Stronghold
Chapter One
January 4th Year 1353, because I work at a well there is not much news gets around to me, I just sit and watch for fires. But the one thing I did hear was that the Lord Flanders was raising taxes to 124 gold a week. I never really cared for the man but now he was going too far, we live on a small island deserted by the King of France in 1220, we just reinhabited the island 20 years ago and now just starting to become independent. In 1330 we ran out of forest, the High King set too many woodcutter's huts up and they cut down the entire vegetation of the island, I can't completely blame the King though, afterall the woodcutters could have stopped...probably too scared to though, get their bloody heads chopped off if they did. Another thing I never liked, if the work is slack, he'll just fire you, nope, not layoff, fire, you can't just temporarily be laid off or nicely told to disband, he'll send the military out and they burn or slowly break down your building, never did it to me though, nor any other fire watchers, his blasted men are so constantly setting fires that we need to be kept in buisness.
Well I'll get back to the story, he raised the taxes, blah blah blah, yes, here we are, he raised taxes and we are just getting indepentent when the forestry industry is completed. So today he built a marketplace, had to, we never have any food due to his stupidity. " Why?" you may ask? Well I think I'll take you back to the very beginning of our settlement, before we even arrived on the island.
The year is 1322, everyone has just gathered for an important meeting with the Lord Governor Rodney Flanders 11. Nobody knows why he has called it so urgent but he said men and women with any children at all are strongly advised to come to Trinity Hall for all with a family will surely be killed in the name of the utmost Highest King of Grandular County. So after hearing this extremely threatening news we packed our bags and headed southeast 200 miles to save our already very poor family and not knowing what was going to take place at this meeting. When we arrived in Grandular County immediately knew something big was up, the King had his military all lined along the roads, not 25 feet away from each other, this was an immediate notion that any who did not follow orders would be shot through the gut with an arrow or plunged in the heart with a sword. Now we knew to stay in line and we walked clear to Trinity Hall and took our seats. The meeting did not start for another 3 hours but we knew we would be surely killed if we were to leave and come back later, I never figured that out but I never dared to ask either. So in due time the meeting finally started, everyone was seated and nobody dared to talk, those who did were immediately asked to leave the premises. Now comes the Lord Governor Flanders, he didn't waste anytime ( Like he usually does) and cut straight to the point. This may be long but this is what he said, " Ladies and gentlemen of the Grandular County, thank you all for coming here today. I am not wasting any time tonight because the sooner this is done the better. So here goes, 2 weeks ago I had a meeting with Cory Dampling of Tasco State, he had informed me of an island approximately 3,400 miles from Grandular, now, he told me it was once inhabited, but did not tell me by whom, so I asked for a map and I got it. Ladies and gentlemen, after careful research I realized it, this island was once owned by the High King of France where he and his militia and 1,050 men and women and children lived there for 200 years. Now 100 years ago they abandoned this place and it was never found until just two months ago, a group of explorers were looking for something, no one knows what, but they found this island, so they explored it and drew maps and came back but never told anyone, the only person they told was Cory Dampling, being the snitch he was he told every person he knew, including me, so it is now my desire to get a group of men and women and their families to sail with me to this mysterious island and rebuild it and start a new empire there and no one will ever know! So if any man wishes go on this journey just please come to the front and sign up and we will try and get you a spot on the finest ships we have, space is limited though so do not waste time. Now before I let you go and do that I just want to tell how good this is. It is an island of pure forest, trees everywhere, it's shape would appear to look like a scorpion, it is about 20 miles wide east to west, and 30 miles north to south, there is enough grass for cattle, hops, wheat farms, orchards, everything you ever dreamed of, beautiful country with neverending peace. But however space on this island is limited, so we can only take so many people over. The boats will hold about 700 people all together so hurry. Thank you for your patience, you are dismissed and may now sign up."
And that's what he said, pretty good speech, it sounded like a nice place to live, so I signed my family aboard the ship.
Three weeks we were on that dreaded sea trip, it seemed like it would never end, but fortunately it did, we finally seen land in sight on the 22nd day, it looked beautiful, lush green forests with deer running all over the place, there wasn't much grass, so getting wheat and hops was going to be hard but I don't like beer anyway. Well as I was just saying, beautiful place, as we got nearer and nearer it seemed like it was a lot bigger than what the Lord Governor said but it turned out not to be after we landed. When we landed there was only one spot about 50 yards long on the whole island, we landed and started right away on the new settlement. We had brought supplies along to build the castle and a couple woocutter's huts and a quarry and men got right to work with the industry.