Chapter 10:Karna's planning(Karna's POV)

Volon Therys

The city had a political system that I find complicated to explain. In theory, the city did not have any self-rule. All the local governors were appointed by Valyria, but at the same time, all of them were originally from the city. They were usually descendants of previous governors. Each governor represents a political force associated with Valyria and in general, their loyalty lies with the force that supports them and they usually pay unofficial tributes to them.

There were eight governors. Only three were from families connected directly connected with the forty of Valyria. The other five were connected with forces related to Volantis. Though, the authority from the eight families was sort of balanced. Because the dragon families with direct connection to the city were the ones too unimportant families to have the necessary power to get money from the fluent Volantis' slave trade, and so they ended up with an alternative.

Changing the power structure of the city wasn't too hard, as the city or more accurately town was merely a small local business that the Valyrians do not even bother to administer directly. Usually, the local families just pay off to keep their governors position.

In fact, in negotiating the ransom of that guy I already got the local Zeys family position of governor. And with the rest of the money, I got the five positions that belong to Volantis. Being myself six governors I can elect myself as the city lord easily. So by conquest, I am the ruler prince to the Rhoynar and, at least for now, the official city lord of the town to the Valyrians.

These troublesome political maneuvers were more of a way to ensure more time before an all-out conflict with Valyria starts. For now, I still have part of Sar Mell's army and integrated the still-alive mercenaries that this city contracted. I found out that the strategist general was a subordinate from the private army of the local Zeys family. The man was a summer islander and his name was Jolhar.

As a Rhoynar, I don't want my city to be Valyria-like in this regard. As a prince, I was thinking of what type of reforms I should do to develop the city. I thought of ending slavery. It might seem like a terrible idea at the time when the Valyrian empire is at its peak, but it will not have much of a consequence, because the town's position was completely irrelevant to the slave rote.

I will not become an ally of the local families no matter what I do, so it's better to use the end of slavery to cut off their influence in the city as soon as possible. Slavery is not only cruel, but it's inconvenient to the economical development of a place, simply because slaves don't trade so the money circulation becomes lower.

Though I don't want a beautiful title that actually did not achieve anything like Daenerys' breaker of chains one. There's no meaning in releasing people from slavery with only the clothes they were on. It is the human instinct that in the hard choice between their life and their freedom people will choose life.

After all, what's the meaning of freedom to one that has nothing left? If the slaves only get their body as a person back it is pointless, because they still have to work for their master that owns their land, their house, their shop, their gold, and so on.

With the support of the army, slavery was ended and forbidden in the region. The slaves that were set free got paid for all their unpaid work by their masters as the army enforced the law. But I nearly did not take out any money from the governors' families with this law, they actually paid their slaves with the means of self-subsistence. Blacksmiths' ex-slaves now became shared owners of the smith where they work. Ex-slaves farmers now own the land they work at. The examples keep on going.

I also forbade the local families from keeping private armies eliminating the ones that resisted. It is clear that in an oligarchical place like this abuses of power are common, so I ended up conducting investigations on each noble of the city and making every provable crime they commented being punished by the law.

They ended with a lot of people from the Zeys family being condemned for a large number of crimes and some even being condemned to death. The other families were a bit more normal some were heads of criminal organizations, others were loan sharks, and so on. Some crimes, like loan sharking, can not even be punished by this era's law.

The current Rhoynar's agriculture uses a three-field system. Which is a method of crop rotation in which the field is planted with one set of crops one year, a different set in the second year, and left fallow in the third year. A set of crops is rotated from one field to another.

On Earth, the technique was first applied in China in the Eastern Zhou period and was adopted in Europe in the medieval period. I also plan to reform agriculture by introducing seed drillers and a four-field system.

A seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sows seeds for crops by arranging them in the soil and burying them to a specific depth while being dragged in modern times by a tractor and in the more old forms by a horse. This ensures that seeds will be distributed evenly.

The four-field system, unlike the current method, does not have a fallow year. Instead, four different types of crops are grown in each year of a four-year cycle: a cereal crop, root crop, fodder crop, and grazing crop.

The different types of crops sort of compensate for the nutrients that the others extract from the soil, the last two permit the breeding of cattle year-round, and the cattle's feces fertilize the soil. But how to make farmers change to this new system? I think I will start to promote the changes myself using my personal charisma, it may be easier to convince the farmers to adapt to the changes.

I have been so caught up in my urge to grow stronger that I ended up forgetting to introduce these ideas to my family back in Sar Mell, I think I will send a communication to them later about this.

I put myself with enormous ambition for this era. I want to teach all people in the city to read letters and count numbers because education is the base of everything.

"Your highness, I just got an interesting report about the city's current state." Jolhar said.