We all waited with baited breath for the first two weeks of winter until the first news from the outside world finally made it's way to us. Initially, we became very apprehensive when we saw fifteen ships approaching the island, but after we recognized the ships as being part of Kao's fleet, we became relieved.
Kao, Shasta, and a handful of other military personnel arrived to both pick up the dwarven soldiers as well as get first hand accounts of what happened in the war here. After we gave the full rundown over the course of a few days, Kao seemed quite keen on working with the dwarves who I had tasked with helping to make the rifled artillery. While they're too difficult to make to be useful on a ship, as singular defensive weapons, they can be incredibly powerful, so I'm not surprised at his interest in them.
We got a rundown on what had been happening throughout the rest of the world from them as well. A little over a week after the enemy troops had shipped out to attack us last year, it sounds like the handful of elven ships set off from an area not far from Rathland. A week later, a few ships from one of the neighboring countries returned and reported that the bulk of their fleet was attacked by leviathans. While Kao wasn't able to verify the exact numbers, it sounds like over ten ships were destroyed in the first encounter with leviathans alone, and that had convinced that country's commander that the whole attack should be called off and re-evaluated.
The news that the fleet was attacked by leviathans seemed to spread like wildfire through the mainland. In fact, according to Kao, it seemed to spread faster than should have been possible. Regardless of that fact, Rathland itself devolved into civil war within a week, with four different factions vying for control. Kao said that the uprisings themselves were quite weak, and could have easily been crushed by Rathland's central military, or their neighbor's military, had they been present, but rumors had begun to circulate already that the King and Baron's ship was eaten by a leviathan, so many people felt the need to back one of these new factions instead.
When we tried to line the timelines up though, these rumors came a full month before anything had happened to the King or Baron, and in fact, this all began happening almost a week before the invasion of our island even started. Things continued to devolve over the following weeks until the bulk of the military returned home.
At that point, though they were currently lacking their leader, they began to stomp out the rebellious factions who had spread the lies that the King and Baron had died. Though only a little over two more weeks later, the Elven Matriarch Elloetta would announce that she had seen both King Besmond III and The Baron of Compfur's ships being destroyed by leviathans. Between herself and the elves with her, they had managed to keep a leviathan from destroying their own ship, at the cost of a significant amount of mana.
Of course, that was just the story they had told everyone. While less than half of the Rathland military believed that story, with winter coming to an end, and with no evidence of either the King or Baron returning, the military itself split into factions, and the civil war began again after only a month.
A month later, Elloetta personally asked Kao to temporarily take in a few refugees that she eventually wanted to take refuge on our island instead. Kao agreed for a small fee after hearing we had already agreed to take them in, which we verified today when asked. I'm a little frustrated by the whole ordeal, because it feels like we're a country in name only at this point, but I suppose in some ways that is true. We're still simply too small to not just get trampled over by all the other big players, though we did prove that we can at least make it incredibly painful to fight us directly.
It seems like great lengths were taken on the mainland to make it seem like we hadn't really defeated Rathland, but instead that Rathland had simply fallen prey to bad luck and poor planning. They set out to attack us, only to be badly damaged by leviathans, lose their leadership, and then have their country fall into civil war. According to Shasta, very little of what happened in the war actually seemed to make it to the mainland as news, other than our use of "unique" tactics and weapons.
In fact, it sounds like many of the rumors seemed to say our military tactics were quite behind and that we had merely gotten lucky in our war. I'm not entirely sure if this is being said by those who participated to help save face, or if someone else is purposefully saying these things, but either way, I suppose it is probably good to be underestimated when it comes to war.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Another interesting series of events were what happened on Kao's island while we were being attacked. They had left minimal personnel there to stop Rathland from using it as a base of operations while simultaneously later using it to drive away any resupply ships. Well, a few resupply ships did show up, and they kept them stalled and preoccupied right up until from high up in a watchtower, with the aid of a telescope we provided, they spotted the majority of the retreating army from after we made our bargain with The Baron.
With a few hours of extra lead time before all those ships would actually arrive, they shooed all the resupply ships off their island within an hour, saying they were welcome to do as they pleased. Once the resupply ships left, the dwarves sunk five of their own vessels off shore, and then moved all their supplies from their fort into a large bunker to hide.
The retreating forces and resupply ships soon realized that the dwarves had played them as fools, but when they returned to the island a few hours later, it looked like all the dwarves had packed up and left the island. Kao said that judging from the rumors he heard from the returning army, the army had every intention to sink any dwarven vessels they ran into during their retreat, so hiding had probably saved quite a few lives as most dwarven ships are generally slower than human ships. This was all at the cost of those ships, which the dwarves on the island then had to spend considerable effort recovering valuables, such as cannons, from.
We hadn't even thought of that, but honestly, we should attempt our own salvage missions. There are a considerable number of shipwrecks around our island now, and some are even in relatively shallow waters. I'll think on how exactly we'll attempt to recover those later. For now, we have more pressing issues to take care of, like dealing with our new refugees.
The refugees that we're supposed to take in are currently staying on the mainland with Kao, but he wants us to take them this winter. There are thirty-two in total. They seem to have been members of one of the factions that started up the civil war shortly after the army left, which makes me think that Elloetta probably had been planning something like this for a while, and now we're hiding away her political pawns. Well, as long as they don't cause problems and help contribute to the country, it should be fine. I never said I wouldn't lock them in prison indefinitely if they didn't behave, after all.
Considering our population has mostly recovered, though there is a bit of a level disparity between the new summons and those who survived the war, I was hoping to transition back to a peacetime economy fully. Then, I'd like to start some more academic pursuits, considering my level has reset again. Though before that, I'll need to collect the two goblins that I sent off with Shasta, and have them start working with Elora on recordkeeping.
After that, I've got a lot of trade I'd like to conduct, if the merchant makes it back this year. If not, then we'll have to make do for another year. Some of our bargas survived the war, as we butchered quite a few just before, though a few of the remainder got quite sickly while being kept underground for almost a month. We still have a surplus of paper, as that was one of the trade goods I squirrelled away in an underground vault to be used after the war, though the paper mill isn't quite fully repaired yet.
We used the rest of our deposit of Hadfield steel up before the war, so now we're actively looking for more iron deposits that we can use around the island. We still have some copper deposits that we're aware of, but ultimately, we might actually need to find a good way to recover the metal from all those sunken ships to supplant our current lack of metal.
For security purposes, I also want to think about ways we can expand our food supply to increase our population even further. Currently, we have a population of about 600 demons, a little over a dozen dwarves, and one elf. I think that our current food supply, if fully utilized, could probably support almost three times that. Between our crop fields, underground mushroom farms, the artificial tide pools, and the partially completed fishing jetty, we have a decent number of sources of food. However, I'd like us to be able to support more than ten times our current population, rather than just three.
First, Zeb and Zaka will need to actually expand our population to be closer to our limit. Then we'll be able to utilize the larger labor force to properly expand into the next valley over. There we have access to some more fresh water, where more fields can be grown, and a second artificial tide pool could potentially be dug out. That one won't have a natural bay to start from though, so the amount of labor required would be significant. Though I imagine it would be worth it as the food returns from the tide pools are quite significant for the low labor required to operate them.
Ultimately, I want us to have a larger population because I want to have more security in case we're attacked again, and also so that we can dedicate a number of individuals to becoming part of a standing army. During our last war, we spent a considerable amount of effort and energy building all sorts of defensive structures on relatively short notice. If instead we had a hundred soldiers who were dedicated to building more defensive structures and planning defensive stratagems year round, we'd probably have had much better chances overall.