I returned to my tower and started to reorganize over the next months. I agreed to pay and house 2000 French soldiers through the French ambassador. I also sent 250 various light stones in thanks for their aide. I stationed 1200 French soldiers in four small batteries in Camelot. The great thing was these soldiers were also a work force, working on roads and clearing fields and building bridges. I stationed 200 soldiers in Pendragon, Avalon, Lancelot and Excalibur. I was going to have trouble with Excalibur city as they didn’t have a currency yet. So I decided to rotate soldiers from Camelot every 6 months when the resupply run went there. I would also have to build another stone ship soon as the Galahad would be going on missions with me next year. Amelia gave me a rough estimate of populations in November 1st 1672. It was still chaos from the war.
Camelot 5600, Pendragon 700, Avalon 3800, Lancelot 1200, Excalibur 500…farming 1400
The population didn’t account for the French, so we had a few more. My biggest problem now was the difficulty for adding to population quickly.
The lack of hard currency issue was still cropping its head up. I had banks established in the cities. Every night I spent exactly 90 minutes Arisa, Cyra, Liana and Mina making coins. The woman had given birth during the war. Arisa and Cyra had boys on Aug 11th, 1673, named Tyree and Lyon. Liana had a girl on August 19th, Fryia. Mina had twin girls on August 25th, Iona and Cecilia. Riona had assessed everyone and she had gotten most of her adult students to cast spells. The good news is she and the others were learning how to teach the more powerful children who would come into their magic between 12 and 14. I still needed to finish the school. The college was making much faster progress without me, but I was the only one working on the magi school with 6 golems.
I spent most of my days getting orchards growing and rejuvenating soil. I required a field rotation for planted crops so each farming family had six planting plots, two rested each year. I hoped that this would keep the fields fertile without my intervention.
I had finished my finally fathering requirements with the Indians. From the medicine woman I learned they were not committing to sending the children to the magic school. They were slowly adopting the construction and white man ways. We did setup some laws for respecting the land and minimize pollution for all of Avalon.
Just before Christmas I announced the winter solstice was now a holiday of the new year, and introduced New Years Eve and New Years Day. It was fun to add presents and bring a festive mood to the holiday to replace Christmas. We had three different churches in Avalon and the priests were not ordained. Also moving the Calendar to start a new year on the solstice just made sense. Now getting presents for 20 children was not easy, the oldest Daphne had just turned 7. I was shocked I had been here over 11 years and the children were now showing to be intelligent and eager to please me, seeking favor. I tasked Ella and Renee with having birthday parties with cake and presents for all the children. Renee had actually married one of the music teachers at the college and I was happy for her.
The Knights of the Magi had grown to 62. Maya had actually found six infiltrators during the interview process. To prevent this we started a special school for non-magic beings starting at age 12. The school focused on physical development and fighting skills. I needed to get sword masters and martial artists to train them. The school would take 12-15 kids a year and they would have 8 years of training, so the school had a dormitory with 120 beds but I had two other dorms sketched out in the plans to possibly increase the number of knights in training to 360. The current Knights were running the school and they were some of the best conditioned fighters we had and I said they could exceed recruitment if they thought there were good candidates. Our actual fighting skill was probably only slightly above average. I moved the Knights school inside my personal estate. The students received pay which they could send to their family and it made it popular to sign up. The testing to become a Knight trainee involved physical tests and mental exams and we would only select the best. I told the instructors that selecting women was fine and if possible to include at least two in every class. Maya also played a role in insuring loyalty through mental scanning. My ultimate hope was the Knights would serve as bodyguards for my children in the future. I decided once a knight graduated at age 20 they had to serve 20 years in service and then would receive a pension or they could continue in service. I also decided the knights would have different grades from one star to seven star, my leftover video game mentality. Stars were earned by scoring certain levels on final exams. The exact specifics of the stars would be determined by the trainers.
After New Years of 1674 I was feeling good about everything and it was time to go build another ship. I was lying in bed alone and checked my general status.
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Magic Pool: 189, Magic Regen: 13.9 per hour
Spell Design Points: 7
I had hit enough spell points for the healing spell. Instead of selecting it though I went through other spells and founds many spells I wanted. I spent hours in my mental spell book. In the end I found two spells I wanted.
* Perfect Recall, Level 1 (0/100) (Mental Spell – tier 1) – recall an image in perfect clarity, COST: 0.2 Magic per image
* Manipulate Stone, Level 1 (0/100) (Stone Spell – tier 7) – control 4 cubic yards of stone, each level increases affected volume by 1%, COST: 1 Magic per minute
The perfect recall spell allowed me to create a mental photograph of anything I had seen. Once I created the image it was filed in my head and I could review it later. This was massive. I could get textbooks from my past life and novels too with a fair amount of work. The manipulate stone was super powerful too. Once cast the stone affected could be molded with my mind. It moved pretty slow, like molasses but it was much better than soften stone spell. If I cast soften stone and then manipulate stone the stone flowed almost like water. Building was going to get a lot easier in the future.
I spent most of January building the tower. My limit was my magic pool. I only had one monkey golem still salvaging but when I felt it return to the warehouse with a load I cut off its tie to my magic pool. Now I went 3 times every day to the tower to build. With the harden stone I switched to having the walls being just 14” thick. I could also make items now. Some nights I would work on my fine control creating small objects. I made a rough 6 shot revolver. But of course the science for bullets was far away… I would have to get some chemists. I didn’t know how to make smokeless gunpowder or a percussion cap. I sat there and searched my memory with perfect recall skill. I found it cordite and gunpowder in my memory and how to make both but for some reason I didn’t find any clues to making a percussion cap. I did have knowledge of bullets and bullet casings from a report I did in high school. I took 28 images using perfect recall and spent time transferring the deadly knowledge to pages. I filled it in my library and put the revolver with it. By the end of January the tower was 40’ high and had two completed floors. With strengthen stone and my abilities the tower would be able to reach higher into the sky than before. I reset my vision. The tower would reach 1000 feet into sky and have 40 floors. It would take me years to finish but it would worth it.
The spear that disrupted the golems had magic runes inscribed on it and the spear was very old. It meant there was a magic science for creating magic items. I guess golems were technically magic items. It was something I could investigate once security was up.
In mid-February of 1674 I went to Camelot. I had hit Amelia’s target on coinage so that was good but she wanted 100,000 more coins for the new cities that were being founded. My new spell allowed me to make quick repairs to the road as I travelled with my six golems. I choose to walk rather than fly to see the development. I was happy to see so many people and my golems identified me as the lord of Avalon. People gave me wide berth but I made an effort to talk to people. It was a two week trip but it was good and we had 4 other towns forming. Camelot hadn’t grown much since I had left. This was due to the people who fled during the war and low influx of new people. I went to the shipyard and two large wooden ships were being built. They were 200’ long merchant ships. That was good but both were in the early stages. I found Armon and talked to him about building another stone ship. We went inside and he had 4 blueprints. I took a few minutes and added a steam engine. It was very basic and rather than a paddle wheel I decided on two large props. Of course my thermal stone spell would negate the need for coal while I was aboard. We selected a simple ship, 220’ in length with a v hull and we cut the number of masts to just 2. It took me just two weeks to lay out the hull with my spells. Another week had the masts and decks finished. The steam engine took a week to build and another week to get working. It took two more weeks of adjustments to get working well enough. I then copied the engine for the other prop. It took us six weeks to get the ship on the water. It made about 3 mph at full open pistons. The good news was there was no chance of the stone contraption blowing. I resized the props and we made just over 4mph into a light wind. I had miscalculated the size of the steam engine. My drawing from perfect recall were not to scale. I kicked the ship to the curb and decided to build from scratch. The new ship was the same size but this time the steam engine was 1/3 of the space under deck. Well this time I made it too big. I enlarged the props. The ship could make 15mph on the ocean now. We had no nearby coal pits so I was the only power with thermal stone. If maintained we could get to Europe in about 9 days. The Galahad was in port and I pulled 40 crew. I added 36 marines as well. The ship ended up with 6 bow, 12 port, 12 starboard and 2 stern cannons. All were 24 pounders. We loaded the prepared supplies on ship and were off.
On the trip I made basin to store sea water in and then boil off the water and condense it for fresh water. We scrapped out and put the salt in casks after each run. It gave the troops something to do. I also had made a large stockpile of light stones.
It was a 10 day trip to Portugal. We entered northern Spanish waters flying the Avalon flag and two warships came after us. I burned them from the skies. We entered port under cannon fire and crashed into the wooden pier. I sent four golems to silence the cannons while the crew and I waited on the stern deck. Soon it was silent except musket fire. I had the golems move and invade the castle. An hour later they had brought who they thought the lord of the city was to the ship. He was in fact the magistrate of the city. I told him I was here due to attacks on Avalon in America. The magistrate knew of the horrors from the ships that had returned. I asked about the inquisition. The local church had inquisitors… I immediately sent the four golems fourth to cleanse the church and bring back valuables. Two hours later they returned with coins and paintings. They made two more trips. It was substantial loot for a church. I had the golems bring the cities treasury as well. I had a special room on the ship for all the paintings I was getting. It took the Spanish three days to get a sizable army coming to the city. I released the magistrate and told him to tell the king he declared war first and if he wants peace I would talk to him after I attacked my next city.