Chapter 104 Planning and Entertainment
On a sunny afternoon, it was finally time for Roland to fulfill his promises.
He conferred the title of Viscount to Sir Payne. In addition to the title he also received a territory to the south of the Shishui River and the right to set up a small village on the other side of the river. Currently, this new territory was still covered by jungle, but Roland had already planned to develop the land. In order to make him give up the autonomy of his newly acquired territory, Roland promised Sir Payne that he would give priority in opening up the territory as soon as possible.
Furthermore, on the open ground Roland would also establish several different kinds of industries, that would generate shares to be given to Sir Payne and his descendants. Roland of course, used his technical abilities as the reason to describe why it was needed for him to supervise the industries. He also explained to him that it was a pretty good possibility to receive money without having to do anything.
Sir Payne readily agreed to this offer – after all, he didn’t like this kind of work, in his view, there was nothing more interesting than riding a horse into battle. But after he had his daughter, he instead put his focus into hunting. The industries in his old territory had already long since been ruined, so he simply asked Roland to help him sell his land which was located east of Longsong Stronghold, after all his family had already completely moved and started to live in Border Town. Roland naturally agreed to his request.
Another person he conferred a title to was Brian, who was awarded with a knighthood. Afterward Brian had to choose if he wanted to get his own territory or still wanted to serve in the army.
If he chose the land, then he could no longer serve in Border Town’s first Army. If he decided to join the army, he had to, just like the others receive his land due to the achievement of his military merits. Without any hesitation, Brian chose the latter option.
As a result, Roland could finally start with planning the general layout of his territory.
With the Shishui River as one boundary, and the Impassable Mountain Range as the other. The living area had a length of three kilometers and a width of seven to eight kilometers. After the construction of the residential areas, it could also later be used as a prize, which could be given as an additional reward to promoted officers.
The other side of the Shishui River will become the future industrial areas and agricultural areas. The land could be extended to the south, but the only problem was that it was still covered by forest. In addition, its topography sloped higher and lower in the further distances. To meet the needs of the population, Roland must begin to reclaim the land.
The border area to the west of the garrison and the forest where the demonic beasts hid themselves were also important areas to open up.
The forest has a wide range of treasures, such as wood, edible fungi, wild animals, herbs and more. In addition to using wood for construction and in industry, it could also be used as a fuel source. The vast area covered by the forest was staggering. Roland had already sent Lighting to explore it, but even flying more than thirty kilometers she still hadn’t been able to see its end, that meant that if all of the wood in the forest was to be used for building a fire, it would burn for a very long time.
The last area was the territory between the Hiding Forest and the Impassable Mountain Range – it was a no man’s land , a restricted area, in other words, a barbarian wasteland. He could only speculate how big the area between the Impassable Mountain Range and the border of the forest was. Both borders were extremely vast, it had to be much bigger than the territory of the Kingdom of Graycastle. In the face of such an extremely large and ownerless land, Roland’s heart began to itch. But he also knew that for the moment he was temporarily unable to bother himself with this piece of land. At present, the most important thing for Border Town was to increase its population.
Back in his office at the castle, he called for the artist Soraya.
“How was your work, are you still helping out in the Town Hall?”
“I have never painted so many paintings in one day,” she seemed to be in a much better condition than the last time he had seen her, “today I have already finished the basic pictures, but only painting pictures of their heads while looking through a window, feels a little strange.”
“They would easily become scared when they see your magic pen”, the prince smiled,” they know that there are witches in Border Town, but if you get in close contact with them, it could easily cause accidents, so we just took some simple hidden measures, not letting them know that you are a witch. Later their opinion will slowly start to change.”
Soraya’s photographic ability helped to bring Roland’s citizenship registration program to a new level. For this plan, he had emptied a room in the Town Hall and then used the room to store the information about the town’s citizens. It was similar to a population register, on each piece of paper were written their names, ages, addresses, blood relatives and so on. This information was all the statistics he had gathered during the winter, and now the records were expanded with new content. The biggest change to all of their personal accounts was that he added to each of them a “color photo.”
According to Roland’s request, the Town Hall had set up a small room large enough for one person that was enterable without being seen, it had only a small window through which Soraya could see the face of the person she should paint. So when she painted the portrait of her subject, the other person couldn’t see her using her magic pen.
As to how it was possible for him to let the town’s residents come over and give their personal information so freely, Roland’s method was very simple, whoever came over and gave their information, got 10 copper royals – he ordered the Town Hall to allocate the money.
“Today I called you here to draw something else.” Roland took out some cutout papers and gave them to Soraya.
The latter noted that the sizes of those pieces of papers were exactly the same, with a size of half a palm, and in a rectangular format.
“What do you want me to paint?”
“Some props for entertainment,” Roland said.
He had this idea within his mind for a long time already, every day the witches had nothing to do besides practicing their magic, this life had to be a bit boring. The same could be said for the Prince, especially when he had to wait for the moment the snow finally melted, until then he was stuck within the castle. Therefore, he came up with the idea of reinventing some games from his old word and finding a way for the witches to relax.
The simplest possibility was to create a card game. But the soft ordinary paper he had wasn’t suitable for card games, shuffling was also a hassle. However, with Soraya, he could finally make some more advanced things.
“Entertainment?” She crouched her head, wondering what kind of entertainment she was painting on a square piece of paper, “Okay, you have the final say.”
“First, on this piece of paper, you have to draw a soldier with a heavy crossbow.”
“Imagine?”
“Yes, the armor, the body shape, age, and the surroundings, everything up to you to freely imagine, as long as it has a heavy crossbow.”
“Uh… I will try it,” Soraya closed her eyes, meditation for a while, then she summoned her pen into her hand and soon a bright light streamed from her hands onto the paper.
Soon, a middle-aged man looking just like a crossbow soldier appeared on the paper.
“Very well,” Roland praised, “Let me think about what the next painting should be, ah… in the upper left corner of the paper and the middle position, draw a small circle at each of these positions,” he recalled the card in his head “The first circle is white in the center with a golden coating, and the second one has an orange color together with a golden coating,” he said.
When the circles were finished, Roland let her add a number to the first circle, “and to the second circle you will add a bow and an arrow mark into the circle.”
The beauty of Soraya’s ability lied in her ability to ignore the material she had to paint on, it didn’t matter to her if it was a blank sheet of paper or an already painted piece. The second design can perfectly cover the former painting, like a layered mask.
Thus, a delicate “crossbow card” appeared in front of Roland.
“Is this what you wanted?” She asked.
“This is just the card of one unit, there are still many similar cards waiting to be painted by you. By the end, you will get a deck and then I’ll teach you how to play.”
When looking at Soraya who was painting with her eyes closed, Roland felt a kind of hunch from his heart. Perhaps soon a dialog like this would be heard within the castle –
“Do you have anything important to do? If not, let us first play a round of ‘Gwent’!”
TN:
Thanks to the help of “busnuss” and “lordVortex” are here some more information about Gwent