“This is insane! There aren’t anywhere near enough houses to support moving everyone in Dracons to Dryholm!” Henrek begged as Utarou laid out his map of the region and tokens on his table. He’d set up a tent he’d bought as a part of his “master plan materials” back in Richerson.
“It isn’t everyone, just every pregnant woman.” Utarou clarified, as if that was the issue.
“Are you thinking they can travel in Dracons without help?!”
“That’s where you come in, you’ll be in charge of getting them all here safely.” Utarou said as he set up 8 tokens across the region of Dracons. The map of Southern Oldser contained 5 provinces, 2 of which surrounded Dracons like a circle, making Dracons look quite small in comparison.
Which it was, assuming a safe journey you could travel the height of Dracons in less than a day by horse.
Though the issue with Dracons was that safe journeys were hard to come by, making it safer and more economical to travel around the entire province.
“That’s still insane, and do you think their husbands would just let me take them with me?” Henrek asked incredulously.
“Some of them might be unmarried!” Utarou laughed as he rummaged through his bag.
“That… No no what am I doing. The main issue here is we cannot house, let alone feed that many people!” Henrek reasserted as Utarou got out several documents and laid them out on the table.
“Tell me Henrek, do you play strategy games?”
“What? Do you mean… war games?” Henrek asked, confused by the question, causing Utarou to chuckle.
“You see my royal knight, I have been playing strategy games since I was 5 years old. And the most important thing in any strategy game is optimizing to the game's parameters.” Utarou explained, pointing towards the various spreadsheets of taxation information he’d brought from Richerson.
“The game we’re playing right now is dire, we lose around 30% of all cargo transported from our 8 settlements, travelling across Dracons is pretty much never done since the routes between settlements are basically never used by merchants! Which means no one protects them, which means there are no merchants to use them! It’s a terrible cycle.” Utarou sighed as Henrek nodded, he didn’t quite know where Utarou was going but he could see that somehow seemed like he knew what he was talking about.
“So, how does moving everyone here fix that exactly? This is the most central settlement in Dracons, that’ll just exacerbate the problem.” Henrek countered, more calm now that Utarou seemed to have thought this through.
“Exactly, we’re ransoming the next generation.” Utarou smirked.
“We’re what?” Henrek asked, baffled.
“Look, I have complete authority over this land and its people. They can leave but I’m going to send out a decree that all other settlements in Dracons are no longer valid, and to be ignored by the king's guards. We’re focusing all resources on securing Dryholm.”
“Again, the people, the houses, the food, we can’t support that many!” Hernrek countered, less calm again.
“They’ll bring their food, look Dryholm isn’t actually in that bad of a position when it comes to farming. According to this survey the land in Dryholm is actually more arable than Nihola, which produces over 80% of the food.” Utarou explained, throwing a report over to Henrek.
“This survey is from 20 years ago! Who knows what’s happened since then!”
“I think I do, I tried to get any information I could about Dragon Attacks in the surrounding provinces of Burtcons and Lolcons, look here…” Utarou pushed another document towards Henrek who cautiously took it.
“The last 50 years of dragon attacks, what about it?” Henrek asked, not seeing any pattern.
“Look, they split it between types of Dragons. Wyverns, Wyrms, Hydras and Drakes. Look at the Wyvern attacks and Drake attacks and see if you notice anything interesting from 50 to 30 years ago.” Utarou said with a prideful huff as Henrek looked through the data again.
“Wait a minute, when there’s a bunch of Wyvern attacks then the Drake attacks stop, and then as the Drake attacks ramp up the Wyvern Attacks slow down…” Henrek realized.
“... But these are for Burtcons and Lolcons, how does that help us?”
“Look at the change in Wyvern and Drake attacks in Lolcons 30 to 20 years ago and then to now.” Utarou prompted. Henrek looked through the data and saw that throughout that 10 year period, Wyvern attacks didn’t increase, while Drake attacks maintained a steady pace, then for the last 20 years Wyvern attacks dropped to nearly 0 per year while Drake attacks maintained steady levels.
“What the… Wait and Burtcons also saw a massive drop in Drake attacks with a spike in Wyvern attacks… We’re closer to Burtcons than Lolcons…” Henrek realized.
“Bingo, Nihola’s doing something interesting with these Dragons, and it started 30 years ago. It’s got to be a unique legacy skill which I want. That’s why it’s the first stop on your route.”
“If we’re able to bring that legacy skill here then we might be able to plant a successful crop… But what about all of the houses… and why the pregnant women?!”
“Simple, I’m hedging my bets. Chances are whoever this guy is will be at least 30 years old now, he’ll have a wife or a mistress and the child will more likely than not have the legacy skill.”
“Why can’t we just… ask?”
“Henrek, the Church apparently helps parents choose the correct Legacy Skill for their child, whatever that means. I don’t think ‘Dragon Tamer’ fits the bill for the legacy skills they suggest like poison resistance and hunger resistance.” Utarou intuited.
“I… Yeah you’re probably right.” Henrek sighed, even being as remote as Dryholm in such a dangerous province like Dracons, they still had a vicar arrive once a month to give a ceremony and help guide the community.
“We have to assume whoever this is probably won’t respect our authority. He’s helping his community so if we round up everyone to consolidate them here, he’ll either come with or worst comes to worst, there’s a more than 0 chance we’ll yoink his legacy skill.” Utarou snickered machiavellianly.
“You’re just after the skill at the end of the day huh…” Henrek sighed as he scratched his head.
“Still, houses and food if he doesn’t arrive?” Henrek pressed.
“You haven’t been here in awhile Henrek, there’s 18 homes here in total, 8 of them are completely empty. According to last year's census Nihola only has a thousand people in it. I’d say it’s safe to say we’ll have 200 or so people coming, pregnant women and their husbands with some younger children.”
“That’s a huge amount of people to bring and feed.”
“It’ll mainly be the young and healthy couples who will be bringing food and seeds with them, the perfect work force for my next project.”
“Go on.” Henrek sighed, finally taking a seat to discuss properly with Utarou.
“Deforestation.”