Chapter 451: Undercover Arrival
The next few days were a blur of trips around town with the trolls, repairing farms, fixing crops, and ensuring that everyone had intact food storage, while helping the new arrivals from just before the battle settle in.
There wasn’t an idle hand in town, and even Pops had relented and hired an extra worker to do sales and cleaning in the front, so that ad didn’t get pulled from essential work to do it for him.
They were too busy for that.
Dominic had managed to find the ti to finish the clubs for the trolls, but now that they had all their equipnt, they were all dedicated to helping around town, with only five trolls at a ti working the walls.
Security was on everyone’s mind, but the Manor was far enough inside the town that it was a lower level concern than the other houses.
"Are you off to fix gardens again?" Prince Fahad asked as Dominic prepared to leave the Manor after lunch.
"Not quite. We’ve got a few things in the industrial section to check out. The rchants have a caravan in town, and they want to talk to ," he replied.
Fahad nodded. "I heard that they’re sending workers for the airship docks. That’s be a great benefit to town, once airborne shipnts start to arrive.
I didn’t expect things to move this fast, but it looks like the actual shipnts will be ready before the final details of the trade negotiations are."
Dominic laughed at the Prince’s annoyed tone. "Well, we have to do sothing to keep them motivated to do more than drink and enjoy Beth’s cooking."
"Have you gotten any word from the Mages about the refugees headed this way? I heard from the border patrol that they had already crossed, but they were moving fast, and we don’t know if there are mages among them, or just more trolls.
I swear, there won’t be a single one left in Axbridge at this rate."
Dominic shrugged. "They didn’t ntion anything about excessive numbers of mages. But they also didn’t ntion a lot of trolls. I will have to go talk to the village Chief to see how many more he has received.
They’re mostly going to that village directly, and he kept most of the Swamp Trolls that ca with the last attack.
Their numbers are growing nearly as fast as Wistover’s are, and they’re going to be a proper town soon.
Even if I’m doing most of their trading for them, other than at the market."
"That market really is a wonder, you know? Every day, I get more ssages about the droughts and crop failures at ho, pushing
to find a way to solve them. But here, there is so much food that they don’t even know how to store it all.
If we can get airship transports full of stable goods, which aren’t going to get bogged down in the bad weather, we can keep entire cities fed." Fahad insisted.
"I think that you should co with
today. There are people that you should et." Dominic agreed.
Intrigued, the Prince followed him and the trolls across town to the warehouse where the rchant’s Guild was welcoming a caravan.
There were also a pair of mages from the Duskblade Sect there, but that was fairly normal, as the Guild supplied them with a wide variety of materials for the school.
"Ah, Your Grace, welco. We’ve got your shipnt." The rchant began, with a glance at Prince Fahad.
"I’ve brought him to et them." Dominic explained, and the rchant nodded, then led the group of Dwarves out of the back room.
Fahad gave Dominic a confused look, and waited to see why this would interest him.
"Your Highness, these lovely gentlen are our new Magitech Engineers to work on the airship improvent project . They will be trying to improve the speed, cargo capacity and efficiency of the airships that we are using to move cargo.
There are so considerations that have co up in the past about using storage magic, so the plan is to make faster cargo vessels with the ability to move larger payloads.
That will make up for it, without the security risk of an integrated storage spell.
Whether they still load it with storage bags full of bulk goods is up to them, but for both industrial and military use, these should be far superior to the previous generation."
The Dwarves nodded in agreent. "Prince, Duke, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. We have blueprints ready to start, and our lead magitech engineer has experience making orbs to improve tal quality, so we can make lighter and more durable hulls.
However, I am told that the Duke also has so blueprints and skills of his own for the project."
Dominic smiled. "I got a blueprint for a bypass turbine that might work well on airships. It’s got a greater air movent rate than a traditional propellor for the sa mana cost."
The Dwarf smiled. "Now we’re talking. Combine that with a lightened structure, levitation magic and an upgraded hull design, and I think that we can really do sothing special."
Fahad patted the Dwarf on the shoulder. "Axbridge will be counting on you. We need the cargo capacity to get goods to our cities. It’s been a rough year, and even with storage bags, it’s not easy to move tonnes of potatoes."
The rchants laughed. That was one of the greatest issues of their ti. Storage bags had limited space and weight. But bulk food was incredibly heavy. Even if they wanted to compress their shipnt to just one wagon, it would take a thousand shipnts to pay for the bags they needed to remove the other six or eight wagons worth of food storage.
"So, airships for everything is the plan?" Fahad asked.
"I suggested a train line as well, but we would need to run a lot of new track. Castle City doesn’t have rail service. The King of Cygnia has been resistant to adding new track. He thinks they’re just more restrictive roads." The rchant sighed.
"You can’t win them all."
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