A New Kind Of Grind

"Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears," Penelope said. "As New Shanghelm has grown rapidly over the past few months, we were approaching a point where I was no longer able to administrate the entire city on my own. The New Shanghelm Civil Service has certainly helped lighten the burden, but as many of you already know, a new sort of government was necessary. Two weeks ago, the very first New Shanghelm Civic Election was held, and voter turnout was immense. We thank you all very, very much for performing your civic duty. The votes have been tallied, and this year's city council has been properly elected. But before I announce our councilors, I would first like to give thanks to the brave, clever women who set this ball in motion to begin with: the Purpleheart Collective, as led by Elizabeth 'Ash' Thorne and Gabrielle 'Legs' Michaels. From the Purpleheart Collective grew the New Shanghelm Civil Service, that much is well known, but without the Purpleheart Collective proving themselves first in Dornhelm, then New Shanghelm wouldn't exist in the first place.

"In light of the deep, foundational contributions the Purpleheart Collective has made, and will continue to make, I hereby declare that New Shanghelm is no more! From this day onward, this shall be Purpleheart City, in the Duchy of Purpleheart, guided by the newly-renamed House Purpleheart. Thank you for your patience with me as I gave thanks to my new namesakes; here to announce the election results is Gabrielle Michaels. This is your Duchess, Penelope Purpleheart, signing off."

"Huh, you two know each other?" I asked.

"I mean, why wouldn't I try chatting up the resident beta aristocrats?" Indoleth asked. "It's pretty relevant to my job, after all."

"Also, she's helping me outline those fucking books I owe you," Vanessa muttered.

"Aw, poor little Annie," I said, patting her head.

"Annie?" she asked, tilting her head.

"Short for V-an-essa," I said. "In the same general way that Nicky is short for Veronica."

"Ahhh, I see. Well, don't let me stop you from giving me pet names."

"So what are these books about?" I asked.

"Speculative fiction," Indoleth said. "The high concept is, 'what if the world went through an apocalypse that only betas survived, and over the next thousand years, they've forgotten that genders even existed? What would that look like?'"

"...Huh," I said. "Well, anyhow, I came up here to tell Annie I was gonna be leaving soon to go back to the Red Forest, and ask if she wanted to come with me to visit a society where frequent genocidal crusades have nearly destroyed everything that once was there before, and in the process of rebuilding over the past few hundred years has ended up being composed almost exclusively of betas. Indoleth, you are also invited if you want to meet more elfish betas, in a society where betas are very much the dominant class."

"Ohhhhh, absolutely yes," Indoleth said, nodding vigorously. "I'd promise to fuck you for it if you hadn't already fucked me before, taking away the novelty factor."

"I mean, I'm hardly averse to fucking a sexy elf beta with big tits," I said. "However, after having revealed to your sister that I was not joking about having fucked you, she was rather upset with me, and I think I'm gonna listen to her this time. Turns out that fucking people I'm not supposed to is sometimes a bad idea that makes my loved ones upset with me."

"Only sometimes?"

"Nobody seemed particularly upset that I fucked King Dorn."

Indoleth coughed violently.

"Anyhow," I continued. "While I am putting an indefinite moratorium on fucking my girlfriend's sister- Annie, that applies to you too-"

"Dammit!"

"-I can guarantee that, if you're horny, then the Red Forest is going to be an excellent place to get laid. Nearly everyone is young, hot-blooded, and utterly free from the pressures of subsistence; I did my civic uplift work there before I did anything with Purpleheart City, so the whole economic stimulus thing, to encourage people to fill gaps and occupy themselves in other ways just. Uh. Well, I never really did that, so it's probably the case that either they're still in the stages where most people sit around doing nothing but fucking all day, or they're very early days as far as any kind of economy goes." I shrugged. "So, yeah, as far as going to the Red Forest goes, you have three options: one is to leave with the Red King and her retinue- who've been here in secret to attend my wedding- at the end of the week. Option two, leave with me in about two months, after the new year and my politely-timed divorce from Penelope Purpleheart. Aaaaand option three, politely ask for a different timetable that can, in fact, be reasonably accommodated, as Neloteth Tanelye is a very skilled vehicle operator who can move people from Purpleheart to New Carmine in less than a day."

"I see, I see," Indoleth said, stroking her chin and considering the matter carefully.

"I, for one, would like to go immediately, so that I can start getting spitroasted by elves as soon as possible," Annie opined.

"I'll need time to make arrangements," Indoleth said. "Being as I was stationed here, in Purpleheart, specifically to speak to you, Roxy, and convince you to play nice with Amazon Isle."

"I didn't exactly take much convincing, now did I?" I asked, flatly. "Plus, given that the current ruler of Purpleheart is herself a beta, I doubt future ambassadors are going to have much of a problem there. But, well, if there's any concessions you'd like to try milking out of me while I'm still the de facto leader, then go right ahead."

"Regular support packages of food, potions, and coin?"

"Yeah, sure, why not," I said, shrugging.

"How about hiring a high-level Mage on our behalf to raise a proper rocky island from the sea floor?"

"I can sail out and do it myself if need be."

"Ooooh. Hrm... A pony for everyone on the Isle."

"Where do you plan to put them?"

"A fair point."

"Anyhow," I said. "We will, soon enough, be launching our first all-metal ship from the shipyards, and for its maiden voyage, visiting Amazon Isle for trade and business is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I'll try to get you a firm date so you can tell your bosses about it."

"Thank you. Genuinely."

"Eh, it's nothing."

The Rattlesnake was the first of what would one day be many Serpent-class corvettes. As far as metal ships went, it wasn't that big- about two hundred feet long, thirty feet wide, and displacing a little over five hundred tons of water. The ship was barely big enough to fit a single main turret aboard, with the rest of the armaments being essentially small arms mounted on semi-armored tripods in strategic locations, but then, a corvette was the smallest kind of warship that could be seriously called a warship- it wasn't what would be delivering the main firepower of the navy, but rather, was more of a screening force for the core force of far-larger, far-more-deadly battleships.

It was still a warship, and therefore would be quite capable of handling itself against, say, pirates, but sending it in alone against a properly organized enemy fleet would be a stupid idea that would only be survivable in the event that the enemy fleet was a paper tiger.

"Honestly, I was expecting something bigger," Indoleth remarked as we slowly pulled in to dock at Amazon Isle- we'd brought our own tugboats, because there was no way in hell that the local pilots would be able to pull it in with their own dinky little dinghies. "Metal ships are supposed to be so much bigger than wooden ships, and yet this... well, this is only the size of a particularly large wooden ship."

"We wanted to start small," I said. "Ask one of the sailors to tell you what a corvette is, if you want to know the full story; the short version is, this is the smallest ship we're willing to call a warship, and we're gonna be putting ships much, much bigger than this to sea. Anyhow, that's hardly the reason we're here; that would be because we're trying to build up a solid foundation for the city to anchor to."

The city itself was... deeply, deeply strange to me. It was a floating city, centered around a trio of particularly big sailing ships that had long since been decommissioned and semi-permanently anchored to the seabed, but the bulk of the city was all wooden buildings atop floating platforms that... almost definitely had a lot of pontoons lashed to the underside to support the weight of people trying to live here. Extensive lightening charms were likely in use where possible, but that only gave you breathing room; everything still had to float, one way or another, and it likely was the case that wooden buildings were far more capable of surviving the rocking and shaking inherent to being on the ocean than a stone building would be.

"Right, that," Indoleth said, nodding. "How are you going to do this?"

"Well, as it so happens," I said, pulling out a topographical map of the seabed around the so-called Isle. "This is an unusually shallow point, with only two thousand feet of water between us and the seabed. So, right here, at the peak of the underwater hill, I'm going to do some excavation, drive some metal pylons into the bedrock, and build up a reinforced pile of big ol' rocks and saltwater concrete. From there, expanding outwards should be pretty straightforward."

We ended up staying overnight at Amazon Isle, although I didn't use the dark as an excuse to stop working.

The floating city had needed to be (very carefully) towed out of the way by the Rattlesnake, what with the city being atop the shallowest point for miles around, which was the ideal place to put down the foundations for the city.

After the initial island build-up, which took barely two hours, there'd been a lot of talking. The island, made of big blocks of granite sealed together with alchemical cement, was fairly small as far as islands went, being only about a thousand feet across in any direction. Still, it was a start, and from there, I decided to comp them an upgrade: another eight pylons were driven into the seabed, in a circle radiating out a full mile from the central island, reaching up and out of the water, and then were connected, between each other as well as the central island, by thin, strong truss beams of Titan's Steel, forming a framework that would sit ten feet above the water even at high tide, and atop which could be built houses and other buildings.

The process of actually building all of those houses and bars and workshops and other shit the city needed to survive was something the locals could and would handle themselves; I'd already gone above and beyond the initial brief for no pay, and they were probably suspecting that if they let me do any more work on the island, then I'd declare them subjects of Purpleheart. So instead, after carefully lashing the floating city to the central island... I got back on my ship and went back home.