The Swordsman of Faerûn

Chapter 883 The Grand Plan of the Valley Kingdom
The sudden arrival of the golden dragon undoubtedly cast a shadow over William's coronation ceremony, at least in the eyes of ordinary people.

In a newly established kingdom, before the king even sits on the throne, a group of giant dragons come to beat the autumn wind. The prospects are obviously very bleak.

Don't say that golden dragons are kind-hearted dragons. Ordinary people can't tell the difference between golden dragons and red dragons. Aren't they all dragons that can breathe fire and like to walk away with a horse or cattle in their mouths? .

No one likes to be a subject of a giant dragon, even the world-famous Golden Dragon Queen of the Northland, if she wants to rule the Silver Moon Alliance in a stable way, she has to live in seclusion behind the scenes, relying on the so-called Supreme Mage to act as an agent.

That's right, the behind-the-scenes king of the Silvermoon Alliance, the real boss of the Supreme Queen Alustriel, is a female ancient golden dragon.

However, the Golden Dragons failed to replicate the old events in the Northland in the valley. William is not a turkey in the Northland. He has enough strength and power to make the Golden Dragons bow their heads, especially when a whole troop of Titan-level golem mechs walks in Faerun When they were on the ground, even groups of ancient golden dragons had to lower their arrogant heads.

The Golden Dragons even reached a joint agreement with the Valley Kingdom represented by William. William guaranteed that the Golden Dragons would have some privileges in the Valley, such as legally living in a humanoid form, traveling, and even participating in work, and even the right to join the army and participate in politics.

Correspondingly, the golden dragons give up peeking at the succession of the valley kingdom in principle. When the valley kingdom is invaded by foreign enemies, the valley people can call the golden dragons to join the battle. Of course, this work is not free, and the valley people need to pay a certain amount of treasures as rewards .

Anyone with a little background and insight knows that a kingdom that can establish a relationship with a giant dragon must have a bright future. For example, the Silver Moon Alliance in the Northland. No matter how much trouble happens, the Silver Moon Alliance will not collapse.

A more direct example is Cormyr, which borders the Kingdom of the Valley.

As we all know, the birth of Cormyr is inextricably linked with a legendary purple dragon. In order to show this close connection, the people of Cormyr even engraved the purple dragon on the royal coat of arms. Elite knights are also known as purple dragon knights.

It is said that when the last Purple Dragon dies, Cormyr will cease to exist.

Some say that day is not far away, and many enemies of the royal family are searching for the whereabouts of the purple dragon, intending to kill him and bring the end of the kingdom of Cormyr.

With the ferment of the Golden Dragon incident at the enthronement ceremony, many people who are "children from poor families" in our words are quite pessimistic about the future of the Fading Valley Kingdom, but they left the Valley one after another to seek life elsewhere.

However, those sensible people who had some background and knew the inside story secretly came to the Valley Kingdom to settle down and seek jobs.It's just that this group of people are very strict-mouthed, and no one is foolish enough to leak the truth out of it, so that the reputation of the Valley Kingdom in the streets and taverns is not very good, which in turn affects the immigration of the Valley to a certain extent. Appeal.

However, with the passage of time, the government affairs of the Valley Kingdom began to gradually spread out. Thanks to William's advance layout, various functional departments of the Kingdom government played their roles in an orderly manner.

Among them, one of the most sensible things William did was to hand over almost all administrative powers to the chief executive officer of the kingdom. The first chief executive officer of the Valley Kingdom was Ms. Hellen.

Undoubtedly, Hillen is a very capable lady. Even in Faerun, her governing ability is considered top-notch, and she handles the numerous government affairs with ease.Especially after the general direction determined by William, Hellen has brought into full play his delicate and flexible political talents.

Thanks to Helen's efforts, the kingdom's taxation, laws, education, public construction and other projects have been quickly put on the right track. Although there are still many defects and deficiencies, the future prospects are undoubtedly quite exciting .

Of course, there were differences between William and Hellen, especially regarding the handling of captives. In the past, during the conquest of the city-states in the valley and the fierce battle with the people of Zhentil Castle, William controlled at least nearly [-] prisoners. Prisoners of war, and most of these prisoners of war are strong and strong laborers.

Prior to this, William had been organizing these captives into labor reform teams (battalions) to participate in the development of transportation and road facilities in the valley.

Hillen believes that since the kingdom has been established, these captives should be released, or absorbed into the valley kingdom, or let them go instead of continuing to enslave them inhumanely.

Of course, William would not agree with Helen's Madonna-style idea. This is such a good free labor force gathered with great difficulty. You want to release them just because they are inhumane. Have you ever thought about the foundation of the Valley Kingdom after they are gone? What to do with construction.

The total population of the entire Valley Kingdom is even less than 60, and the labor force of the year is probably less than 20, not to mention the cost of recruiting [-] young and strong from them, and how much business will be delayed.

It's just that the opposite is equivalent to a shortfall of 20 labor force. William is so stupid that he will be bewitched by Helen to abolish his martial arts.

If it weren't for worrying that excessive squeezing would violate William's conscience, and even damage the reputation of the Valley Kingdom, he really wanted to keep those captives under his command for the rest of his life.

Engaging in slavery is really going backwards in history, which William did not do.

In order to appease the dissatisfaction of Hellen and a series of benevolent figures under his command—mostly from the Harper Alliance and occupy a large number of positions in the government functions of the Valley Kingdom—William had to formulate a relatively enlightened reform of captive labor. plan.

All captives need to undergo labor reform in the Valley Kingdom for at least three years in order to atone for the crimes they committed against King William in the past. If the circumstances are more serious, an additional two to five years of hard labor will be added.

After the captives have completed the labor reform, the Valley Kingdom government needs to pay a relatively considerable resettlement and severance fee to the labor reformers. With this money, they can freely choose to join the Valley Kingdom or leave the Valley.

Although William's proposal still dissatisfied some people who were overwhelmed with the heart of the Virgin Mary, Sheeren and most of her friends and partners reluctantly accepted it. Compared with most of the rulers of the Kingdom of Faerun, this is already relatively merciful plan.

In fact, many of William's plans are somewhat incomprehensible to most people in the valley and even Faerun, such as the three valley arteries in William's plan.One of the main arteries that was first started was the artery line from Shadow Valley - Fuenla - Yulas - Far Mountain City.

The main artery road requires lava as the base material for road construction. Lava is poured into the trenches dug in advance, and magma-style concrete with a width of three feet and a thickness of one and a half meters is laid. Can become almost natural super concrete road.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with pouring lava, because this work can only be done by the natives of the Flame World, the labor force of the whole world plus a certain amount of engineering golem assistance, and the large team headed by Elminster and the Silver-haired Sisters. The super lava pouring machine developed by the mages can be said to be unexpectedly worry-free and labor-saving.

Speaking of the super lava pouring machine, it is a spider-shaped super-giant engineering mecha composed of four Titan-level golem mecha cores. The semi-permanent flame gate (by the great sage Yi Yi) is installed on the mecha. Erminster leads the deployment), this engineering mecha is powered by two of the power cores, one power core charges the Flame Gate, and the last power core is responsible for Power is provided by equipment that pumps molten magma.

The main manpower and material resources of the main artery project are the excavation of the subgrade. This project is so large that the construction volume of the excavation of the trench alone is absolutely no less than the volume of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal excavated in the previous Sui Dynasty.

We must know that Emperor Sui Yang had tens of millions of human resources back then, and the whole country was digging the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, but it also resulted in turmoil among the people and the country was in trouble.

With a population of just 10 in the Valley Kingdom, it is absolutely not an exaggeration to define such a horrible project with a sentence of cruelty and evil.

Fortunately, there are [-] captive laborers under William's hands to squeeze, and the area of ​​the entire valley is no more than one or two provinces in the previous life. The land is small and sparsely populated, but the products are extremely rich. infrastructure projects.

Some people may ask why William doesn't use engineering golem mechs on a large scale?
It's really not that William doesn't want to use it, but that there is no such condition.

After the golem mech is built, it doesn't just need the driver to start the job, but also needs a whole logistics team to provide support services behind it.

In particular, this golem mech was manufactured in the world of flames. After it was moved to the main material plane Faerun, its failure rate has soared greatly. It could have operated without failure in the world of flames for more than a month. An excellent airframe, when Feren can run for three days without lying down, it is considered to be of excellent quality.

Including William's so-called (Ferran) most powerful Matador mech battle group, after two or three times on the battlefield, it basically became a bluffing display.

William has the most outstanding technical talent reserve in the flame world, but he can barely guarantee the normal logistical maintenance of a small number of golem mechs in Faerun.

In fact, William used manual excavation of the roadbed for another unknown purpose, which was to completely absorb and digest this group of rare and high-quality labor, so that they could better integrate into the Valley Kingdom.

As the saying goes, things that are too easy to get are often unwilling to cherish.Although William always used the captives to work as much as possible, he was never stingy when it came to food and treatment. Thanks to the extraordinary food production capacity of the valley, the living standards of many captives were even better than before they were captured. many.

In this way, when the captives who have undergone some labor training are freed, most of them will have a high probability of choosing to be a part of the Valley Kingdom. Learn about Stockholm Syndrome.

The starting point of William's preset arterial project plan in the north is not Yuanshan City or Yuras. He prefers Zhentil Castle, but to achieve this goal, William needs to conquer that city first.

(End of this chapter)