[X] Dead Priests (One compatible value: The Greater Good)
[X] [Main] Saltern
[X][Secondary] Study Health
[X][Secondary] Study Health x2
[X] [Kick] Saltern
Provinces - Megaproject x2
Stallion Tribes [Main] Chariots, [Sec] Expand Econ x2
With the new potion developed requiring salt, and salt being required for so many things anyway, the king carefully listened to his council and then authorized that significant resources be directed towards the construction of a new major project along the coast in Northshore. There was a place along the coast where what appeared to be an old riverbed had once run, producing an area where the tide came up unusually high but where a plausible wall could be built as a sort of dam. The biggest trick would be how to create a gate that could let the sea in when the structure needed to be filled, but keep it out when they wanted the water collected to disappear beneath the sun. They surveyed the land and got to work planning things out, sending workers to the location even as they started to fill wagons with cut stone and fired bricks and food for those who would actually do the job. It was massively disruptive to internal trade and supplies and actually getting the usual work done...
And yet, somehow, everything just came together all at once and a frenzy came over those working at the project. Something that was projected to take generations to get working properly instead only took years, and while there were setbacks and delays, the first walls built were better able to withstand the sea than any might have expected, and the crumbling of the gates gave quicker insight. Bricks and glazed tiles to make the collection of salt simpler came in faster than initially expected as the People threw personal effort into getting the project done. By the time the first children born after the announcement of the project were taking their rites of adulthood, the first batches of salt were already being scraped up.
Megaproject Completed!
Ancient Saltern
Gives an initial bonus to Econ, +1 Diplomacy every turn until the invention of currency, grants access to the Salt Gift action, and the Saltern extended project action, when acceptable sites for construction or expansion can be found
Legacy Gained!
Rush Builders: Extended projects cost more per turn but complete faster
New Concept: Extended projects are somewhat like megaprojects in that they require a commitment of actions beyond what one could usually develop in a single turn, but are less involved than megaprojects so they can be done with secondary actions and do not cause social disruption to stop part way through. Some may, however, suffer loss of progress is ignored
Perhaps some of the frenzy was the fact that the gift from the Xohyssiri was paying off quite well, the lessons and knowledge of their healers and Book of the Living, while gruesome, were also incredibly valuable for dealing with injury. Many shamans could set bones, and some of the Carrion Eaters knew the secrets of releasing the demons from the skull of a man suffering a head wound, but when given a sharp knife and fire the butcher priests could amputate a limb faster and more cleanly than any of the People. If a woman perished in childbirth then they could even sometimes cut the babe from her belly so that both would not be lost. It was unclean, spiritually dangerous work, but it was exactly the sort of thing the Carrion Eaters were for, and with the reduced number of workers being outright killed in accidents or dying from disease, the projections of the chiefs were perhaps overly pessimistic, hence why things completed so quickly.
The healers also told of a rare flower that the People might be able to trade with the Highlanders for that made dealing with painful sickness and injury. It came from somewhere in the south-west, but there were traders who occasionally wandered up from that direction who might be able to be contacted through intermediaries. The Xohyssiri had routes even further to the south that the People had never heard about that bypassed the Highlanders and the Southern Hill Folk, but one of those two would probably have to be a go between for the People if they were interested. A mission to the Highlanders might also be useful as the civil war had ended swiftly and decisively, with a new king rising to prominence and apparently beginning a project of consolidation and inscription of the law inspired by tales from the People.
Then again there was a rumour along their trade routes that the Metal Workers had discovered something interesting, or perhaps more ties with the Thunder Horse - who were apparently starting to refer to their term for 'king' of Thunder Speaker for their whole people - would give further insights into their conflicts with their eastern cousins. Or maybe they might take the relative peace of the western lowlands to send a mission to the Xohyssiri, who as far as anyone could tell the People had never actually fought and most stories were just ancient tales of monsters in the south-east. While they did things that the People disapproved of, so did basically all of their trade partners in one way or another, and maybe going to their homelands would give actual insights instead of fourth-hand stories and ancient campfire tales to scare small children.
Choose an Econ action
[] Expand Carrion Eaters (-1 Econ, -1 Mysticism, +1 Martial, many more Carrion Eaters, additional effects)
[] Study Stars (continues chain) + Survey Lands
[] Begin work on the Garden (-1 Econ, +1 Stability, starts megaproject)
Choose a trade mission target (-1 Diplo)
[] Highland Kingdom
[] Metal Workers
[] Thunder Horse
[] Xohyssiri
[] No one (No cost)
