Quoted By:
>The civilisation gets +0.05 Technology.
>The civilisation gets +5 Security.
>The civilisation gets -5 Productivity.
The headsmen support the saint's proposal and decide that the chiefdom should prepare for an inevitable assault from the Windborn, rather than launch an incursion of its own. Craftsmen shall be sent down the river Choslitol, where they shall construct a series of outposts to house a Truthguard garrison and serve as the first line of defence against the Shagodalek.
Most of the floodplains along the river are unsuitable for such structures, but a few rocky outcrops can be found there. These serve as the foundation for the first multi-storey structures that the chiefdom has ever built and though they are a challenge to make a reality, the crafty Croglatovic rise to the occasion. A lack of local quarries and the hundreds of kilometres between the western border and the chiefdom's granite pits means that the watchtowers have to be built of wood, but once they are finished, each one of them stands tall and proud, complete with a palisade perimeter to dissuade any would-be attacker.
Within these stockades, homes are built for the Brulicruvic watchmen to occupy, while a system of beacons is devised to connect the towers. Should the Shagodalek attack, one watchtower shall alert the rest and the one furthest upstream shall send a messenger to inform the city of Ancron. Once they are completed, these outposts serve as an effective deterrent – the amount of skirmishes that occur along the border drop dramatically as the Windborn choose to keep their distance.
However, the chiefdom is being stretched a little thin. Between all of the different projects – the maintenance of the watchtowers and the great northward road, the conscription of young men to serve a year in the Truthguard instead of labouring alongside their families, keeping the soldiery armed and armoured and sustaining a significant population of couriers, copyists and other non-manual workers - the Croglatovic have little in the way of resources and manpower left to spare. This may soon become a problem.
Twenty years pass.
At the latest harvest festival, the chieftain and saint are bickering again. The subject of the latest argument is the <span class="mu-s">Gramivec</span>, the Woodsmen who dwell along the great northward road. They are not true Croglatovic but uplifted savages whose existence the chiefdom entertains, as their settlements serve as ideal stopovers for merchants on their way to and from the lands of the Sunblessed and Moonmen. None of these primitive people can remember a time when the chiefdom did not watch over them and many of their youth are leaving behind their old ways, in an effort to become truly Croglatovic.
