Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 234 Paper Making
Before leaving, Orville left some blacksmiths in Rome and asked them to continue making weapons and equipment. Some of the weapons and equipment in front of Ivar now came from this, but the majority of them still came from Palphi.

The weapons factory jointly established by Orville and two other people has been continuously producing various weapons and equipment. Part of them was given to Cleopatra so that she could arm her army, and the other part belonging to Orville was transported to Rome.

His army in Britain had armor issued by the empire, and occasionally some weapons and equipment would be shipped from Rome to fill the gaps, but most of the weapons and equipment were left in Rome. Orville stored them in the manor for emergency use.

Now was the time to put them to use. These Vikings had become his mercenaries to some extent, half his own people, and Orville was almost not stingy with the fighting power of his men.

Therefore, although their freedom was restricted to a certain extent, the Vikings had no objection - Orville sent them armor and weapons as well as good wine and meat, and it would be too much if they did not appreciate the courtesy. They had all fought life and death with the Romans, and these people who had shed blood knew when not to push for an inch.

After ensuring that these barbarians would not cause him any trouble, Orville left the manor and went back to his own hotel, preparing to conduct a surprise inspection of the accounts.
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Without notifying the other party in advance, Orville broke into his own hotel with a small team of guards and asked to check the day's turnover and warehouse conditions. The feedback he received was quite good.

The person he chose to stay in Rome to look after the house was Nicanor, a comrade-in-arms who had participated in the Palphic War with him, and the one who introduced Stilicho to Orville. Although he did not have outstanding management skills, he had good character and was serious and responsible, and he had always done his job well.

There were no major problems during this surprise inspection. They just found out that a few people were slacking off, and a few guys were not very honest and took some small pieces. This was a normal and inevitable situation for a hotel. Orville was in a good mood and didn't even pursue their faults. He just scolded them casually and then sat down at his desk and began to sort out his property.

As mentioned before, the situation in Greece has been unstable recently, and the number of Romans going there to study has also decreased. However, overall, the scale has been maintained. Orville has not opened any new hotels, nor has it cut its own businesses. The current scale has basically reached its peak, and further expansion will require expansion in Egypt and Syria.

He shifted the focus of his career to the transportation industry, and has been purchasing new transport ships sporadically. So far, the number of ships he owns is close to 200, and the scale has been growing at a considerable rate recently. It is not too much, but not too little either. After a while, he should be able to be considered influential.

In addition, he also owned an arsenal in Palphi, some scattered lands in the mainland, and about 200,000 dinars of silver coins kept for emergencies. Excluding the public and private properties in the British province, this was all his property.

Compared with everyone in the Senate, this is considered a relatively good level. Of course, it cannot be compared with those super-rich people, but after all, he has accumulated this wealth rapidly in a few years, so it can be said that "the future is promising."

Now, he is ready to expand his business.
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A few days later, Orville sat opposite a few people in the office of the hotel, chatting with them calmly, but the people opposite him were obviously a little nervous, and they either stumbled or spoke quickly and a little unclearly.

After Orville finished speaking, one of them interrupted and said, "Excuse me, Your Highness, but the price of 200,000 dinars you offered us is too low. It is not realistic to acquire any of us individually, let alone you want to acquire all five of our bookmaking workshops at once. Although our five workshops are not the largest in Rome, they are also among the best. After discussion, we think we can give Your Highness a friendly price, how about 1.5 million dinars? We also admire your honor and sincerely want to cooperate with you."

The reason why these people were nervous was that they thought Orville wanted to use his power to force them to buy out their properties at a low price, but it was not easy for them to directly go against the royal family, so they could only worry.

Orville refused: "I can only offer a price of 200,000 dinars, because that's all I have now." He waved his hand to stop them from talking, "But I can show you something that you will definitely be interested in."

He asked his servant to bring a stack of slightly yellowed papers and distribute them to the merchants around him, asking them to look at them carefully.

"In the past, books were made using either parchment or papyrus, or even stone slabs. Both methods are very expensive. I have figured out a new papermaking method that can reduce the cost of paper several times. I can provide you with this paper at a very low price. It can barely be considered as my investment in technology.

If the five of you merge into one, I can give you 30% of the basic profit share, and we can talk about it later. After the merger, you will have the advantages of both size and cheap materials, and you will soon be the number one in Rome. I can guarantee that you will make more money by then. "

When he first arrived in Rome, he was thinking about making paper. However, at that time, firstly, he could not accept such a new technology, and secondly, he had not yet developed practical paper. When he was in office in Britain, he did not forget about this matter and kept asking people to try it out.

Before Orville traveled through time, he was an ordinary modern man with a slightly broader knowledge. He didn't know how paper was made, so he could only give a rough idea so that the craftsmen could have a general idea of ​​the process in their heads.

The bark and other materials are selected, cut into pieces, soaked, and then steamed in a pot, dried, and soaked again after drying. This process is repeated several times. Then impurities are removed manually by boiling or trampling, and the raw materials are beaten into cakes, which are then cut into pieces and put into the stages of pounding, pulping, scooping, pressing, and drying.

From an ordinary person's perspective, he already understood it in detail, but it was this relatively detailed process that took the craftsmen more than half a year of intermittent trial and error to produce the finished product.

(End of this chapter)