Luckily, we knew that names could be changed. Tracy had a funny story about finding out that tid bit of information. Nick had apparently named their Outpost something stupid and Tracy had to convince him to change it.
She never ended up telling us what he originally picked, but the name they came up with afterwards was Stormfront, as a play for the man's affinity. I didn't meet the guy, but from what Tracy told us, he loved his affinity and refused to let the Outpost be named something that didn't include it.
I wasn't as vain as that, I didn't much care much for what the city was called. It didn't have to have Ice or Arctic in the name for my sake, but since the area we were in was currently a Winter Wonderland, it seemed fitting.
If one were to look back and connect the fact that we named our city after the area we were in, and then add that we were only here because of my affinity, then in some sense, the city was named after my affinity, but that was semantics by that point.
Still, I elected to wait on naming the Outpost and dismissed the notification to the side for later. I didn't have any names prepped, but I probably should have. My focus was more on getting here and starting construction rather than what name I would call it.
We would talk about it and throw around ideas before I finalized anything.
Still, people needed to be seen to for various non-lethal wounds and clean up needed to take place. As much fun as exploring the new pylon would be, that could wait until later.
"Good job everybody! Let's start on the clean up!" I announced.
Everyone seemed pleased with the outcome and I was happy as well. It wasn't standing alone against an army proud, but it was something to be proud of at least.
With some training and coordination, I could put together a decent force to be reckoned with.
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After the cleanup, all of my family who cared to weigh in stood surrounding the pylon coming up with names. Some were good, while some were laughably bad.
"We should name it Icefall. The snow clinging to the cliff face kind of looks like a frozen waterfall." Gabriel said.
Austin snorted before rebutting, "No, that's stupid. Winter's End is way better."
"No it's not! That means the end of Winter not..."
The bickering continued and it was slightly amusing to see everyone's thoughts. Most threw out some variation of Ice, Snow, Frost, or Winter with either a suffix or prefix attached.
I couldn't fault them for it, because all of my ideas were in the same line of thought.
Other than what Austin and my brother were bickering about, Icefall and Winter's End, a few others were proposed yet none stood out to me, but I did have the inkling of an idea.
Most of my Classes so far had followed a theme and I wanted to lean into that. I didn't care much for Norse Mythology before the world ended, but it seemed to love me from the Classes I was offered.
Champion of Niflheim, Hammer of the Jotnar, Frost Giants, all of it had ties to the stories of old. It made me question how much of it was real if we were close to the mark with our legends.
That line of thought spiraled further into how we would possibly know of it but I didn't wish to go down that route.
I had a name to think about and those thoughts could be left for later.
Keeping in line with the Norse theme, one that stuck out from the rest intrigued me. It kept to the similar convention of Frost and then something but I liked it nonetheless.
"Frostheim."
I hadn't realized I said my idea aloud until everyone turned to look at me. Frostheim seemed like a good choice for the area we were in. A land of Ice and Snow with deadly winters. It somewhat translated to Land of Frost but I liked it.
I couldn't very well name it Niflheim as that was already a thing and it could possibly be a real place. Plus, Frostheim sounded cool and as much as I liked to think it didn't matter, it did.
As people chewed on my idea, there were no immediate disagreements. They continued to hem and haw but no one could think of anything better.
To push everyone over the edge, I added, "We can always change it later if someone thinks of something better."
I would be heavily against it as I liked Frostheim, but it was still an option.
Nods of agreement went around and we had finalized the name of our city and I entered it into the notification.
Frostheim
After doing so, the usual menu for the pylon came up. It didn't hold as many options as I remembered but to see the familiar screen again was a relief. It also had the option to appoint an Outpost Chieftain.
It was a step down from the Town Mayor Abigail was before, but it opened her Profession back up to gaining experience.
Her Profession wouldn't devolve down to her current position, but her evolutions would be hindered if we didn't raise the Pylon's rank before she reached level 100.
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Reaching that for her Profession would take quite a while and we had time to upgrade our pylon without rushing.
As soon as the notification came through on her end, I could see her eyes flickering back and forth, reading all of the menu screens no doubt. She didn't wave her arms around anymore like I still did as she had much more experience with the menus.
It was just easier to point and touch and I never bothered to change that. I spent little time in the menus anyway. They were different than the status screen and the notifications that popped up usually, requiring more than just a cursory look.
Those could be called up or dismissed with a thought, or minimized with practice, but the pylon screens were different. They had a plethora of different tabs and options to click on and explore which made the simple commands of open and close not available.
You could learn to do it all manually, as Abigail demonstrated, but I never allotted the time to do so before. It seemed like a waste before.
I was content to learn eventually, through practice of using the menus more often.
On my end, I could see the different adjustments she was making and I let her have free reign. There was an option to restrict what she had access to but there was no need to do so.
That was more for people who didn't trust their advisors completely, Abigail was family, I trusted her with my life, let alone City management.
Some of the options needed an input now but others could be put off. Tax rate was the biggest one and we had finalized that before we placed the pylon, like we should have done for the name.
While the dungeon tax rate would stay at 1 in 5, 20%, the City's tax rate would be half that. 1 in 10, or 10%. Sam brought up a good point that people chose to go into dungeons while simply living wasn't.
Someone who worked as a Blacksmith selling wares to make a living was different than people who ventured into dungeons. In that, we decided to lower the tax rate for those people to make sure they were able to make a living.
This was all subject to change though. We weren't sure how the economy would turn or if certain things would effect it, but we were alright with setting it to 10% for now and seeing how that worked.
Setting the tax rate through the Civilization pylon was a touch different than paying taxes from before.
The System, being all powerful and whatnot, had what I called, a Wallet feature. Similar to how the Points worked in the tutorial, there was a section for Coins listed on everyone's status screen.
Mine had remained empty for the entire tutorial and still was. While I had physical coins in my possession, there were only certain ways to transfer them into this 'Wallet' section.
Gabriel came up with ideas for why and one was actually pretty funny to me. He claimed that being able to instantly transfer wealth from the physical to our status screens would make thieves and banks obsolete while also requiring the System to conjure physical money at every beings whim.
Whatever the case was, one of the ways to do so was through a Merchant. Not all could do it, but if they had the skills, they could take the physical coin and 'deposit' it, so to say.
They would, of course, charge a fee for doing so, but it was possible. Merchants weren't the only to hold that power and other Professions could as well. As well as certain buildings tied to a Pylon.
Banks and marketplaces could be built inside Cities that had a special link to Pylons that could facilitate the same action.
While all of that was way in the future for our fledgling City, it helped explain how the tax worked. Or more specifically, how it didn't.
Someone could, with a coin in hand, walk up and buy something with it while never paying the enforced tax. The System only enforced it on transactions that occurred with the transfer of coins through the Status screen.
While I was one hundred percent confident the System could have enforced both, it was likely it chose not to. With how much the System liked to demand a price to do anything, watching every transaction in every city in the entire universe was too much of an expenditure, even if it had the ability to.
There were other ways to avoid this tax besides paying with actual coins. Exchanges of services couldn't be tracked along with bartering.
I wasn't too concerned with tax evasion right now as it was impossible to track. Once we had the infrastructure set up that would change, but taking people in good faith would work for now.
People would cheat it no doubt, but that was fine for now. It would begin being an issue when our population started to rise. The few coins or so we lost now weren't that big of a deal.
Other than setting the tax, Abigail appointed our first advisor slot. Well, other than the city leader spot.
Tracy tried to explain the way the advisor slots worked but it was hard to grasp without seeing the screens in front of me. I filled one slot and was considered the City Owner, having full control over the pylon and anything among its menus.
Next in line was the person who managed the City. I could have taken the position if I wanted it and been both the Owner and the manager, but I didn't want to.
It didn't require me to change my Profession, but managing the City without the associated Profession was 100 times harder. Plus, it didn't make sense to do so when Abigail was already good at it and had the profession.
So while I was highest on the totem pole, Abigail was second. Similar to how Nick and Tracy ran things. Next came the various 'advisor' slots you could appoint. Things like a Treasury Advisor, or Security Advisor. The names could be changed or positions split up, but their function was clear.
Every position did something different, but mostly, it delegated some of the tasks of running the City to different people. It allowed them access to certain menus that they would need without opening up all of them.
Head Merchant was one of them that Abigail filled first. Jonathan was here with us around the pylon and accepted the notification swiftly. He hadn't thrown out many ideas for names but he knew he would be needed for this part.
While I wasn't going to restrict the advisor slots to only my family, I wanted to get our feet under us before we started branching out. The fact he was the highest level Merchant in our caravan was only a nice bonus.
After his appointment, an entirely new screen came up and I couldn't help but smile at it.
The shop was back, baby!
Well, there were some changes but it was similar enough. Opening that tab of the menu led to a staunchly bare list compared to what we were used to but it was still exciting to see anything available for purchase.
Pelts from certain animals were common along with mundane materials. Logs of wood or hunks of stone that weren't high in grade.
We weren't advanced enough to buy things from other planets and the list only held what other pylons were selling, and not even all of them at that. It only populated with listings from pylons that weren't too far away. At the bare minimum, we had at least one pylon in range.
I wasn't sure what the exact range was, as that was dictated by how strong the Merchant appointed was, but I was glad to see anything listed.
We hadn't seen a single pylon after leaving what used to be Chicago and I wasn't sure we were close to any.
We did travel in mostly a straight line and hadn't deviated to where any past cities used to be, but my mind chose to ignore that bit.
Increasing that range could be done in a few ways but that wasn't that important right now. I doubted anyone was selling anything useful, but that would change eventually.
Abigail changed a few other little things before I closed the screen but we didn't have any more appointments to make. What took priority now was construction.
Just thinking of digging again made my Spirit ache.