common sense to followers of the Six Great Gods, but viewed as arbitrary and inefficient in the perception of heretics and infidels.

If Germaine LeNez had it her way, she would be swapping her apprentices back and forth between different tasks in order to meet the shifting demands of the marketplace. It made immediate economic sense, but was in reality a trap that one could not escape once a divergence in Job Classes manifested. Not unless one had a resurrection on hand, at any rate.

With the knowledge of Class Levels brought with His Majesty and his closest subjects, some of the mysteries behind the seemingly ‘arbitrary’ portions of her faith were solved. If one divided their activities as the Perfumer would have liked, one would inevitably end up with a ‘corrupted build’. The average individual had a very limited number of total Levels to use, after all.

Spending equal amounts of time between Alchemy and magic item creation might result in one having 8 Levels in Alchemist and 7 Levels in Artificer. While this would still result in a comfortable standard of living, such an individual would never be the equal of a Level 15 Alchemist or Artificer and never be able to create the best potions and items possible for them.

The same thinking applied to any vocation, which was why she took steps to ensure that her subjects lived comfortably and would not be tempted to take on side jobs. Seasonal workers were especially notorious for this: Farmers might take up various handicrafts during the winter, which would eventually lead to their precious, limited levels being wasted on tailoring, woodworking or whatever Job Classes they ended up with.

To have the best possible goods and services in her demesne, discipline and focus were demanded of her subjects. Not only did this apply to the vocations of her subjects, but matters of breeding as well. Ludmila was a living – or formerly living – example of the success that came with the careful cultivation of bloodlines. It was the most difficult task demanded upon them by the scriptures, requiring a robust administrative apparatus and a culture that understood its universal importance.

A strong nation was not built on transient individual ability, but on the blood that ran through its people. If strong bloodlines were perpetually cultivated, even the destruction of key institutions was but a temporary setback. If bloodlines were allowed to dilute, however, it would only be sheer luck that produced strong individuals on extremely rare occasions. Even if a society’s excellent institutions were maintained, they would only ever be able to rely on the average individuals that their thinned-out bloodlines could produce.

Ludmila released a frustrated sigh, which caused several people working in the vicinity to look in her direction. The rejection of the Six Great Gods and their wisdom was the crux of the heresy that plagued the northern Human nations. In Re-Estize, the tenets of the faith and the cultural mores that manifested from them were twisted into baseless and hollow social constructs. In the Baharuth Empire, transient individual ability was prized above all else.

By and large, the vast majority of people in these nations were allowed to breed in any direction that they wished. As a result, the Great Seeding – the Slane Theocracy’s monumental investment in the future of humanity – had grown into a garden choked with weeds. It was a critical problem far beyond crime, corruption, inefficient administration or stunted institutional development. Preciously cultivated lineages diluted by generations of careless breeding required centuries to restore…if restoration was even possible.

Whether they pretended to excellence or raised a generation of the excellent average did not matter: without cultivating excellent bloodlines to produce exceptional individuals, they were all a Dragon’s whim away from total annihilation.