How I Accidentally Built a Kingdom

Welcome ladies and gentleman to another session of our story!

Since it’s been a while since we had a nice chat in here instead of just falling into the story, I thought it was about time we did that again.

I know you all missed this... right?

You know me sharing my current wisdom and charm with you, while my lovely wives interrupt me and continue to tell you that I’m lying— which I would never do.

We’ve reached a point of the story where I guess you might be a bit bored if we told it piece-by-piece, and discussed every action with you, so in this session I’m basically going to give you the gist of it.

I’m going to do a rough summary of what happened in far less detail than we have been telling the story in the past... well I’m not entirely sure how long we’ve been going, but you get the point.

So after my very generous offer to Worick, which he obviously accepted, we immediately started construction on the barracks for my mercenary company.

We decided that it should consist of a large training area, and enough room to house at least fifty people.

Yes I know fifty people sound a bit optimistic for a company that consisted of only fourteen mercenaries at that point, but we were pretty glad that we did that only a couple of months later... ahem, I probably shouldn’t have said that.

Anyway, so the barracks had a training area, and enough room to house fifty people, I also already had a reception area built with a board that would be used to post missions and requests from the public.

I know right, what a brilliant idea, nothing at all like the stupid system the adventurers guild used.

While the barracks was being built I had to cough up all of the coins to have them stay at the inn, which made my heart palpitate each time I had to pay up.

I also had to pay for their meals, which also wasn’t very cheap, and then to top it all off, I had to allow them to drink for free in my bar.

Do you have any idea how much a bunch of ex-soldiers, and adventurers could drink if they didn’t have to pay for it?

I’ll give you a hint... a lot.

Honestly I’m probably the best employer anyone could ask for, they even had the privilege of using my bathhouse for free.

But there I had to draw a line in the cost of what they’re allowed for free.

There was no way that I could let them have the best of everything for free, so I limited them to the public baths for free, if they wanted to use the private ones they would have to cough up the fees.

And after about a week of giving them free meals and drinks, I immediately decided that maybe it would be better if I limited them a bit.

I mean they are supposed to be soldiers, so I couldn’t have them getting fat and out of shape because they could eat and drink as much as they wanted, right.

So I limited them on the amount they could eat and drink for free, before they had to start paying for themselves.

Obviously this had nothing to do with the fact that I was afraid of them bankrupting me.

Although that was also a slight worry.

I mean only five of the twelve of them in Lofie at that point were actually making any money back for me, whereas the rest of them were an absolute loss on my books at that time.

About a month later, the barracks was completed, and I had them move in, which was at least a small relief on my expenses.

Which is when the brilliant idea of hiring a chef for them came to mind, luckily for me John’s wife was an excellent cook, and didn’t have a job at that point.

So for a salary of seven silver a month, she agreed to become the in house cook for the mercenary barracks.

And ironically, even with her salary and the ingredients I had to buy for the barracks... it was still a lot cheaper than having them eat at the inn three times a day.

Obviously the part of the barracks that was immediately put into use by my lovely wives, was the training area.

There, they spent weeks whipping the mercenaries into shape.

And also training me and Erick to the point of exhaustion each and every day.

By the end of the second month since our return to Lofie, the mercenaries were working together like a well-oiled machine.

Cat had spent weeks training them in the importance of teamwork, dividing them into groups, and having them run mock battle exercises each day.

Failure meant suffering, and success... well success meant a little less suffering.

Once she was happy that they were at least mediocre— in her eyes that is— we divided seven of them into two groups, and sent them out into the world.

Which left only Erick and the four other men who were under contract to guard the village.

Now if you were thinking that that meant at least the training would lighten up a bit, you would be completely wrong, just like I was.

Because apparently less students meant that more attention could be given to the rest of us.

And so our suffering continued.

Luckily for me, I had businesses to run, which meant that I couldn’t attend each and every training session they had. I also had some planning to do at that time.

Now you might’ve heard me tell my lovely wives that they can’t just declare war on kingdoms that pisses them off, or kill people who do.

And I stand by that completely.

But my wives pointed out to me that I’m a bit of a hypocrite for always saying that, and then doing what I did at that time.

But what they seem to forget is that I also always say that they should do what I say, and not what I do.

So you see... I’m covered.

And I mean it wasn’t like I was planning to kill anyone, or declare war, I was just going to... make a point.

Maybe scare someone a little bit.

Threaten some people.

Maybe hurt him a bit.

But anyway, we’ll get back to that in the next session when I continue the story in more detail again.