Gwayne Seawright had returned safely, bearing documents signed by the High King and news of royal support.
Viscount Andrew, who had been waiting in Gulltown for nearly three months, felt he'd made the right call. The founding hero from seven hundred years ago hadn't disappointed him. He wasn't the simple warrior the viscount had initially feared, but a figure who combined cunning with strategy.
He just hadn't expected the founding hero to choose the Black Mountains as his starting point for rebuilding the family.
As a minor noble stationed in the Southern Marches, Viscount Andrew was naturally no stranger to the Black Mountains. In fact, the former Seawright territory and the Royce territory both lay on the mountains' northern side, and on clear days you only had to look up to see that majestic natural barrier. The range blocked the unhealthy air drifting from the Gondor Wasteland, but its own reputation, teeming with magical beasts and rife with eerie tales, made plenty of people blanch at the mere mention. Even the most reckless hunters rarely ventured into the Black Mountains to make a living, even when southern lords opened up hunting rights inside the range.
The former Seawright territory sat slightly to the northwest of the Black Mountains. Gulltown lay to the northeast, and the "New Seawright Territory" Wayne had selected was to Gulltown's southeast. The three roughly formed a triangle, though the New Seawright Territory was the closest of the three to the Black Mountains, its southern reaches even extended directly into the mountain range.
One of the White River's tributaries, which flowed past Gulltown, fed into the New Seawright Territory. In terms of transportation, the new home was actually well-positioned. it could easily receive supply shipments from Gulltown, and if the territory developed in the future, trade costs would drop considerably.
But all of that assumed Wayne and his people could actually gain a foothold in that barren land.
In Viscount Andrew's castle, the thin, fastidious noble looked deeply worried. "Forgive my bluntness, Your Grace, but your chosen first base of operations is not... ideal. The land is plentiful, yes, but it's too close to the Black Mountains. There's no protection from civilized society. The mountain beasts are a serious threat, and every year during the month of Mistfall, the Unclean Wind blows over the mountains from the Gondor Wasteland. Strong, healthy soldiers might weather it, but the frail smallfolk and peasants won't..."
"You've seen the map. You know that while the area I can choose from is vast, the conditions are more or less the same everywhere," Wayne said dismissively. "Among the ring of land bordering the Black Mountains, the parcel I picked is already the best option. The Unclean Wind can be countered with medicine and magic. I'll handle the defense myself. If we can survive the first year, we'll be able to extract ore from the Black Mountains, and the territory will have its footing."
He could hardly tell the man he'd chosen that spot because a seven-hundred-year-old national treasury was buried inside the mountains.
At the very least, he needed to open the vault and secure everything before letting outsiders know, and even then, only on a need-to-know basis. Complete secrecy was impossible; those supplies would eventually be used, and the moment they appeared in construction projects, even a fool could guess the truth.
The best he could do was minimize who knew before everything had been put to use.
Seeing Wayne's resolve, Viscount Andrew naturally couldn't say much more. He simply offered a reminder. "These are all your decisions, and I'll support them as best I can. But please remember our original arrangement."
Wayne smiled slightly. "Don't worry. The Seawrights never leave debts unpaid. If you're really that nervous, I could pawn you one or two of the antiques I'm wearing?"
Rebecca, who had been sitting across the table reporting her capital experiences to Aunt Hestia, immediately looked up, eyes shining in Wayne's direction.
The ancestor thinks exactly like me! Does this mean I've inherited the family spirit?
Hestia rapped Rebecca on the forehead with moderate force. "Stop looking around, continue. You're telling me that at the High King's banquet, you spent the entire time just eating?!"
"I drank wine too, I'm of age now, I can have a little..."
Looking at this girl whose head clearly wasn't screwed on right, Hestia's face was pure despair. "My god..."
As for Viscount Andrew, he naturally couldn't accept Wayne's "generous offer" and hurriedly waved his hands. "That won't be necessary! I trust House Seawright's reputation and the guarantee of a founding hero... So when do you plan to depart?"
"The sooner the better," Wayne nodded. "We leave as soon as supplies are ready. The High King's aid won't arrive for at least a month. I need to get my people settled in the new home first."
For those who had escaped the nightmare of old Seawright territory, the three-month recovery period was over. The lord's return from the capital meant they had to prepare immediately for a new life.
Even though the vast majority of them had no idea what that new life would look like.
Ser Philip and Ser Byron were dispatched with teams to purchase essential supplies and construction materials in Gulltown, grain, tools, tents, medicine, and a mountain of necessities that no one had even thought to consider.
The list of items to procure was staggering. Even Hestia, who had been assisting with territorial management, and Byron, a longtime Seawright retainer, didn't know where to begin. Nobody knew what it took to build a territory from scratch. In this regard, only Wayne could help, during the great pioneering era seven hundred years ago, Andraste's forebears had built their homes from nothing. The memories in Wayne's head about what preparations the pioneering period required were invaluable experience.
Of course, with a seven-hundred-year gap, that knowledge wasn't guaranteed to be fully applicable. But the basic principles were much the same. No matter how tools evolved, the problems a pioneer faced in the wilderness remained constant.
Food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medicine, and security.
As for funding, Viscount Andrew had returned House Seawright's gold and silver, and combined with the assets Ser Philip had preserved, it wasn't abundant but just barely enough to procure the initial supplies.
The Seawright refugees bustled through town purchasing supplies and hiring wagons, which naturally drew the locals' attention. They'd all heard about the founding hero's resurrection, and had recently learned that the Seawright lord had returned from the capital. So they knew these "outsiders" who'd been living in their town for three months were finally leaving.
Most of Gulltown's lower-class residents didn't much care either way about the outsiders' departure, but the fact that they were buying heavily on the way out earned the merchant guild a tidy profit, which greatly reduced their complaints about their own lord. Before this, the lord had requisitioned quite a few shacks to house the outsiders, and those destitute refugees hadn't had so much as a few coppers to scrape together, a source of considerable resentment among the business community.
While the two family knights scrambled to gather supplies, Wayne tasked Hestia and Rebecca with conducting a census of all Seawright subjects, compiling the eight-hundred-odd survivors into a detailed roster.
"I need each person's name, age, sex, health status, and any skills they possess, organized by household. Also prepare a separate list with carpenters, stonemasons, and blacksmiths singled out. Oh, and if possible, assign each person a number for easy reference."
This was the task Wayne assigned to his two great-great-great-great-...-granddaughters. He'd assumed it would be straightforward, but instead it left both N-times-granddaughters completely baffled.
They had never heard of anything called "basic data registration," nor did they understand how these so-called "tables" were supposed to work.
"You've never even conducted a basic population census?" Seeing Hestia and Rebecca's blank expressions, Wayne felt even more confused than they were. "Then how do you track your territory's population?"
Rebecca answered with perfect innocence. "Aunt Hestia manages the lands around the castle, and the knight's fiefs are managed by each knight individually. We roughly know how many men, how many women, how many elderly, how many children there are. As for who's a blacksmith and who's a carpenter, everyone who lives nearby more or less knows each other. You just ask around."
Wayne: "..."
What? Just ask around? The legendary governance-by-eyeballing, administration-by-expression, rule-the-realm-with-a-shout approach?
Noticing the storm of emotions crossing Wayne's face, Hestia grew nervous. "Great Ancestor... did you and the founding king actually use those tables you described to track the population when you were building the nation?"
Wayne hurriedly rifled through the data in his head. A moment later, his face went green.
Damn it... back then was even worse.
The Gondor Imperium had collapsed overnight. Its prosperous, developed heartlands were completely obliterated. The only survivors of the initial cataclysm were people from remote border areas, and that ancient empire was a textbook case of unbalanced development, so lopsided that Wayne found it almost deformed.
Because this world's magical technology depended on mana foci, and natural mana foci were limited, the Gondor Imperium had concentrated all its advanced technology around the Deep Blue Well, the most powerful mana focus at the continent's center. As for the remote areas where mana foci were sparse...
They were backward to an almost inconceivable degree.
So when the Tide erupted outward from Deep Blue, every scrap of the Gondor Imperium's advanced technology and highly educated population was sacrificed to the gods. The survivors were then filtered again and again by the ongoing energy radiation. By the time the pioneers led everyone to safety, human civilization had, for all intents and purposes, completely collapsed...
To put it bluntly. the four great nations were founded by a handful of middle-schoolers leading an army of illiterates.
The only saving grace was that in a world where magic power existed, the extraordinary strength of a few individuals at the top could partially offset the overall decline caused by civilizational regression. That was how the four nations had been propped up in the first place, held together by sheer force by pioneers whose combat abilities were off the charts, weathering the crushing pressures of the founding years.
But, but, but!
It had been seven hundred years! Seven hundred years, and these worthless descendants hadn't made any progress at all?