Chapter 45: Rise of a new scourge of god? (Part 2)

Once the castle's inventory was emptied I moved to a room in the castle to relax. Before entering the previous lord's room here, I gave an order to my commanders to let me know once our shipment was received from the navy.

After napping for a short while my commander woke me up and made me aware of the situation, he said there is reports from the navy that the Venetians are supporting the Serbs with a fleet in Ragusa, and they are moving weapons and men from Italy through there as well. Perfect Ragusa is an ideal area to make my way towards later, it will give a firm grasp on our border with the Adriatic Sea.

This is good, now that I have my fleet shadowing my movements, I can have them ferry my heavy cannons to siege locations allowing me to move faster and seize more strongholds before the Serbs even raised a decent army. Thinking along the way... I watched my commanders arrange the army for the march.

We have a long day's march ahead even after a fight, this is a part of the plan moving fast and securing strategic strongholds before our enemies can even oppose me. The next stretch of the campaign lasted three days, in which we secured the surrounding areas and essential towns on the coasts on our route to Durres.

Sparring no effort we speedily moved along the coasts supported by our fleet, we finally arrived outside our goal Durres! Again our siege camp was being set around the city, but soon while I and my commanders were designing our plan after seeing the walls a messenger arrived with important news.

Once the tired and gasping messenger calmed down, he said "My sultan, I have great news! The Italians calling themselves the kingdom of Naples have gutted the garrison forces here in Durres! Barely 100 men are guarding this large city...

-Our spies say they are planning to launch a campaign against the Genoese whilst still participating in the crusade against our state."

Commander Omar waved off the messenger. Then he turned to look back at the group of commanders including me and said "The greedy bastards are the source of their destruction! Stretching their troops so thin, what did they think we would just wait around to be attacked?"

I replied "Well... Who cares what they were thinking the idiots left their treasures just laying around who are we to leave such an opportunity? Send all the troops to attack no need for cannons just use ladders I want the men on the walls within the hour, make the soldiers work I want them constructing these ladders quickly."

All the commanders saluted and then left to handle their tasks. Leaving me here to just think again... Man, I wonder how much the events of the timeline will branch off. Most likely the greedy Italian city-states are more focused on figuring out how to gain in the Genoese losses than how to help the Serbs, what a backward thought but it makes sense...

I should be thinking a little more, I believed I knew how the world would shape up... But that only applies if I did not exist, and I do somehow exist here. Man, so all the history books I've read only help me with knowledge of my enemies but not the events as they can change because I have changed the world already by making my state this powerful this early.

I wonder how my stopping the plague from killing millions in the middle east will affect the world, I truly do but I guess we will have to wait and see... Now I have more pressing issues like securing this beautiful system city!

Soon my soldiers were vaulting onto the walls of the city from all directions. This was rather speedy as there was no resistance at all, and once the gates were flung open, we moved deeper into the city with our guard up just in case the defenders were feeling heroic.

But luckily for us these defenders felt the pressure and gave up in exchange for their lives, I asked these men to join my already large Italian mercenary forces and 65 of them agreed. The rest were placed in the dungeons, to be ransomed to their families later when we have time. Once in the city's center palace, I took my seat in the throne room.

Here I began to spread my orders around once more! I ordered the capture of all cities and towns between Durres and Ragusa. This time I want these places secured even before I march on the city itself, by doing this I hope to speed along the marching speeds. I only sent out ten thousand men to complete this task.

In the meantime, I will fix the construction queue for the system city and await our garrison forces for the region who should be en route to the city by now. This city may not be the richest, but it is the only other system settlement I have that is known as a CASTLE by the system. The only other one is Canakkale.

There are different troops able to be recruited by each type (city/castle) so securing another castle allows me to recruit heavy cavalry and heavy infantry more efficiently and allows me to recruit another general to my forces. I will use this to appoint Suleyman as a system general giving him bonuses that the generals receive, he will become a supreme general in no time.

*Sigh* I am beginning to have a love for battle and the challenges that come with it, as I look over the sea I am overcome with a certain melancholy. I felt a tinge of disappointment when I heard the garrison here was so small, it is almost like I have become a true warmonger... My initial goal was to control the world... But I have never truly led men into battle or felt the rush of adrenaline from slaying a man.

Or that feeling you get when you see a man's head on a pike that was previously confident in his triumph against your forces... I had no clue such feelings could reside in my soul, honestly, I thought I would be sickened by the acts of war and would become a stay-at-home sultan sending orders all around. But shit if you think about it I refuse to stay home, once I am there for too long I will cook up another campaign to wage war again.

Well, FUCK IT! I cannot be my own shrink it just doesn't work well, for now, let me focus on the tasks at hand. Looking through the accounting records the system is providing on the city, it seems the majority of the resources exported from the region is timber, followed closely by salt from the coastal salt pans, and in third is silk... A good bit of silk is created and manufactured here into fabrics...

Seeing the outputs here helped me to decide the route I will invest in. All factories started with my funds will contribute to my state's income and will not be given away to anyone. There will likely be competitor companies started by private individuals and investors built later on. But seeing the outputs in the city I decided to build a few different manufactories here.

I did not need to invest in timber as the system buildings will contribute heavily to the timber industry, and large complexes of tree harvesting facilities will be built near the forested regions. So, I decided to invest in the salt and silk industries here. I want to build a medium-sized salt harvesting facility and have it exported and sold throughout my lands. All extra will be sold in Russia and Italy for more profits.

I will also establish the first water-powered manufactory in the city, I will invest a heavy sum in building a silk production complex. Including the making of silk by way of silkworms and the next processes of the silk as well like the spinning of silk into thread and then into fabrics and clothing. The majority of the finished products will also be mostly exported into central and eastern Europe as Islam is not too keen on silk products as they are considered vain.

Once I finished writing my letters for my business ideas and sending them to my accountants and merchants, I called it a day and went to bed. Waking up in the morning I started my day inspecting the quality of life in the city... I want to compare the state of the city now to the state of the city after a few months of my rule later.

To see the effects of my policies I need more and more information on the situation of the cities when I seize them to how they proceed after being in my care. Most of the day was spent checking the situation of the farming practices and what techniques and technologies the farmers themselves were using.

Seeing that majority of the farmlands themselves are extremely fertile, but the output being small compared to my farms in Abydos I decided to build the farm buildings first in the city. There are only three reasons to secure areas of the Balkans: the fertile lands, the coasts of the Adriatic and black sea, and finally the mines.

So as this city does not have mines, it is better to improve the timber and farm output first before the defenses and other educational and religious buildings. Though the city does hold the initial levels of the majority of these buildings in the systems building tree, they have a small effect of educating or converting the citizens.

Now that it takes two weeks to complete buildings it will take some time to complete all the buildings from the system. Just to complete the farm building tree will take 4 months at this rate just to show how long it will take to complete all the buildings. After another two days passed our garrison units arrived at the port.

And after another day our squadrons sent out to secure the surrounding areas returned as well. Letting them rest for a day before we finally set off towards the next goal of Ragusa. I need this city, Though it may only be connected to my other lands by a sliver of coastline in my control it being a system city makes it more desirable than anything else in the Serb's control.

Moving through the mountains and valleys all filled with snow, though our route was temporarily cleared of snow by the units who secured the region for me. One thing you can notice moving through the areas closer to the center is the sheer number of mining villages and small mining operations.

The excitement began to build the closer we are getting to the city... But soon we got news of a Serbian detachment force in the region. My scouts brought news that there is a large mercenary force scouting the area looking for intruders I guess news began to spread that we may be around!

Using my spies, I did make it seem like we are attacking but at the same time, we aren't attacking. The enemies do not have access to an information network as efficient as ours, so they must use rumors to base their movements on. Merchants' and peasants' hearsay usually has some truth to it, so it is best to at least prepare for the worst.

Following this line of thinking the Serbs must've sent a detachment to guard this region in case of attack. They did not put much defense on Albania as the main city is owned by the Italians, so we will face more resistance in this region where they can mine gold.

So once getting the news and then send more scouts to gather further detailed information... I decided to send five one-thousand-man squadrons of sipahis to lead these forces away from their well-defended fortresses. Once we can separate them from their defenses we can pick their disorganized forces off in several dynamic ambushes.

Watching the Sipahi break off from the army, they slowly moved out of sight. Using the reports of the geography my commanders organized many ambush zones by positioning our troops in positions where they can ambush from one or more areas. Some of the ambush zones intersect and where they do two of the small squads will ambush one area if enemies arrive in that area.

Using this semi-chaotic system we spread our troops quietly over a few miles. Guarding an entire region and ensuring that our sipahis bringing the enemies will be guaranteed to bring the enemies into an ambush. Now once the ambush begins we will send our signals in the sky, so that the commanders and I can know where these battles are taking place.

-I want to say the city names may be different from the names used today, and even during the 14th century used in the book... The majority of the larger cities have 3-4 different names according to the culture occupying the city... In the region, there were Romans, Slavs, Byzantines, Serbians, Bulgarians, Italians, and Ottomans Pretty much all used different names for each city when they would write or speak about them so it leads to varying names I use hope it does not confuse or annoy you that some names I use are Latin and some are Turkish and some are old roman styled Latin names... and some are greek.