Basics

System notification! Congratulations to Special non-playable character Elizabeth Almeria for founding the 4th village on Alerma, founding of Hadran; special reward of 800 merit points.

Special non-playable character? What was going on?

System alert, as a special npc you have permission to view the world forum. In the future, to view the world forum, visualize it.

System alert, village has been founded but not lord manor exists, please find a suitable area for the lords manor.

Suddenly a large gray square appeared before me.

'Four! We haven't even been here for an hour!' -Xin, player

'Who the hell are the first three? How'd they complete the lord's starting quest so quick, I just finished it.' -Gal, player

'Special npc!' -Trazed, player

'+1' -anonymous

'+2' -Heaven Sent, player

'Didn't the developers say the special npc's would be hidden?' -Cul, player

'Don't seem to be the case' -Hunter, player

'Yeah, But there's like 51 of them in the whole game! That we got 1 on our server! We're lucky.' -anonymous

'+1' -Xin, player

I waved my hand over the large grey box. It snapped shut like a scroll and disappeared. I cleared my mind. I would focus on the here and now. I chose where I wished the lord's manor to be. A bright flash of light enveloped the land and a large building appeared. It was not fancy, but it was suitable for the lord of a small village.

I placed the bag of resources at my feet as I looked at my people. "Welcome to Hadran. I hope we may all work together to build a better future for ourselves."

A tour of the manor revealed that there were three distinct areas inside the house there was a East and western wing. Each consisting of two rooms and a storage area, the final area was the north wing. It had the lord's quarters, kitchen, study, and pantry.

After the quick tour of my new manor I set aside a pair of rooms in the east wing, which was its entirety for those who were injured or sick.

I began to delegate tasks, Shanri would preside over the sick. Although she was no doctor she knew more than anyone else. I had Isok and half of those that remained to build small houses after I had laid out where a few of the central roads would be.

I split the remaining half in half again. I had some go to the river to collect water, and the rest to the forest to begin harvesting food. At this point there was not much more for me to do. So I walked back over to the obelisk and placed my hand upon it. A grey box appeared.

Territory: Hadran village (grade 1)

Territory size: 10 leagues squared

Territory immigration pull: (platinum) 10*(1+75%) = 17.5 rounded down to 17

Territory effects:

What was all this? Father and mother had not mentioned this to me. Had father ever seen these? But, Immigration? Who would know of this small backwater as things currently stood?

"Mylady?" A quiet voice asked. "There are several people gathered near the village edge who have asked to see you." Li-li then quickly dashed away, not leaving me time to ask her anything.

Well, I should greet these people. I reasoned that I could always recruit them as new villagers. I walked down what would eventually become one of the main roads. I could see a rather large group standing off to the side, shuffling nervously.

They were all men, an age range of twenty to around fifty. They had the look of farm hands. Calloused hands and dark tans from working under the sun all day. Among them an older man stepped forward.

"I am Elizabeth, lady of this village." I greeted them by introducing myself.

"I am Als." The old man answered in kind. "I was elder of my village before the Sundering."

I smiled. "You must have come a long way. Please, this way, I'll see if I can get you any refreshments." I led them to the manor. Those who had gone to fetch water were returning, so I offered to let our new arrivals drink from the buckets and those that had returned I put to the task of creating some basic lodging.

After I had settled the arrivals in the manor and brought them what was left of our food did I take Als aside. "Do you plan on staying here or moving on?" I asked cautiously.

"After the kindness milady has shown us, how could we just leave?" Als said kindly, clasping his hands behind his back. "Unless milady wishes us to leave?"

"No, I would be filled with joy should you all chose to stay, but I do not suffer those who rely on others to do their work here." I said with a kind, yet stern tone.

"We are farmers, should you have need of a field to tend. We will do so happily." Als replied.

"At the moment I don't need fields tended to, but homes built." I looked at Als, "Are your people up for it?"

Of course, it wasn't easy to start a village, but the bag of resources given to me but Zystim helped immensely as not trees had to be felled for their lumber until almost all the basic houses had been built. Of course only the stone remained in the bag and we discovered that we could only take items from the bag, and not put them in.

There were few tools, so work began to slow dramatically. In the end O decided that we should create a fence around the village. To make sure it would be a large enough project that it would last until enough timber had been felled for other projects I decided the fence would be two leagues along the shorter side, and three and a half along it's longer side.

Of course this fence was completely basic. Even a somewhat determined calf could easily break through the interlocking tree branches and knee high piles of dirt. But with it being estimated to take around two days to complete, it was perhaps the best option as food slowly trickled in from the forest. But most importantly was that the fence did not protect the village at all.

Instead it was near the borders of the land the village controlled, and would turned into productive farmland at the first opportunity. But we would need more tools as well. We needed quite a bit more than I had expected, it was... rather irritating.