The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 230
Chapter 230 – Future
The jaunt through the portal had been extremely interesting. Literally a whole new world of possibilities had opened to me. Of course, properly exploiting those possibilities was not something that could be done overnight. Even I couldn’t just wave my hand and have a properly functioning city formed in a day. Oh, the Earth Magic of it was do-able, but that was just one part of a greater whole.
The first step was securing the area, and beginning work on the crater. I had some of the garrison troops that I had not deployed on Earth yet take up positions around the crater, and used some of my undead laborers to start working on the bottom of the crater, constructing the great cisterns that would help the city withstand sieges. Constructing the cisterns first would allow the builders to create vertical channels for the water so that rainfall on the surface would collect under the city. Wards on the cistern, and those channels, would keep the water safe to drink, even if the rainfall was tainted by magic in some way, or if someone tried to poison the water supply.
That much could be done without my paying much attention. Once construction began on the agricultural floors, where the city would be using hydroponics and indoor gardens to grow food crops and alchemical herbs, I would likely need to pay more attention, if only to ensure that the environment had the right conditions to grow the herbs without the technology and magic being used stripping them of their power. Then, there would be the factories to provide the goods, arms, and other such things a city needed. But all those could wait, for the moment.
Instead, I had returned to my castle on Earth, and was focused on (amongst other things) the big logistical question for cross-planetary trade: the choke point. Simply put, the portal was the major choke point for trade. While thirty meters wide and forty tall was a significant gateway, the simple fact was that it was the point where all trade between worlds would bottleneck, and there was no good way to manage it.
The Earth side of the bottleneck was fairly straightforward to manage. Add some docks at Pagan for cargo ships, warehouses to store goods, and have vehicles to ferry the goods through the portal, once things on the other side were set up, and you basically made a port town, if not a port city. However, creating a pocket realm for the people living and working at the port, like had been done for the Elves of the Blood Oak, would ease the logistical concerns of creating a city on an island that had been all but uninhabited for generations. This much was fine.
The problem was on the Onerth side. Since the portal was at the center of the crater, that meant it would be at the center of the city. I’d already intended for the Scout Airship designs the Athelian Magitech Research Center devised as military scouts to be reworked into armed merchantmen, plying the skies of Onerth as they moved around, conducting trade. The Scout Airships had already had the machine gun turrets updated to use spellgun designs, and they had the primary cannon for major offense. If you stripped the stealth enchantments to add to the armor and shielding, and replaced the strike teams with a cargo hold with an expanded space enchantment, you had a perfect armed merchantman, which would only need to watch out for some of the larger aerial predators, like thunderbirds and dragons.
However, I was not fool enough to think that these armed merchantmen couldn’t be taken over. Any time they landed to take on supplies or trade goods, they would be vulnerable. And eventually someone would recreate them on Onerth, and you would have pirates and privateers at work. Whether it was a captured merchantmen or a pirate, it was too risky to have ships flying over my fortress city and landing in the center of all the fortifications to unload goods. That was an unacceptable security risk.
At the same time, having the ships land in a field outside the city walls would just add delays and introduce potential weaknesses. If the landing pad was outside the walls, then raiders or bandits could try and attack ships while they were docked, or intercept the cargo as it was being moved from the landing site to the city gates, taking what they could and escaping before a response force could mobilize from the city. That was also unacceptable, for obvious reasons. A middle ground was needed.
The middle ground, in my opinion, was to have a tower where airships could dock, possibly multiple towers, in different areas of the city, near the outer walls. This would keep the airships from venturing too far into the city itself, reducing the risk of rogue agents, while ensuring that the cargo transfer happened inside the walls, reducing the risk of bandits. It wouldn’t completely negate the risk to the city from someone taking over an airship, and there was still a chance that suitably motivated thieves could target cargo coming off or headed to the airships. However, those risks were low enough that I was not terribly concerned about that happening, just yet.
Not having to deal with the airships passing through the portal also meant that you did not need to fit them through the portal in one piece. This was big, because we could build major components on Earth, and move them to Onerth for final assembly. More importantly, it helped me control the spread of advanced manufacturing on Onerth, and the spread of magical knowledge on Earth. The manufacturing processes for building airships so quickly was not something I wanted to unleash upon Onerth until forces opposed to me were no longer an issue in the world, while the expanded space and dimensional storage technology was very much on the ‘do not let the humans know how to do this’ list. Not until they found out the secret on their own.
Like I’d told Eri and Dr. Fletcher, people weren’t ready for all the follow-on effects of true bags of holding, and other such things. A ship with an expanded cargo hold was less problematic, since the space was securely anchored with the ship. Pocket dimensions like my storage space were also fine, since one needed a reasonable amount of power and knowledge to create one, and the space was locked to you. A true bag of holding, however, could be picked up and carried around by anyone, and people trying to copy the enchantment could do a lot of really nasty things by mistake if they made mistakes. And mistakes were pretty much guaranteed when trying to create new and untested enchantments.
That much was true even for me. There was a difference between mixing and matching existing enchantments into more complex ones, especially when you actually knew what you were doing, and trying something completely new, without any guidelines. I had the benefit of copying another caster’s spellwork to create my pocket dimension, though it was my own power which grew it to its current size. There were several craters on Onerth where towers used to be where the mages who did the initial trial and error lived, before their towers either exploded, or were transferred into spaces with too many dimensions, or too few.
Of course, I had time to work out the specifics of the trade network. Building the new armed merchantmen airships would take some time, of course. Traditional modern airships took a year to make per craft, but much of that was because there was a lot of precision needed, along with creating high-strength materials. Shield and armor enchantments, combined with basic self-repair enchantments and regular magical maintenance dramatically reduced the amount of time needed for manufacturing and assembly. Currently, the Scout Airships were being turned out at a rate of one every six months, including fitting the weapons and controls. Once we got another production facility online, the armed merchantmen could be put out at about the same rate.
Building the port at Pagan would take several months, as well as adding in the warehouses, equipment, and all the other things needed to make a proper cargo port. An area for seaplanes to land and dock would also be a good idea, for when passengers started moving between worlds, or when the people who would be living on the island wanted to move elsewhere within Risen Athelia. Plus, of course, the actual homes people would be living in. All of that took time to build.
The Fortress City of Earthgate, as I was already planning to call the city in the crater of old Athelas, would take time to build, as well. Even just getting the structure up so that the crater was made level, and that proper walls and wards were installed, so that the city could be made safe, would take two to three years, by my reckoning, maybe more, unless I wanted to skip steps and use magic to ‘roof over’ the underground areas, and build them in as needed. If I were planning a simple project, and just needed the ground level, that would be the easy way of doing it. But I wanted a fortress, and having massive caverns that a city’s streets were suspended over were the opposite of that. One lucky explosion, or well-placed penetrating strike, and entire neighborhoods would collapse into the unfilled space. If it was built in before the ground level was done, the structure would be much stronger, and harder to bring down. Getting the city fully built and full of people to make it an actual living settlement? That was a five-year plan, if I was being honest. But I was an immortal, undying lich. Time was one thing I had plenty of.
“Your Majesty, there is a message from the leaders of the East Asian Alliance.”
I looked over at Galeren, the Greater Zombie who served as my Seneschal. “Really? what does it say, Galeren?”
“Really, my Queen, it would scarcely be proper for a servant to go and read their liege’s mail.”
“Then it is a good thing you are more prudent than proper, my old friend. You forget that I know you quite well by now. I know that, unless it was expressly meant for my eyes only, you would have a look at the message, so that you could better prepare whatever options I would need to respond to it in advance.”
Galeren did not have the good grace to keep from looking smug, but he was good enough at his job to earn every ounce of smugness in him, and more besides. That was why I’d kept him in his position for so long, after all. I’d yet to find anyone, living or dead, that was better than he at keeping the affairs of the castle, and realm, in order when I was not paying direct attention to them.
“The other leaders of the Alliance are formally noting the opening of the portal to Onerth, your Majesty, and are seeking knowledge of whether they will be able to engage in trade and exploration on the other side of the gateway, or, at the very least, have access to the area on this side of the gateway. Assuming that there are no undue safety concerns.”
I considered that for a moment. It was a fairly reasonable request, honestly. Part of the Alliance was in allowing members to access trade routes that the others developed, naturally. Denying them access to Onerth entirely would spit in the face of the Alliance, but giving the nations of Earth unfettered access to that world would be damaging for both worlds.
“You may send replies, telling them that while the connection is stable, it will be some time before the area is suitable for trade, as there is no infrastructure on either side, and the land between the gate and the nearest city is tainted and full of monsters. Once the area is made safe, and trade can begin, they will, of course, be able to establish embassies on the other side of the gate, and businesses may open branches in the newly built city the same as they may anywhere in Risen Athelia.”
“As you wish, my Queen.”