May 31, 2022 - 4 minutes read - 681 words
I guess I should talk about how my territory is doing.
The former Riggsby territory was built into a high-earning territory that shouldn’t need to carry any debts. The reason it became debt-ridden was the extreme greed of piggish nobles.
Three generations before me, that Baron Riggsby started to engage in usury. The profits were then invested in building an ale and wine industry in the territory. Two generations ago, the Riggsby family became known as a respected purveyor of ale and wine across the Kingdom and abroad.
Futhermore, that generation’s Baron realized the harvest was declining due to continuous planting of wheat, so they started to plant beans every other year to let the fields recover. That bean was similar to soybeans from Earth.
Previously, the Riggsby family was somewhat crooked, but scarily competent. The territory is blessed with water and soil, with vast wheat fields and vineyards all over the land.
Some of the wheat is sent to the King as tax without needing to be sold for gold. Most of the rest is turned into ale or (starting recently) distilled into whiskey. Grapes of course are turned into wine. The principal industries of the former Riggsby territory are wheat, ale, and wine. My newly developed whiskey is very profitable. No matter what kind of alcohol we export, it sells out easily.
That’s how the former Riggsby family was called the loan sharks of the Kingdom. Thanks to the pigs spending spree, all the accumulated wealth was squandered. Luckily, the debt to the Westin family went away their execution. Additionally, the jewels collected by the piggish Riggsby’s were given to me when I took over the territory, so I sold them to replenish the territory coffers.
I’m not a heavy drinker, but I do partake. I never really liked ale, must be from my past life’s memories. In that life, I gravitated towards whiskey. So I found a craftsman to build me a distiller. I then distilled the Riggsby ale into a whiskey-ish product.
That was really good, so I turned it into a product of the territory. The whiskey is worth three times as much as the ale that is put into the distiller.
In another case, I worked with a brewer and an elf to use time magic (a rare magic) to age select bottles of Riggsby wine for an extra three years. Because of the high demand for wine, I can’t hold back much for normal aging, but aged wine sells for a lot to nobility. Of course, I sent a few crates of both the whiskey and aged wine to the Royal Family as tribute.
In the other section of my domain, the part that originally belonged to Viscount Harter, they didn’t have much land suitable for farming. Most of the territory is a vast lake and the surrounding wetands. The main industry of the territory was fishing, but the Viscount had let the fishermen grow too greedy. The catch has been going down year over year, so the money coming in is less and less. The fishermen are leaving their boats or going into debt.
When I went to inspect the area, I found a certain grass growing in the marsh. There was a ton of it. I asked the villagers if they were going to eat it. One villager said that it looked like wheat, but it doesn’t work for making bread, they just feed it to the chickens and pigs.
Yes, it was rice!
I immediately organize rice cultivation with the caveat that all rice produced from the new fields will be purchased by me. Of course, I want the rice for sake. Since the rice-polishing technology is well behind Earth, the sake isn’t as clear as a modern Earth sake, it’s a slightly brownish color.
I’ve also created mirin and soy sauce from soybeans. The new seasonings and sake were well received in the capital.
After a number of years, the Snake territory would become the second most prosperous territory after the Royal Capital. But that is a while away still…
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