4 Commercial Development of House Tarth (1)

The first species chosen by Galladon would not be involved in military affairs, rather commercial development. Over the fifteen years he spent on the island of Tarth he got to know the island inside out but didn't find any special resource exclusive to Tarth, except for a rather special resource.

The island contains mountains, waterfalls, high meadows, and shadowed vales. Tarth is also apparently rich in marble - marble used in the construction of the Eyrie in the Vale had to be shipped from Tarth. But since the recent civil war and the following rebellions made life in Westeros very hard in recent years, transportation of marble from Tarth was not in high demand currently.

Therefore, he couldn't develop any product or service with an obvious advantage, even after his father granted him bigger rights after his confession at the age of 10.

Having a good reason to deny his father further spots for future military leaders he chose a simple bee as his next object to focus all four auras on.

The bee developed very quickly in the following year and Galladon focused an abandoned village in a deeper forest part of Tarth to raise large bee hives. The female bee turned into a queen bee and produced extremely delicious and nutritious honey a year after. The bee colony developed very quickly, attracting pretty much any bees in the surroundings of Tarth to join in, turning this hidden village into a small kingdom of bees.

Most people on Tarth were extremely afraid of those large amounts of bees, so Galladon had to buy slaves from Myr to carry out the honey and further process it.

When the merchants of Myr sent the slaves to Tarth they reserved some of the freshly made honey in return. They were luxuriously packaged in hand carved little jars. Upon their return they shared this honey with other large businessman of Myr and its reputation spread from the rich of Myr to all the free states within months. Special honey from the island of Tarth become a must have luxury for any high-level banquet in Essos.

With the fame and increasing cost of Tarth Honey nearby pirates and mercenaries tried to invade the forests of Tarth from the east and south sides of the Island. Galladon had to use Grey's wolves to protect this part of the forest. But the increasingly intelligent Grey was very unhappy with this. Many times, he "argued" with his master, because his children detested the sticky environment of the beehive.

It didn't take long for Galladon to no longer be able to bear the nightly wolf howling and he agreed to raise another guard for the Tarth honey, his future money bag. To the anger of his father Lord Selwyn, he chose a young brown bear cub for his next aura investment. When the young brown bear cub spent his next year in the beehive village and attracted many wild bears on Tarth along with him, he never wanted to leave this place again. At some point the even fought with the wolves that kept protecting them while their leader was rapidly growing up.

Grey used this chance to completely leave the hateful environment of the beehive and retreated to his natural habitat outside of the deep forest. Even Galladon had some problems taking the luxurious shiny honey outside of the beehive village, because his young brown bear king didn't want to part with it. After receiving some loving education from Galladon's iron fist he finally acknowledged reality and dutifully protected the beehive until the slaves from Essos harvested and packaged most of it away.

Over the course of the next year the volume of Tarth honey increased by a large margin and any force trying to steal it was ruthlessly destroyed by many brown bears attacking them as soon as they left the coast of Tarth.

Lord Selwyn used those intruders as a reason to strengthen the coastal protection of Tarth and increased the number of ships and sailors for the Tarth navy.

At some point even the nobles of Westeros heard about this new delicacy from Tarth and Galladon proposed to use Tarth honey as a tribute to King Robert Baratheon. He even went further and started brewing fruit wine with the large amount of fruit trees and small vineyards alongside the south coast of Tarth and mixed those wines together with Tarth honey. Tarth was relatively close to Dorne which resulted in a warm and sunny climate, ideal to produce fruits such as apples and grapes.

Overall Tarth had a nice climate and a beautiful scenery. It is called the Sapphire Isle for the clear blue waters surrounding the island (but there are no real sapphires in it).

The "Sapphire Honey Wine" was extremely popular with the nobles of King's Landing, even more than the traditional Tarth Honey. The increasingly large demand for the specialties of Tarth resulted on a lot of profit for House Tarth. Truthfully, Selwyn Tarth didn't really know what to spend the money on, as their family's strategy was not to leave the island of Tarth until a few years later.

After listening to the suggestion of Galladon he reached an agreement with the merchants of Myr and the slave masters of Slaver's Bay to import many slaves. But not some random farmer slaves or fighter slaves, Selwyn Tarth insisted on buying talents in blacksmithing, leatherworking, crafting, building, reading and medicine. According to his son they would focus on building infrastructure on Tarth in the coming years.

Such as improving roads, building houses for their retainers, upgrading their own castle, building a larger smithy on the north side of the island, and further improving their medical and educational services for the people of Tarth. Starting all those projects at the same time used up all the free funds quickly, to the point where Selwyn started worrying about the liquidity of House Tarth.

When he realized that he was a little too ambitious by starting all the projects his son suggested at the same time, he lost sleep for a couple of days. He chose to keep his worries too himself until his wife and closest partner, Erina Tarth, couldn't bear to watch her husband suffer silently.