Kingdom building – Winter in Wonder [Kuthona to Calistril] (Kerubiel’s point of view)

With the arrival of Kuthona, the kingdom was a flurry of excitement in anticipation of the wedding to be held on the winter solstice. Council met early this month so that the bride and groom could spend some relaxing time post wedding without having to worry about imminent kingdom decisions. This was also Cora’s first council where, she told me later, she first felt comfortable sharing her opinions. Before she’d felt more like an observer, but now she feels like full member. Good.
 
The kingdom’s agriculture grew some more with the building of facilities to accommodate more fishing along the Tuskwater, and the farming in the land east of Silver Falls has put apiaries into place.
 
Silver Stag is continuing to grow according to Jhod, who frequently visits there as part of his patrols. Perhaps we should find a way to make that a home base for him. Anyways, we built more homes there to help house the new citizens. But that was all the major construction that was had, as most of the taxes collected this month helped to cover the cost of the wedding. More details on the wedding later.
 
Moving into the new year, Cora was the first to tell me that while we were planning our wedding, Valla was planning one of her own. To the bartender, Traikore Zalphon in Varnhold. They were to have their wedding at the end of Abadius and she was moving there. We were of course invited and needed to bring a great gift.
 
So, we packed up an envoy and headed to Varnhold for a beautiful wedding. Nothing quite as extravagant as ours of course, but it was nice, and Cora seemed to really enjoy her duties as a bridesmaid.
 
Before we left, we met for council and expanded the kingdom more. We now have in our territory the area to the southeast of Silver Falls – where we fought that giant turtle so long ago. We also expanded our farming operation to this land.
 
Loy and Latricia, who have been very pleased with our progress, had sent word that their investors are still looking for a market space, so we sent resources to help them establish that as well as more homes for their growing town.
 
Jensothi told me later that we may have overspent a little this month with the cost of attending another wedding and Gith said that the people are worried we are not being responsible with their tax dollars. Best to do something about this in the upcoming month.
 
In Calistril, council decides to continue to add apiaries to our farming land. A great idea with the amount of mead that is consumed during Merry Mead this year. A great night in Silver Falls and I hear it also does well in our other towns as well. Helps keep morale high during this cold time of year.
We also upgrade the barracks space in Silver Falls to a full garrison. Glanrim thinks he can properly train his remaining soldiers and no longer are they a rag tag militia, but full soldiers. Good. We’ll be ready in any other monster nation comes knocking.
 
As winter ends at the beginning of Pharast, we are enjoying breakfast in the council chambers when Jensothi brings in letters for Kasner, Finn, and I… It’s from the Mayor of Duskholde. They are being overwhelmed by centaur raiders and both Brevoy and Varnhold have not sent help or replied to their call for aid. Looks like we have some decisions to make fast… At least we had a nice winter.