Currently Prince Viraja is sitting in a office room within his newly constructed company headqueters located at a distance almost 60 km to the north of the capital city. It has been almost 3 months since he has received the Royal court permission to create a company. The entire area is surrounded by wooden palisade on all sides and the space within is divided into mainly barracks which has training grounds where his private armies training is going on since his troops has already moved here from Royal Barracks. Then there is the Metal & Weapons Workshop and finally there are few smaller separate section which will be used to manufacture other goods for the company.He also created a warehouse in capital city as well as recruitment office in both capital city and his barony for personnel recruitment for his company using proper vetting process to mitigate any security risk.
The Metal & Weapons Workshop is where the smiths both experienced and apprentice who has been hired for fixed monthly salary will be working to produce steel weapons parts from iron ore using the bloomery process which includes a furnace made out of clay with charcoal where the iron ore is grinded into fine dust and put into it to produce bloom and then reheated and hammered continuously to remove as much of the slag as possible to produce steel which will then be used to be casted into finishing products like matchlock musket parts and repeating crossbow parts, bayonets. metal tipped arrows and pikes etc. The workshop has been build in such way , that multiple forge has been created to produce iron-carbon alloy i.e steel. Finally woodworkers has been hired to produce the wooden section of the weapons. Prince viraja has introduced the division of labour which is the process of separating a work process into multiple tasks this will result in each workers becoming proficient in managing that particular task there by increasing work efficiency and also maintaining secrecy of the end-product design as each worker would know only a part of the product and not the whole.For now he is using the slow bloomery process to produce steel but once he moves to his barony Badrak he will build foundries with more modern european style furnace to mass produce steel thereby decreasing manufacturing time and cost significantly. A part of the workshop is also used to manufacture paper cartridges using black powder(gunpowder) made of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur which has started being brought from different areas within the kingdom.
At this moment the supervisor of the Metal & Weapons Workshop, Mastersmith Hariharan entered his office and greeted him with a tap to his heart.He said "Your highness everything has been setup and soon we will start producing the weapons whose design you have provided me using the division of labour concept which is quite brilliant as it will speed up the manufacturing process". Hearing this Prince Viraja nodded his head and said "Good my father has spoken very highly of your smithy knowledge and your ability to supervise and get the job done.I am counting on you to not only maintain the secrecy of the product design but also get the weapons made as fast as possible preferably within 6 months for my army.I have also assigned a squad of Royal Guards to act as security personnel".Listening to the prince words Hariharan thanked him and assured him that he will do everything to get the target achieved.As Hariharan was about to leave, prince Viraja told him to wait and handed him design of two artillery weapons that he wants to be manufactured. One is the korean style Hwacha which he named Vajrastra and other is the Mysorian Rockets which he named Varshastra Rockets.
Prince Viraja said "Let me give you a brief description of the design I have just provided"
"First is the Vajrastra which fires one to two hundred rocket powered arrows.It structure is similar to a handcart with mobile wooden launchpad containing 100 to 200 cylindrical holes into which long arrows is placed with addition of gunpowder-filled paper tube attached to the shaft just below the head.Once Vajrastra is set up for combat, the operators would use the gunpowder stored in a boot-like bag tied on each igniter to be used for each hole on the mechanism".
"Next is the Varshastra rockets which could be of various sizes but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron about 8 inches long and 1.5 to 3 inches in diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about 4 ft long. The iron tube acted as a combustion chamber and contained well-packed black powder propellant. A rocket carrying about one pound of powder could travel almost 1,000 yards Some of the rockets had pierced cylinders, to allow them to act like incendiaries, while some had iron points or steel blades bound to the bamboo. By attaching these blades to rockets they became very unstable towards the end of their flight.I have provided detail design and notes in the document given to you if you need any farther clarification you can always consult me.". As hariharan studied the diagrams and information on the paper all he can think of is how a 8 year old can think of such genius ideas truly the royal family has birthed a once in a millennium prodigy, with this thought he quickly excused himself from the prince presence and left the office as he was quite excited to work on this new artillery weapons.
After sometime his personal attendant bhimrao entered his office and said "Your Highness I have gathered the material as well as recruited the workers from the nearby villages as ordered by you they are waiting to meet with you outside the office".Hearing this he went outside and signaled the workers to follow him along with his personal attendant and Royal guards, Once he reached a building in another section of the company grounds and before proceeding any farther with the job they needed to do, he put forward few conditions, first they are not allowed to share with anyone about the details that he will provide them to create cheap scented bathing soap, if anyone leaks it they will be executed for treason. Second they will be paid good salary for their services and provided free housing in the new town that is being build near the company headquarters for them and their family just like all the other recruited workers of his company. Once they understood what they are getting into the prince finally started giving them instruction on how to create scented soap using ingredients like hardwood, castor oil, coconut oil, grinded jasmine petals and water.Once they where able to create successfully the soap bars he congratulated them on work well done.
Finally he turned to Bhimrao and instructed him to sent a supervisor who will monitor the soap manufacturing process and also send a sample of the soap to all the merchants in the capital city that has been contracted for marketing and selling the soap in the kingdom. With this he exited the building.