Commercial Development of House Tarth (2)

After some persuasion of his wife Selwyn had no other choice but to explain his problems to Galladon. Surely, Galladon himself was already aware of the financial problems House Tarth would face once they started many projects at the same time. But he purposefully let his father run into those problems to dampen his fighting spirit.

He lacked the foreknowledge to realize that Westeros was currently running full force into a large civil war and that their current sworn lord, House Baratheon, was majorly participating in this war. The stronger House Tarth would be in year 298 AC, the start of the television series in his former life, the more involved they would inevitably be in this civil war.

That is the only and major reason why Galladon is vehemently refusing to strengthen the navy too much, because all those ships would probably be used by Renly Baratheon to invade King's Landing after the death of his brother and current king Robert Baratheon.

House Tarth needed to develop the infrastructure on the island of Tarth and cultivate suitable elite soldiers and commanders for their future army and fleet, while simultaneously be extremely lowkey in development of armed forces to evade any major involvement in the wars that would inevitably happen in roughly five years.

If Galladon asked to buy mercenary soldiers or fighting slaves from the Free States of Essos und increase the quantity of the standing army of House Tarth, they would highly likely all be wasted in the meet grinder the war of the seven kingdoms would become soon. Of course, they could strengthen their army and simply refuse large scale deployment during the upcoming war, but this would tarnish the glorious reputation House Tarth build up over the last few thousands of years. Something his father Selwyn Tarth and his close retainers would never allow to happen.

To relieve House Tarth from their current financial risk Galladon proposed another project, suitable for the island environment they were facing.

He wanted to slowly erode a mountain range in the north of the island and turn it into a small farm raising cows. Of course, those cows would not be simple. He would include one cow into all three auras of strength, health, and speed to turn it into a special species. Thus, creating something like Japanese wagyu known from his former life. Obviously, creating large scale cow farming on the island of Tarth was simply not possible.

Even though the island was quite large, most of it was occupied by mountain ranges and forest. Eroding a small part of this mountain range in the north would need many slaves from the free states. Galladon only proposed this project on the one hand to generate another income source, luxurious premium beef, and on the other hand because the infrastructure projects of House Tarth would require a large amount of stone and lime in the next few years.

Instead of transporting materials from outside the island it would be much smarter to import slaves and query the stones and wood materials themselves. Meanwhile they could further optimize the layout of the island of Tarth. Mountain ranges and forests were helpful to house the different animals Galladon raised, but the limited place of the island was currently not in an ideal situation.

He further planned to build a commercial port in the north of Tarth to facilitate the trade with King's Landing. Currently most of the ships started from the port of Evenfall Hall and had to either cross the Strait of Tarth or the Shipbreaker Bay. Both straits are known to have large storms a few times a year. Even though the Strait of Tarth was rather quiet most of the time, avoiding this risk altogether seemed a good idea.

Focusing the commercial center of Tarth on the north side of the island would free up the port of Evenfall Hall to turn into a purely military port. In this way House Tarth could cultivate their navy more secretly. Spies would have a lot more problems invading the stronghold of House Tarth if they had to cross from the north side of the island all the way to Evenfall Hall. On their way they had to cross the habitat of Grey and his wolve pack, sending them into a safe way to death.

After some arguing back and forth Selwyn Tarth agreed to the plan proposed by his son, but under the condition to control the remaining aura spot in the intelligence department. He wanted to include the current youngest son of the head steward of House Tarth. Raising a capable helper from a young age would later majorly help Galladon himself, so he had no problem agreeing to this part of the deal.

Under the conditioning of three auras the cow cub grew up very quickly and turned into a majestic young bull. By gathering different cow species from around Westeros and Essos, thanks to the many merchants dealing with Tarth Honey and Sapphire Honey Wine, the plan for breeding quickly started. In the second half of the year 293 AC a large influx of working slaves arrived in the northern part of Tarth, quickly turning a small fishing village and their farmlands into a semi professional farm for raising cows.

The construction of the commercial town in the north of the island profited majorly from the invention of Cement made by Galladon himself. Cement manufacturing is a complex process that begins with mining and then grinding raw materials that include limestone and clay, to a fine powder, called raw meal, which is then heated to a sintering temperature as high as 1450 °C in a cement kiln. In this process, the chemical bonds of the raw materials are broken down and then they are recombined into new compounds. The result is called clinker, which are rounded nodules between 1mm and 25mm across. The clinker is ground to a fine powder in a cement mill and mixed with gypsum to create cement. The powdered cement is then mixed with water and aggregates to form concrete that is used in construction.