[X][Reform] Primary: Land reform
[X][Reform] Secondary: Naval reform
[X][Fuel] Primary: Development of new industries
[X][Fuel] Secondary: Deepening trade ties with growing powers
The entire naval system needed reform if the People wanted a hope in gygo to resist the naval pressure of the Syffrynites, but in order to pay for these reforms they needed other reforms. They needed to be more productive with the land that they actually owned, to be able to produce more things to sell in case their old staples were no longer viable, and they needed more trading partners to obtain all the raw goods they required. To that end, they undertook a series of sweeping reforms. The first and most profound was a reworking of land distribution. Surveyors went through and rationalized the distribution of land and laws governing them. Families that owned a dozen tiny plots scattered across two or three provinces had all those plots consolidated into single packages under a single set of laws. Common and Crown lands that had gone into decline from neglect or over-utilization were similarly reorganized, either put into saner arrangements rather than distributed in patchwork, or sold off to wealthy families that could make better use of them. The natural philosophers of the universities were also brought in to rework crop management practices with the latest in scientific knowledge, to best ensure the vital flows of elemental essences continued to flow through the terrain despite the reorganization.
The effort saw the coffers of the crown swell once again, and the reorganization of the fields also allowed more sheep to be raised in pasture, bringing in more wool that could be processed. The clever artisans of the cities could build larger and more sophisticated looms, allowing for the wool to be processed more finely and more quickly than anywhere else, producing a very fine product that also brought in more wealth. With the increased emphasis on naval matters, the need for intricate clockwork soon appeared, and the experienced metal casters, printers and gunsmiths found that they could expand their ranks with clockwork guilds. Redshore and the Monsoon Sea city of Newport swelled with industry.
But those industries were ever hungry for raw resources that the People struggled to acquire within their own territory. They made many deals, including with Syffrynites in the Monsoon Sea. The more reasonable ones anyway, not the hated Vortugs, but the ones that would buy their weaponry and hire their forces as mercenaries, ones like the Sketch and Halvyni, who were from the radical Meshamini sects the People had supported in generations past and seemed to recognize their scholarship. These trade deals also exposed the People to some of the more esoteric innovations of the Syffrynites, as the Sketch and Halvyni traders they met were part of complex and elaborate 'joint stock trade companies' that used strange methods of credit and debit to finance the construction and outfitting of their trade missions. Once the scholars at the university actually talked with people of actual accounting responsibility it made considerable sense to them.
However, as several bad winters rolled through, it became obvious that all of these reforms and money making efforts had come too little, too late. The Nevien Patriarch used his trade networks to buoy his people through a famine and unify the Gylruv kingdoms to the north, while the Black Sheep had done something similar to the tribes of the east. All land routes to the east were controlled by those two groups, and together they could throttle the flow of luxuries from the east to the People and then onward to the Saffron Sea. With the People still playing catch up in the sea and the Khemetri undergoing economic chaos as silver and gold flooded the markets of the Saffron Sea from the west, the loss of those overland silk routes would mean the death of the People. If either of the Gylruv or Black Sheep cut off the supply of raw resources, the economy of the People would stall, and if both did it at the same time, the economy would outright explode.
The Gylruv, their northern ports spending an increasingly intolerable amount of time frozen over in the winter, had reason to go to war with the People. Their envoys made it increasingly clear that they wanted the river ports on the Yllthon, and also passage through Trelli. The Black Sheep, increasingly annoyed with the Vortuga and Sketch efforts in the Lands of Spice and Tea, were making noises that suggested that they might like Newport for themselves. The armies of both of these powers were immense from the territory they had conquered giving them huge populations to draw upon. The generals and spies and ambassadors of the People figured that they had enough of a dense urban core to fight off one of these powers, but it was also pretty obvious that if one struck the other would not be far behind to tear apart the distracted People. Only internal troubles from the bad weather and the knowledge that whoever pounced first would likely get the lesser share of the spoils, but it was also obvious that eventually one of them - probably the Gylruv deciding that the warm water ports were a good enough prize for their needs - decided that the lesser prize was good enough.
The ambassadors saw only one path that would guarantee safety: submission to one power or the other. If the People agreed to vassalization under the Nevien Patriarch or the Black Emperor then the other could not tear off a chunk of them. Of the two, the Black Emperor with his better trade routes and penetration into the Kus regions of the Lands of Tea and Spice and opposition to the Syffrynites in the Monsoon Sea was probably preferable, but the Nevien Patriarchy also claimed descent from the ancient Amber Road, and the Patriarch had even gone so far to declare himself 'haddyth', a debased form of the Old Ymaryn for 'high king', as part of a claim to legitimacy over the rest of the Gylruv, so there was probably more legal wiggle room for forging a low pain vassalization arrangement.
Or the People could defy both powers and almost inevitably be torn apart in the struggle.
Decision time
[] Bend knee to the Gylruv (1.1x)
[] Bend knee to the Black Sheep (1x)
[] Defy both (0.8x)
