6 Commercial Development of House Tarth (3)

Galladon was aware of the steps for producing cement due to the knowledge of his past life. The only real problem that existed for him was to create a Kiln and reach the needed temperature of 1450 °C. After importing blacksmith slaves from Essos for many years and building a smithy in the middle of the island they finally constructed a working kiln a year ago. Thankfully Grey and his wolve pack found a suitable open pit coal mine in the depths of the mountain range, perfect for the immediate needs in the next few decades. The pit mine was by no means gigantic, but enough to cover the production of cement and the construction of high-quality steel knives.

Over the years Galladon was surprised and amazed by the size of the island of Tarth repeatedly. The furthest point north and the furthest point south of the island were roughly 200 kilometers apart.

(Reference: George R.R. Martin officially claimed Westeros as large as South America (7600 Kilometers). 200 Kilometers for Tarth is a rough estimation due to the official maps)

As a comparison, Germany in his past life only had a total length of 640 kilometers, which means Tarth is roughly the size of one third of Germany, at least in length. Surely, most of the island, especially in the south and east, is covered by mountain ranges and deep forests, but there Is still a lot of unused space and potential hidden deep in the island. The number of people is slowly but steadily increasing towards a total population of 100.000.

This development is only possible thanks to Grey and his wolve pack. In the southern and eastern part of the island deer and wild boars are currently overpopulated. They attacked the farmlands in the western and northern part of the island all year round, thus creating a lot of food problems for House Tarth. Under the huge effort of Grey and his children they could finally be contained in the south-eastern part of the island.

This increased the potential for food production by a lot, allowing Selwyn Tarth to import additional population for the development of the northern part of the island. Galladon's goal is to increase the population of Tarth to 1,5 – 2 million people in the next ten years. To achieve this goal a lot of slaves are needed to mine stones and reclaim farmland. Furthermore, he suggested at an elder meeting of House Tarth to build additional granaries and horde food, while grain prices are still low right now.

Westeros was currently in the middle of an ongoing long summer period, but in 4-5 years the long winter was returning. Combined with the start of a long civil war and a potential invasion of Westeros due to the return of the Targaryen dragon queen, food for most of the population would become a problem. Obviously, in the television series of his past life this problem wasn't really considered, but many things have been simplified to fit everything into a few short episodes. Galladon was now in a real and extremely large and complicated world and food security was extremely important to consider.

By using the family's connection, they can safely transport a large amount of grain from the Reach through the Stormlands or King's Landing and ship them to large granaries build from cement. If every ship landing at Tarth was filled with grain from Westeros and changed that for specialties from Tarth, a perfect situation would be created. Having a large amount of food is further required to feed the many slaves imported from Essos that are currently doing a major part of the infrastructure construction in Tarth.

Building the roads that connect the four coastlines of Tarth and crossed the middle of the island is already a very large project, costing the lives of many slaves every mount, because they need to flatten dangerous mountain passes and query a lot of stones. But those roads are very important, because they transport the cement that is constantly being produced in the middle of the island. Cement and steel production will be a family secret for many years to come and is constantly monitored by Silver and his large group of eagles. Anyone getting close to this medieval industrial park without permission of Galladon will soon be attacked from the sky.

During the year 293 AC Tarth was steadily developing according to Galladon's plan, which was mainly carried out by Selwyn Tarth and the elders of the Tarth family. 16 years of being fully included in all four auras developed Selwyn into a very capable administrator with a strong body. He didn't even need 6 hours of sleep per day to function perfectly every day. Even his mother, Erina Tarth, developed into a formidable female leader of the Tarth family. 

Any problems within House Tarth were tackled by her most of the time. She further cared for the immediate family of all important retainers and made sure Tarth was developing without any internal problems. Her change from a smart but very quiet and peaceful lady into an impressive female leader prompted Galladon to let his mother manage the farm and commercial port city in the North of Tarth. His father was already busy with important family affairs, military adjustment and connections with the noble families of the Stormland.

Involving him in the commercial development would probably tire him out. Before assigning one young talent that was involved in the intelligence aura for many years, Armin, to support his mother from time to time, he personally asked for Erina's opinion on whether she would like to participate in the construction and management of Sapphire Hall, the new port town of Tarth. Erina was delighted and gladly took over the management of the project.

During the years all of her four children were extremely smart, due to being involved in the intelligence aura, depriving her of most of her mother's moments. There really was not much need to educate her children, because they learned extremely quickly and were very independent. Especially her son never really troubled her before. Being able to help him and her husband to develop the family was a very welcome change in her otherwise stable life.