NOVEL SIMPLE [Vol.4] Ch.18 Bureaucracy
Myself and the mining crew spent three weeks up on the mountain mining. We shipped down a significant amount of ore, and ran into one edge of this ore deposit. We haven't run out yet, but in theory it could run out at any time now, which means that we might end up wanting to make an exploratory mine part of the way up the mountain below the snow level to try to find new valuable deposits of things like ore. If we do that, I don't have to worry about workers intruding on my mountain house either.
With the amount of ore we shipped back this time, Karsh should be busy for a few more weeks after this just making ingots. He's welcome to work on any other projects in the meantime, but it gives him something to do that we know produces value, so I'm hoping this year we can trade for some interesting items. At the very least, having a lot of wealth to trade spreads rumors about our island, which should attract new migrants. It might not be until next year that the migrants show up, but I've really decided its a good idea to get skilled talent in from the rest of the world.
I can only do so much, and with Karsh around, its apparent that I lack knowledge in some places. By bringing in a small number of outsiders, we can more effectively expand without having to rely on myself as the sole bringer of new technologies. An even bigger difference is the comparison between my own skill with those technologies and other's. I made a furnace and smelted metal, but all my work is childish in comparison to Karsh's speed and quality. Plus he told me about the idea of rock dams, which we'll see how effective they are in a few months when the spring rains and snow melt happen.
I also brought down more of the coinage from the mountain after all the goblins and haulers left. We don't quite need it yet, but I would hate to be left without any new currency during winter. I'm probably going to have to do a second coin minting in spring, just to be ready for when the population ends up expanding.
I've finished up the structure for the city hall after another week of work. It'll take some time before it's completely ready, since I need to make and commission a bunch of furniture for the insides. We've had a couple good developments in the meantime. The construction crew has really made some good progress, and has all the sewer lines, roads, bridges, and even about a quarter of the new city wall completed, save for those blocked by existing crop fields. This time, we're making the wall a little thicker to hopefully make it a little more effective against a second invasion where they just turn the stone in the wall into spheres. In a perfect world, we'd coat the walls in a thin layer of metal to prevent that, but realistically that would be far too much work and value lost to cover such a huge area in metal.
All the dwarven crops are finally ready for harvest as well. We've already had plenty of reka through the year, and it's been interesting to say the least. I personally find it to be tastier than swamp beets, but the majority of the goblins seem to have an acquired taste for swamp beets over the more mild reka. Once the harvest of the korogo and boto-boto are done, we'll see how those taste. I might have to consult with Karsh's wife for information on how to properly prepare and eat them, although I know we can at least make flour from the Korogo seeds.
I'll have to keep a close eye on how hard it is to process the korogo to get the seeds though. If it's anything like wheat, I might have to make a second windmill to power a thresher to make that process significantly easier. In either case, the vines from the boto-boto once the fruit are harvested should also be useful for some of our industries, and the korogo stems should be edible by the bargas, so we'll have plenty of harvested goodies.
I wasn't sure when exactly the bargas would begin mating, but it seems that it's also around this time. I'm hoping that means that by spring we'll have a few new ones ready, which means I'll need more than just one additional field for them. It'll be important to keep them sorted genetically, so we don't run into inbreeding issues in the long term as well. That's why we're getting a few new breeding males via trade. The females born of one herd can be reorganized into the pen with a different male, and so on. After five or six generations young could be reintroduced into the original genetic group and they'll be different enough that it shouldn't cause an issue.
I spent another eight days working on furniture and other design within the city hall before the korogo was hand threshed, and it became time to show a few goblins how to operate the mill. We first lubricated the bearings with our homemade fish soap lubricant made from oil and lime. Then I showed them how to operate a lever to lower the upper grindstone onto the lower one, and operate a chute to feed grain into the eye of the main rotating stone. After a few practice runs, and some tinkering on my part, we got it working, and started milling flour.
I figured the first person to inform of this should be Karsh's wife, Rishi, as she would be the most likely to know about making bread. She initially seemed excited, but then seemed to realize she didn't have some of the ingredients she'd want to make what she wanted. I'm not that surprised, but I told her to make a list so we could try to trade for it. Until then, I offered her quite the supply of flour, and asked if she'd do some experiments with making flatbreads, since they need only water and flour. Obviously, other ingredients can be added, like salt or fats and oils. I gave her some of each of those as well, and told her to let me know if she needs any other ingredients.
After another eighteen days, I finished furnishing the city hall. In that time, snow had fallen on the mountain and Rishi had come up with a few viable recipes for flatbreads, which I was glad to hear. I'm not going to push her to work, but if she decides she wants to make a bakery, I'll probably end up giving them priority and a discount on construction.
Now that all the fields are fully harvested, the construction crew was able to build the remaining sections of road and sewer that had to wait for the crops to finish growing. Since we've had to remove parts of some of the crop fields, we're going to have to build them again, and I figured if we're doing that already, we should probably expand them further, in anticipation of needing more food moving forward.
I have more exciting priorities right now though. With the city hall building done, I can finally start having other individuals handle the management of work. Sure, I could just train someone to handle it, but without a physical institution where records are kept, if that goblin just stops working, it would be worse than if I didn't have them at all. With the building in place where records can be kept, it means anyone with training should be able to pick up where someone else left off.
For now, most of the rooms will be unused, since it's designed much larger than we currently need, so we can grow into the space as needed. For now, I have three jobs in mind that I'm going to advertise for. The first job will be for someone who manages hiring and paying goblins for tasks that I lay out. Instead of me going around recruiting people, outside city hall I've put up a large wall where I can hang plates that have pictographs of certain kinds of work. The goblin is in charge of putting the correct pictograph up, and then helping anyone who inquires about work inside.
The second job will be for an overseer. Their job is to go to different jobsites and make sure that work is being done. Ultimately, they aren't in charge of punishing anyone if they aren't working. Instead, they're to inform Zaka of what happened, so he can make a judgement call after talking to them. I intend to be lenient about labor, they don't need to be working super hard all the time, but I also don't want someone to be slacking on a two month job, and find out we've been paying them for doing nothing for a few months.
The third job will be for recordkeeping. That one will require some degree of training, since they'll need to learn a written language. I don't doubt that the demon language has a written form, but no one here knows it. Zaka only spoke the language, and since he is the entire island's source of information on the matter, we're stuck without a written form. Which means we need writing.
I could go one of three ways with this. In Europe for a long time, many records were kept in latin, despite no one speaking the language anymore. I could go that route, where we use English for our written records, and we speak demon. The other option is that I have to come up with an entire written form of the demon language, then teach a goblin that written form. The third option, which I'm even more torn about, is using dwarven for our written language. Over time, this would probably lead to a hybrid demon-dwarven language that gets spoken on the island, which might not be a bad thing. Plus, it would facilitate trade, since city hall workers would be able to read and write in the language of the country we're trading with.
Given those choices, I think we'll end up going to with the dwarven. Of course, one further issue arises from that. If Karsh or Rishi don't know how to write in their own language, then I'm going to have to either give up on the idea, or hope I can find someone who does over this winter.