And now that that silliness is over.
Speculation on the benefits of the Great Forge?
Good old megaproject analysis to the rescue!
-What it does:
--Unprecedented increase in iron production and recycling, leading to explosion in iron tool availability and equipment innovation. We already have a lot of these, but if we don't have steel when we start we'd get it really soon after. Then comes all the fun stuff you can make with steel, springs, gears...
-What it needs:
--Large supply of iron ore. While initially Redhill local mines will suffice, we need to change how we mine the metal or how we transport ore to actually keep the furnaces fed once we scale it up.
--Large supply of charcoal. We'd need a lot more forestry, and we'd need to transport large amounts of bulk charcoal. We'd need to invent whole new ways to burn it more efficiently to make it work.
--Large supply of mechanical power. While aqueducts are a good start, the system does demand a fair bit more than that to keep it working at full force. We're going to need to make our mills more efficient and easier to maintain unless you want to shut down the ironworks to replace a single stripped gear.
--Gathering large numbers of smelters and ironworkers. This would probably greatly influence Guild politics.
-What are it's consequences:
--Pollution becomes visible. The emissions from iron smelting will remain low, thankfully, since most iron ores don't have a lot of noxious materials once it cools to stable slag, but we'd be burning enough charcoal to blacken the sky with smoke. We'd need to either come to an accomodation with this socially, or work on ways to burn it more cleanly.
--Economy skew. Concentrating such a major industry will need to find whole new ways for master artisans to work together. Administrative in nature but also political because building the iron works will touch on the miners for the ore, the ashers for the charcoal, the traders to transport all the fuel and product, the smelters to process it, and the millers to maintain the hammers. The smiths will move in to take advantage of the high availability of quality metal, the alchemists to take advantage of the slag products, and priests move in to service the population and study metal. Then further concentrate as the potters and glassblowers imitate the economies of scale by grouping their fuel intensive workshops together to work more product with less fuel. Short version. True City.
It occurs to me that the Khemetri do not know about the cure for cholera, and that they are sophisticated and wealthy enough to be able to maintain the scourge warding as well. The former is free, but we might trade the later, say, for some of their knowledge on constructing large stone projects, or knowledge of the stars.
The main issue with maintaining the warding is conveying the rather esoteric knowledge through a translator, and transferring institutional knowledge to a theocracy via your priests.
Difficult.
I'd probably just start with Cholera.
Sacred Warding is too easy to fuck up, and we've seen little of libraries needed to record it accurately without being integrated into religious practice.
...and they'd also be reluctant to retool their economy like that. It seems they've gone Build Tall for their temples, one giant temple, rather than our shrines in every settlement, and herds in every settlement.
You do realize that the Eastern Roman empire, or the Byzantine Empire as we known them, exists in the East, right? So knowledge wasn't lost. On the contrary, the Roman empire continued along for another thousand years until they were conquered by cannons and the Ottoman Empire.
While they existed as a political entity, the various crisis happening to them as they broke up/shifted power DID result in the loss of a lot of institutional skill and knowledge however, while the cultural shifts didn't help either.
tl;dr It would just turn the Stallions and the Martial we just gained into a mobile version of themselves that we'll also keep putting off integrating forever.
Theres no reason to integrate a mercenary group except subordinate slots and wealth generation. If you want to fix their culture just park them in Valleyhome for a few generations.
I think it was Martial Cap from arsenal 2, and tech refund from arsenal/shrine/library synergy.
We've yet to meet the Shrine 2 on that.
AN actually confirmed that us and all our neighbors have what amounts to short swords, pretty widespread even, so i think it just hasn't been added? I think that was in response to me, so "sword abby" would find it in search? Alternately, searching whatever the term is for the egyptian curved blade weapon khep-something would find it, since he used that word in that post.
AN mentioned that we've been copying the Khopesh from the Khemetri, but he ALSO mentioned that Case Hardening supported a longer and harder sword than we used to be able to make with iron.
