Chapter 9: Home Sweet Home
Building a city was by no means an easy task.
I, for one, had no prior engineering know-how or any degree in architectural design/aesthetics. Ymir's knowledge ended at digging ditches with other slaves for wooden palisades, erecting picket fences with commonly found sticks, and pitching tents in the wilderness. She knew the basics of building a hut for a small family to live in but was completely at a loss about how to build a longhouse.
Marius was a merchant and Farwan was a vagrant who knew how to fight, survive in the wilderness and maybe scale small mountains. Most of the men I had saved were either farmers, shepards, guards, pit-fighters or merchants. The women were mid-wives or pleasure slaves- so no luck there either.
Of course, I asked the Worm if it knew how to build cities and was met with the human equivalent of a shrug. It knew which materials would be suitable for longer lasting buildings but knew nothing about aesthetics. Apparently, its people did not live in buildings but caravans and loose communes. They were also not aesthetically inclined, so there wasn't much the Worm could tell me about building city stuff. It did, however, offer to scan the memories and skills of the architects in this world and then use that knowledge to aid me in the nitty gritty.
That… was a good idea- mostly. You see, while the architects on Planetos were pretty metal and talented, their views on structural establishment were limited by the medieval knowledge they had. They were used to working with well-known materials such as stone bricks, mud, marble, granite and the like. Thus, the architecture constructed by them reflected their experience and human limitations. There were also labour and financial limitations so most never dreamt of anything too grand, and so their imagination was throttled.
On the other hand, I had no such limits. I could summon or craft as many permanent materials as I wished. I could mold the city as I wanted, but while I could do all that, design aesthetics were where I took the greatest "L".
And so recognising my artistic limitations, I let the Worm scan their minds anyways. Who knows, maybe if I took a good look through some of them, I might be able to bridge that gap and make something that wasn't a bland wall.
I delved back into the Paths for two reasons- one, I could parse through the memories far quicker here than in the real world, and two- I could command the sand into structures with my imagination and then send them down into the city itself with quantum transference. Ymir watched the glowing tree with awe and wandered around playing with sand while I worked.
After combing through images of palaces from Oldtown to Asshai, beautiful carved and painted wall designs, pools, fountains, and graceful pillars and arches, I had a rough idea of how fancy I wanted the city to be- not overwhelmingly fancy but fancy enough to not be a boring, rock and stone medieval fort.
Once I had that down, I thought about how to implement my newly acquired knowledge. The city had to have walls- layers of them. We were mostly invincible in this world but everyone else was not. And while the wall I had already built would do temporarily, there were no defenses for well-aimed trebuchets and ballista bolts. The greatest defense would be to make the last wall thicker and obscenely tall. Tall enough for the citizens inside to not worry about flying rocks and giant arrows.
The wall also had to be smoother than polished glass so as to not fall to expert climbers- I had that part down already. All that was left was adjusting the elevation leading up to the circular wall and building a deep moat surrounding it, filled with water from the river- which I learned was named "Qoy" by the horselords.
"Qoy" means "Blood" in the Dothraki tongue. Wow, the savages were really obsessed with female reproductive organs weren't they? Mother of Mountains, Womb of the World, the Blood river that flows out of the Womb. I guess it made sense in a pseudo-matriarchal society like theirs. Though I had to admit, a river named "Blood" went really hard. Hm, I might even keep it, but only after abandoning the Dothraki name for it. This city had no place for the Dothraki culture or their language.
I walked around the miniature 2 m wide model of the city I had made after much trial and error. I nodded in appreciation.
The city was protected by circular, three-layered walls with ditches in between. Yes, I had just ripped off the Theodosian walls of Constantinople and the overall design of ancient Baghdad as I remembered it, while borrowing a decent bit from Ba Sing Se. This city, however, would have none of their weaknesses.
The first wall was 50 m high, the next 100, and the last was 150 m tall and 10 m thick (60 m taller than that of Harrenhal's). It originated from the steep mountain slope and guarded an area of 3 km (in diameter). This would allow the city to occupy an area greater than the original Vaes Dothrak. I had plans to expand it further as needed, but this should do for now. The river was cut off where the largest wall started and a gated mechanism made of the same seamless crystal stone as the walls, would allow us to control the flow of outgoing water.
Some of the water would be diverted through the city via two major canals and supply enough filtered water for public and private bathhouses, fountains, recreation and industry. Sanitation needs would also be met by the river, clean water would be pumped into homes through a network of long-lasting pipes laid under the city, foul water would be pumped into a filtration unit before being pumped out back into the river. The river would also help defend it- funneled properly, a pressurised stream of water could sever flesh and shatter bone. The remaining water would fill the ringed moats making any siege a nightmare. I laughed, as if it wasn't one already.
I found it ironic to face the arriving Dothraki hordes from atop walls modeled after two Earth cities that either fell to the Mongol empire or paid them tribute. Unfortunately for the Dothraki, there were no farmlands outside the wall to burn and the river did not flow into the city. So even if the Khals had enough brain cells to figure out how to block, poison, or divert a river- it wouldn't help their chances any.
After providing the ground with the appropriate slope, I moved on to designing the districts.
The city was divided into equal quadrants, with the lake almost at the centre, the two canals would cross the city diagonally, and four major paved roads led out in four cardinal directions (approximately)- the Qarth Road (South) would go all the way down to Qarth, the Ibben Road (North) was self-explanatory, as was the Qohor Road (West). Whereas the Bone Road would simply be the smoother, paved version of the road already being used to trade with the Far East through Kayakayanaya.
Unfortunately, or should I say fortunately, my capital had no seaport through which it could dominate the high seas. This also meant that the city wouldn't be attacked from the sea- it was only the land and the air that I needed to secure. Me and Ymir could take any dragons or wyverns down easily enough but it was better to arm the city in case we were away.
In the model, several sleek, high pressure, long-range, water cannons appeared. I made a note to use my bio-constructs to train the operators to aim at the face/eyes, wing membranes and joints. They were joined by cannons which threw canisters that would explode into a temporary blindness gas once they reach a sufficiently massive and warm biological organism- such as flying men or dragons or flying men on dragons.
There was, of course, the possibility that the blind flying creature would crash land in the capital and hurt the citizens. That could not be allowed to happen. With the Worm's help, I created a special, rapidly-expanding, quantum foam that would wrap around the target. Whether it be dragon or wildfire pot, the foam would dissipate most of the mass, force and energy inside it. The foamed object would have negligible mass and energy, so getting hit by the falling foam lump wouldn't hurt a newborn infant, much less a grown adult. The same cannon would fire the foam missile soon after.
How 4D quantum fuckery wasn't straight up magic, I did not understand.
Ymir, who was observing me as I worked for the past 15 minutes, hesitantly suggested that I could place dormant, 40 m tall, mindless titan constructs into the 50 m tall outer wall. That way if the enemy ever manages to breach the first wall, the titans would awaken and trample the army ahead. Even if they didn't breach the wall, we could awaken them and use them anyway.
I blinked away the terrifying image and slowly nodded. Yeah… Why didn't I think of that? Ymir was right. We had bloody titans at our command!
"That's a very nice idea, Ymir!" I patted her on the back. She shyly mumbled a "thank you" and ran back to whatever she was doing. I shook my head and turned back to the city model.
Huh. Titans in the outer wall. The image of Ba Sing Se's wall did not leave my mind. A wall big enough to encompass an entire kingdom with large farmlands and rivers flowing inside. A completely separate wall to mark and protect our territory.
I presented the Worm with an idea and asked it about its viability and energy costs.
We concluded that it was a good idea and while grand for me, it was easy enough to accomplish with a relatively small exertion of its energy. However, the Worm suggested that I should wait before implementing it. While it had hidden this world from probing interstellar eyes, it wanted to be sure that there was nothing in the galactic quadrant that could threaten us. It was entirely possible that some entity could notice a sudden energy spike of that magnitude and become curious.
I agreed and went back to implementing 300 mindless titans into the outer wall. Once done I gave a few finishing touches to the aesthetically pleasing, palace fortress embedded into the base of the mountain. And yes, I used the Paths to make sure nothing eldritch was living inside the mountain. Well… nothing that would threaten us or our city.
The Red was stronger above a 1000 feet, so any lower was safe to live. I really needed to get a tight control over that nexus or leyline- whatever the proper word was.
The palace came along nicely with its marble arches, large but cozy bedrooms, fountains and pools. Hanging gardens were something I wanted to try and Ymir suggested a few gazebos in the palace gardens for us and our guests to relax in. She insisted that she didn't need a room of her own and that sleeping together was much safer. I didn't buy those reasons for a moment but relented and just moved on to designing the halls and balconies.
It took me an hour until I was satisfied with the city and the Imperial palace overlooking the lake. After sending the model over to the Worm for storage, I dusted my hands.
I turned around to see what Ymir was doing and saw her sledding down a huge mountain of sand that I could swear did not exist a few hours ago. What the…
I could see the joy in her eyes and as she rushed down and thumped into a sand dune. She stumbled out with a giggle and shook off the sand in her blonde hair like an upright golden retriever.
As if sensing my shocked gaze, her smile disappeared and she looked worried. I smiled and shook my head, silently assuring her that I wasn't mad at her. Who was I to deny her the joys of sledding? Her shoulders relaxed.
I appeared above the sand mountain and with a thought, a sled appeared in my hands. Her eyes lit up like stars when I waved her over.
"First one down wins!" I grinned and set off. I heard a huff behind me and the sound of another sled sliding away.
Ymir won, but only by cheating and making my side of the path bumpy. Crafty little wench.
We spent much of our time in the Paths carefree and playing games.
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Sitting on a throne alongside Ymir at a round table, I revealed the model- now much larger and colourful- to my subordinates. They were impressed- blown away, more like. I told them that this model wasn't simply a toy, it would become reality. At first they thought that this was my vision for an eventual capital.
They had suddenly forgotten how I had raised a whole wall in an instant. When I told them that I could summon it like I did for the wall, they were more than just blown away.
So when I commanded them to gather everyone up on the designated hovering platform so that the buildings suddenly appearing didn't crush them, they rushed to carry it out.
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There was a flash of blue lightning and a large puff of steam. Those above the giant platform were unharmed and when they descended the stone stairs, what they saw, whether they be Dothraki prisoner or Freedman, would remain with them for their whole life. They would tell their children and grandchildren born within this city of the day the Emperor and Empress brought forth a grand city from thin air. The children would be just as awed, but they would never truly experience the first joys of drinking clean water, good food, and a home to call their own. But if you ever asked them if they'd have it any other way- they'd scoff and say, "Never!".