Civilian factories functioned much like their original counterparts; they could produce various “consumer goods” or be utilized to accelerate the speed of real-world infrastructure construction.
Normally, a portion of the thirteen civilian labor units would have to be reserved to maintain the basic livelihood of the populace, but perhaps because Huron’s system lacked that specific mechanism, all of them were at his disposal.
Consequently, as soon as the transformation of all the new recruits was complete, Huron couldn’t wait to drag the “Badab Government” group, led by Odinson, into a small briefing.
This group consisted of about a hundred people, mostly new recruits converted from administrative personnel, with a small number of Chaplains and Librarians.
While many among them possessed management experience—and Odinson himself had served as a planetary governor for a significant amount of time—the group was, for all intents and purposes, a makeshift team.
Due to the universal systems of the Warhammer world, the classic “the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal” rule applied.
The Administratum didn’t care how a planetary governor ruled, the planetary governor didn’t care how the nobles ruled, and the nobles didn’t care how the heads of the various factions under their command ruled.
As long as the taxes were paid in full and no one started shouting about rebellion, everyone pretended everything was peaceful.
On Huron’s system interface, this manifested as the puppet state of Badab being a mess of overlapping circles.
Setting aside organizations like the Ecclesiarchy and the Adeptus Arbites fortresses, the former planetary governor, nobles, guilds, gangs, and chambers of commerce formed a dense layer of competing factions.
Currently, the area under the actual control of the Astral Claws was limited to a single portion of Palatos, the planet’s largest Hive City.
Naturally, this garbage system could not satisfy Huron’s vision.
Even if he couldn’t achieve high-intensity centralization immediately, he at least needed orders to come from a single source.
What was the point of having all these different factions?
The system’s judgment on “factions” wasn’t arbitrary; a group had to be an independent entity with actual conflicting interests to count.
In other words, these people were busy building independent kingdoms within his planet.
Therefore, Huron’s first requirement for Odinson was to bypass the nobles of the original Badab system as much as possible and establish a centralized, unified administrative system.
Odinson looked troubled.
“Chapter Master, this is too difficult.
Even if we ignore the various industries monopolized by the nobility, we simply don’t have enough manpower.”
As an old noble who had spent a long time in a highly militarized organization like the Astral Claws, Odinson naturally understood Huron’s thirst for centralization.
But for that very reason, he knew exactly how difficult it would be to establish such a system, even with a hundred “supermen” at his disposal.
What was required was not a handful of supermen, but a massive number of grassroots administrative personnel.
Based on his experience, governing the Palatos Hive with its twenty billion people would require an optimistic estimate of roughly one billion grassroots bureaucrats.
Even if they only managed a portion of the Hive in the early stages, they would still need millions, if not tens of millions, of staff.
The Astral Claws, including Chapter serfs, only numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
Since the Chapter Master demanded they bypass the existing noble system as much as possible, where would these people come from?
Huron patted Odinson on the shoulder and said reassuringly, “Rest easy.
I have received the Emperor’s blessing.
The Auxiliaries will soon be able to train a large number of capable administrative personnel.
For now, I just need you to set up the framework.”
Lately, Huron had been mentioning the “Emperor’s blessing” at every turn.
However, the successful transformation of over a thousand battle-brothers was a concrete fact, as was the daily supply of weapons and equipment.
Consequently, most people had accepted Huron’s status as the Emperor’s Chosen, or perhaps even a Living Saint.
Thus, the meeting to reorganize the Chapter serfs and establish a larger, more detailed, and professionalized Chapter Auxiliary passed without resistance.
Hearing the Chapter Master’s assurance, Odinson felt slightly more at ease and began discussing how to build the framework with the others.
Since Huron forbade them from copying the Chapter’s style of total military oversight, the management team could only look for answers in their past experiences.
However, since the administrative personnel Huron promised hadn’t arrived yet, and they weren’t sure of the quality of the first batch of Chapter Auxiliaries, most of their talk was theoretical.
This was exactly why Huron felt the “Badab Government” was such a ragtag crew.
After listening to their discussion for a while, Huron signaled for them to pause.
“Let’s put the rest aside for now.
Our first goal is to seize control of basic resources—industries like food, water, energy, and air circulation.
We must avoid being held hostage if we eventually fall out with the nobility.”
Odinson thought for a moment and offered his suggestion.
“In that case, our first objective could be expanding the production scale of corpse starch.”
Huron was curious.
“Why?”
Odinson showed Huron the data on his data-slate.
“Because we happen to have the relevant resources.
After the rebellion of the nobles who conspired with xenos to smuggle addictive neuro-drugs, many merchants from the Corpse Starch Guild joined them.
The assets of those traitors are now in our hands.”
The catalyst for Huron’s claim to the title of Governor-General of the Badab Sector was a rebellion by several Badab nobles who had colluded with xenos to smuggle contraband, attempting to overthrow the original planetary governor.
After the Astral Claws were invited to suppress the rebellion, the traitors were quickly put down, and their assets naturally fell into the Chapter’s possession.
Although many nobles—especially the former planetary governor—were currently trying to argue their case to annex those assets, they didn’t dare be too brazen, given that the Astral Claws were clearly determined to dig their heels into Badab.
Huron scanned the data.
It included a substantial number of corpse starch factories and production equipment.
If these resources could be integrated and utilized, satisfying the hunger of Palatos Hive would at least no longer be a problem.
And being full was already a dream for the people of the Hive, especially those in the Underhive.
Huron already had a plan in mind.
“Thanks” to the Imperial elite’s fear and rejection of the self-evolving Men of Iron, this sentiment had trickled down, leading the lower classes to view electronics and automated machinery with equal loathing.
The result was that many industries retained a staggering amount of manual labor.
Most people favored skilled human laborers over artificial intelligence.
The starch factory expansion project Odinson planned was no different.
In his proposal, a total of approximately one hundred million people would need to be mobilized as labor.
This manpower would mainly be used for transportation, loading, and installation; machinery would only be used for the high-precision components.
As for the wages of these people?
Odinson felt the Chapter Master was relatively kind toward mortals, so he had allocated quite a high level of compensation for the workers.
Not only would meals be provided, but extra starch and vitamin tablets would be distributed as wages and bonuses.
Huron’s eyebrows knitted into a tight knot as he read this.
What made him feel even worse was that, according to his memories, Odinson’s arrangement was indeed exceptionally merciful.
Providing meals plus extra wages and bonuses—vitamin tablets were a genuine luxury item, and to those in the Underhive, they could even be used as medicine.
Precisely because of this, Huron decided that the first batch of Auxiliary personnel would be selected from these workers and their families.
As long as they could eat and drink their fill, the bottom-tier people of Warhammer were quite docile.
Under ten thousand years of large-scale artificial selection, the ones who weren’t docile had long since been culled.
Odinson’s “benevolence” would be enough to make these Underhivers feel profoundly grateful, further strengthening the stability of the Auxiliaries.
Only at times like this could Huron truly feel the madness of the Warhammer world.
Yet he was powerless to change it overnight; he could only use the system to alter the status quo as quickly as possible.