A Citizen's Concern for our Town

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Sprak

A Citizen's Concern for our Town

Post by Sprak »

Around midday Sprak slowly walks into the centre of town. He looks at all the people going about their day as he takes the steps at the Town Hall. Upon reaching the top of the steps, Sprak turns around and addresses everyone in the square.

Attention all!

Sprak waits for the townspeople to turn their attention to him.

Fellow townspeople of Paz.

Please, heed my words about my concerns with the times we face. With these same words I call for discussion with our Mayor on how we can improve our town to be the best town in all the lands!

My first concern is with our severe labour shortage which has continued to increase our cost of labour and desecrate the profits of our fields! It costs me a minimum of 25.00f to attract labourers each time I hire. For my corn field I have a cost of 50.00f up to 56.00f with the wages I see for hire today. On my latest harvest I received 15 sellable bags of corn. At the price that our fair Mayor has offered to buy these bags at I will see at best 2.50f in profit for the 8 days of running the field, at worst a loss. A pretty deplorable situation if you ask me!

The state of our market terrifies me as well. Very few goods are moving, and the shortages are not being addressed. The fruit and veggie shortage is so dire that today I saw a single stalk of celery selling for 20.00f by Tybalt Eastcastle! A vile act of profiteering if you ask me! The same pieces of meat have sat in the market so long I am sure they can be smelt in the capital, and the lack of newly crafted items bespeaks the terrible profits seen by all tradespeople in this town.

People of Paz, I do not stand in front of you holding the answers to these troubles. All I ask is for you to all come together and discuss how we can find a path to greatness for our town.

Sprak pauses after his speech, looking at the townspeople, waiting for someone to speak up.
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Johnstone
Posts: 1435
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2009 8:19 pm

Re: A Citizen's Concern for our Town

Post by Johnstone »

John had been in the back of the crowd listening to the concerns of his fellow citizen. He had been thinking about the concerns the man was bringing up, but due to the lack of activity in Paz, John was not sure what direction to go. John agrees with Sprak that we need to find a path to help Paz get back on the road to greatness. Before John speaks up, he was waiting to hear back from his contacts to see if they had some fresh fruits to bring to Paz, some fresh milk to get on the market, and to see what other concerns other Paz citizens had.
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Nikola
Posts: 3837
Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2009 11:45 pm

Re: A Citizen's Concern for our Town

Post by Nikola »

Nikola does some figuring and decides to speak up with some suggestions.

”Sprak, you bring up some very good points. Unfortunately, corn is not a very good cash crop, but is needed for livestock either on personal farms or for the Viceroyalty’s animal breeding program. Higher wages tend to get people into the fields sooner, but if you can afford to wait several days for your field to be worked, you can lower your wage and eventually a peasant will work your field, but as I said, this can take several days. If you lowered your wage to 20F and waited for a peasant to work it, you would clear 12.5F on selling your corn. Not a lot of difference, but some.

The real problem is that there are so few of us in these lands. Paz has only 24 active people in town and of those, 4 are currently contemplating their navels at the church (in retreat). Bravia City may have a few more active citizens than Paz, but not many. Many of our citizens are also craftsmen who enjoy spending time in their workshops to produce the items that the rest of us need or want, be that specialty (multi-stat) foods, weapons, tools, or luxury items to name only a few. Many of these same citizens also choose to study at the university in order to improve their lot in life. Some choose to guard the town, the church or the castle rather than work the fields. A few even enjoy working in the mines, although the vast majority of our mine workers are our peasant population and we are most grateful to them for doing this for us.

As you can see, when our craftsmen are busy in their workshops, our students busy studying or attending classes, and our volunteer security force is out guarding your towns, churches and castle, well that leaves even fewer people to work the field jobs available. Supply and demand pushes up the cost of labor for those field jobs. It’s not ideal, by any stretch, and definitely hits the farmers hardest of all.

Markets are, indeed, slow. Again, this is largely due to the size of our population and the lack of real need for some of these goods. The celery you spoke of was probably priced fairly, though. Celery is not something that can be grown or cultivated in a field. It grows in the wild and can only be gathered when foraging outside of town and even so it’s hit or miss whether you find anything of value, including said celery. Celery is hard to come by so a price of 20F is actually quite reasonable. Particularly when foraging outside of town is a full day’s work and the celery may be the only fruit of that labor.

There are ways of improving your income as you progress in your quest for more knowledge (INT), more strength (STR) and a sunny disposition (CHR). The Viceroyalty is always in need of wood. The Town Halls will buy wood from its citizens for 7F per bushel to use for the town or transfer over to the VR. You must travel to one of our wood towns to chop the wood, and you will need an axe, but Mayor Johnstone or Finance Minister Lum can help you with that. Staunchville is the closest wood town and is 2 days travel from Paz. Even if you only gather 4 wood bushels per day, selling at 7F gives you a wage of 28F per day. As your intelligence increases, so will your ability to gather more wood in a single day which increases your earnings. My advice, at least for the interim to help you get past this hump, would be to contact Mayor Johnstone to offer your services as a logger. He can provide you with a grant containing an axe on loan and to hold all the wood you gather so that you are still able to move when you are ready to return to your home. He can discuss more specific details with you, but I strongly advise this as an alternative earning source."


Realizing she has been speaking for awhile, Nikola sits down to allow someone else to offer advice or suggestions.
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