Chapter 307 - Update on the Town
Chris
"Sam did a wonderful job, by the way," Abigail started. "The fields were tended to and the harvest was in good order. We exceeded our expected yield, and it was all stored properly before the first frost came. While we were gone, our population broke 20,000 as well, which has put a strain on the land we have available. With the Wall limiting growth, we need to think about either going up or down. The increased strength of materials allows us to go up rather easily, but not endlessly.
"With the Builders we have now and what we have available to us, I wouldn't want anything over four or five stories. Any higher and they'll stick out over the Wall and start blocking line of sight from the Castle."
We had siege weapons to think about as well that she forgot to mention. Trebuchets lined the Outer Wall and the Inner Wall. If we made skyscrapers in between the two, the weapons on the Castle and Inner Wall wouldn't be able to shoot over them.
There was the arc we could work with, but losing line of sight would make everything harder. There was also the possibility of raising our Walls higher, but that wasn't an effective solution.
We'd run into the same problem eventually. It would just be kicking the can down the road.
"And do we have expansion plans?" I asked, already knowing the answer. It also wasn't something I'd expected us to need so soon. I never imagined so many people living under my care.
"Yes, we do." Abigail said, "We have a few we can pursue. The main one I want to start working on is utilizing the space under us. The Cliff essentially cuts us off from a great deal of land. If we can make lifts or elevators that can facilitate travel up and down the cliff face, we can start moving in on the land down there."
"You've mentioned that before, and we are..." I stopped mid-way through my sentence. What I was about to say was that we had no viable way to do so. Sure, we could use manpower and pullies, but that wasn't a great solution.
We were still working out generators and mundane electricity like we used to have, so any solution that required having it was stalled.
That wasn't the case anymore. Miles had been working on communication as his main project, but that wasn't necessary anymore. We could switch him over to getting electricity back up and running.
That would help a lot of things. Most of the magic technology I bartered with The Admiral for required it, too.