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When they arrived in the crafter's district, they were surrounded by the sounds and smells of early civilization's industry. All around, there were groups of people working, be it pottery and ceramics, blacksmithing of tools and weapons, crafting of jewelry, or their current focus, the place that was producing textiles.
Uchi brought Grud to a building the size of a small warehouse, and she opened the door to show its insides with pride, "This, is the textile house I own with one of the women who came from the Newlands, it took a while, but we managed to grow it and bring on some of the tribe's women. From what I have heard from visitors, we are the biggest textile producer within a month's journey."
Seeing the look of pride for what she had built, Grud leaned over and kissed her head while giving her a little squeeze.
Grud looked around to see how big her operation was and counted around thirty women working with looms to weave lengths of textiles of different colors and designs, Uchi then led Grud and the wives to the back of the warehouse and opened a room to reveal nine women, each of them were either pinning fabrics of different colors and cuts to straw-stuffed mannequins or seated at a table sewing.
"This is an extension of the business I recently started. While most of the textiles are traded away to the traders passing through, I decided to gather some women who had some ideas on clothes design and put them to work, so far, they have made a limited release of their own designs and the reception has been good, and we now take custom orders, which at this point is mandatory for all of us." Uchi said as she gestured at her fellow sister-wives and hefted Nita's gigantic tits to emphasize the point of needing custom clothes to accommodate all of his wives' outrageous proportions.
She then leaned in close to Grud and whispered in a sultry voice, "When the children are put to sleep, we will put on a private show of what we made."
The next to lead the tour was one of the short stacks of his harem, Sline. She held Grud's hand and tugged at him like an excited little girl who wanted to show off to her daddy.
She led them to the same stall that she apprenticed at and introduced Grud and the new wives to the old couple she was working for. After introductions were made, she showed off what jewelry was on display and even called Tala, Kaya, and the twelve new women over to try out some jewelry and pick one for themselves.
While Tala and Kaya readily accepted Sline's offer and came forward, the twelve new women were rather nervous as they looked around for their new family's approval. It was only after Grud and his other wives urged them, that they took up the offer.
As the wives were pursuing the jewelry, Sline hugged Ida and thanked her for the new tools to shape and resize rings, and announced that thanks to her, their shop would soon be producing rings, but they were still practicing how to use them properly.
She then went among the women explaining the different styles of jewelry she and the old couple specialized in, she mentioned that while the old couple practiced more traditional Newland styles, Sline leaned more towards a fusion of Newland and Mainland styles, and with Ida helping supply the crafting materials at greatly reduced cost, she was able to practice her craft a lot more and pump out more fine works.
After an hour of choosing, a trade price was agreed upon and all of Grud's women walked away happy with new jewelry.
The next place they visited was just inside the tribe's walls, and this time, Sonu led the way.
They all came to a stop in front of what was most likely the first stable in the history of the world, and as they walked inside, she proudly narrated her journey of how this building came to be.
When she first got the thirty-two horses, she took care of them like those who traded the horses to her described, she left them in their pen as she petted and fed them, but she knew that she could not afford to just keep so many of these horses just for her viewing pleasure, she had to find a way to make keeping them sustainable.
So she came up with a plan to rent them out to perform labor around the tribe and even to the hunters who were patrolling further than usual. When she saw traders pulling their carts in and out of the tribe by hand, Sonu had the idea of renting out her horses to the traders and brought up the idea to Ida.
Ida found it to be a great idea and started working together with Sonu to work on a schedule to loan out the horses.
When Ida offered to rent out the horses to the traders, they were skeptical at first, but it did not stop some of them from trying out this service, and when they returned to the Rock Claw tribe with nary a sweat broken, a cart full of goods ready to trade, and in half the travel time, almost all the traders jumped to book a horse to rent.
The service was so successful that the next time the hunters from the east came with another batch of horses to trade, Sonu practically kicked down Ida's door and all but kidnapped her to come and negotiate the trade for the horses. That day, the eastern hunters were cleaned out of their stock of horses and would have had to pull a carriage full of goods themselves if they had not held firm on keeping at least two horses to pull the carriage back home.
As time passed and the frequency of people renting her horses increased, Sonu noticed that some of her horses were falling ill, and after consulting the shamans and medicine men for a second opinion, they all came to the same conclusion. The living space in the pen was inadequate.
While the horses had access to plenty of food and water, they were pretty exposed to the elements due to there being no trees in the pen. Sonu immediately got in contact with some builders and came up with a plan to build a stable capable of housing a hundred horses with some room to roam, and that is how they ended up with the stable before Grud and the seventy horses that call it home.
When Sonu brought Grud into the stable proper, the horses started freaking out at Grud's presence, recognizing him as a predator. And since they were in an enclosed stable with Grud standing at the only exit, the male horses in the stable that regarded the other horses in the stable as their herd, busted open their stalls to come and defend the rest of the horses. This was led by the biggest male, the lead stallion, and was backed up by the other stallions.
Grud, seeing this for what it was, pulled Sonu behind him and signaled his harem to stand back. As Grud advanced to try and pacify the frenzied animals, the stallions neighed, grunted, and snorted as they aggressively stomped their front hoves in an attempt to ward Grud off.
Grud passively observed the threat display and kept advancing. Over the years, Grud learned how to exude a sense of menace or bloodlust to ward away animals and beasts that he did not want to hunt, unfortunately, this did not work on monsters, as they would only take it as a challenge.
Without the help of mana or magic, Grud let his bloodlust flow over the horses in the stable, this had the immediate effect of cowing the stallions as the mares ducked their heads in their stalls.
Grud pulled back his bloodlust, walked over to the lead stallion, and started stroking it. At first, the stallion flinched away, but as Grud persisted, the lead stallion got used to Grud's presence, and when the lead stallion relaxed, so did the other stallions, soon followed by the mares peeking out of their stalls to see that everything was fine.
Sonu soon came from behind Grud with a basket of vegetables and fed the stallions as she led them back to their stalls, Grud took her lead and took a few vegetables from her basket to do the same with the other stallions.
After Sonu made sure that everything was fine and asked one of the stable hands to repair the busted stall doors, it was time for the last site visit of the day, this time, it was outside the tribe walls.
Reta and Oso each grabbed one of Grud's arms and sandwiched it between their boobs as they led him and the harem out of the gates. After a ten-minute walk, they reached a farm that had plots of farmland on both sides of a stream that had undergone some extensive routing to flow over wide and shallow swaths of rocky areas with plants growing out of them in orderly staggered rows.
As for the fields of crops, they were no crop fields Grud had ever seen. Instead of the usual farming he knew of where the crops were exposed to as much sunlight as they could get, more than half of the fields were partially shaded.
"Welcome to our farm!" Oso said excitedly.
By this point, Grud could not help but ask, "What kind of farm is this? What are those crops? They look familiar."
Reta perked up at this, "Of course they seem familiar, you learned about all of them when you trained to become a shaman, all that you see before you are herbs and spices that were once only able to be harvested in the wild, but we have managed to find a way to farm them."
Ida who was standing behind them added, "The herbs and spices from this farm are by far the most lucrative, and since we also own the tribe's stable the droppings from the horses are free and frequent fertilizer, making our yields and quality better than those harvested in the wilds."
"Yup! We are currently raising a batch of saplings, and once they are strong enough on their own, we will open another two plots downstream and transplant them." Oso said excitedly
After Reta and Oso were done showing Grud around their farm, Nita said, "Ok, now that we are all caught up, dear husband, I am sure you need to attend to your duties as Chieftain after being away for so long, and the rest of us need to take this time to make arrangements to take a few days off, we have much catching up to do with our husband."
Nita looked at Ida and asked, "Can we find stand-ins for at least a week?"
Ida thought about it for a while and replied, "We should be able to do it, but one of us will need to visit our businesses every other day to make sure everything is fine."
"I am sure we can take turns." Mita said to a chorus of agreement from the rest of the sister-wives.
Grud was reluctant to separate his beautiful wives so soon after he returned, but duty called for the tribe's Chieftain, all he could do was kiss his wives and say, "I will be back for dinner." before heading off to his office.