Getting Started
I gutted the fish using the Leatherman tool I had on me when I was portaled in. Emily said she'd fry it up with some kale that was ready in the garden.
There wasn't any butter or extra oil, so we'd need to order some once we got back. We chatted idly about what animals and home goods we'd need to order. The Albion Shop System wouldn't put me into "System time". I'd still only see the page, but I could talk with people.
Once we got back, Emily took Colin aside to tell him I had portaled in from somewhere else in the world, and I didn’t know why. She just said that it must have been a powerful wizard or ritual.
Emily had agreed with my choice to pnt corn as my other optional crop. Wheat had to be grown. She said that we could expect twenty to thirty bushels of corn, and as low as thirteen bushels of wheat per acre.
I was confident that my corn and wheat yield would be at least double that number. Back home we were easily doing two hundred-twenty bushels per acre for corn. Of course, genetically modified seed was a huge part of that. I knew from hearing my grandpa talk about it that in the 1950s, when modern practices and unmodified seed were used, farmers got forty to fifty bushels per acre. I had the bonuses that would make ?fifty the low number.
Wheat was also pretty modified from the early days. But, we weren't keeping a fraction of the wheat behind that was needed from hand sowing. With the loss from hand sowing and harvest, the almanac said farmers on Tamh could only expect four grains for every one they pnted. With my pnters and bonuses, I thought thirty-five to forty bushels per acre was reasonable here as well.
I finally pulled open the Shop Interface for the first time and almost ughed. It was just like a video game!
I was greeted to what looked like a ledger book with an index page. It took up my vision, but it didn’t put me in scroll time. I could still move my body, but since I couldn’t see my surroundings I stayed put.
The first tab I saw said Free Items, so I clicked on it. There was nothing there right now. The page was set up in a grid-like pattern with little boxes. It almost made me giddy seeing this screen. After my talk with Emily, it felt like just what I needed to elevate my mood. I had always loved store and auction screens in video games for some darned reason.
After the free tab, I decided I'd start moving tab by tab alphabetically.
The animals tab had what you'd expect. The System organized them by price, not alphabetically. I saw that there was silver in addition to gold. Since a chicken was 20 silver, I assumed that meant that 100 silver equaled 1 gold. I didn’t see copper.
The clothing tab was organized the same way. I saw nothing there that I had to have.
I asked Emily if she wanted any clothing items for now. She seemed embarrassed, but did ask if I could buy her some fabric for underclothes, some fabric to make herself another dress, and some fabric for Colin. I had a surprise for Colin, but I bought her the fabric she needed. All told, I spent 5 gold there. 695 gold left.
Crafting Equipment had a still, and an alchemy table. The problem was that the alchemy table cost 50 gold. The still was only 5. I needed something to get started on my biofuel. It looked like it would be enough for now. 5 more gold. 690 gold left.
Crop seeds weren't listed at price per acre, but at a price per plot.
1,000 gold – Almonds(t2), Apples,Cherries, Grapes(t2), Peaches, Pears, Plums,
500 gold – Potatoes
400 gold – Hops(t2)
300 gold- Barley, Oats, Yellow Onions, Bck Beans, White Beans, Red Beans
200 gold – Alfalfa, Corn, Fx(t2)
100 gold – Clover, Turnips, Wheat
I actually remembered that people used turnips as a forage crop for animals in the winter in the 1800s. I was pretty convinced that I was dealing with somewhere around 1880s tech, with wizards thrown in there. Potatoes, corn, and wheat were the three major crops grown in the US in the te 1800s. Farmers grew most corn to feed animals, not people, just like today.
I was curious about the almonds. On Earth, they came from California. I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion I was in an alternate North America based on Colin’s story about Arturos and Merlotus.
It seemed like maybe we were on the East Coast, around Pennsylvania or New York, maybe. Instead of being old and worn down, I was dealing with an Appachian mountain range the size of the Alps or something.
My theory was still in its early days of course, so I could be totally wrong. This theory didn’t help expin fantasy races either. If Arturos and Merlotus brought the System with them, but the other races were already here, they had to have come from somewhere else at a different time. I’d have to look at the almanac for answers there sometime.
Getting back on track, I looked back at the list.
I already had potatoes. That saved me a lot of gold. I also had a 20% discount. Still, 240 gold down with the corn and wheat. That left me with 450 gold.
Farming Equipment was the next tab. It was not full of all the specialty items I would have access to at home, but it had a few items of interest.
500 gold – Self-Raking Reaper, horse-drawn
90 gold – Gang Plow
45 gold – Plow, Grain Seed Drill
27 gold – Harrow, Hay Rake
Holy hell. That Reaper was expensive. I decided to ask Emily about it.
"Hey, are there harvest teams for hire in the quest tab?"
"Correct, are you looking at the reaper?" She replied.
"Yeah, with horses I imagine that thing is like a thousand gold."
I could hear her say, “Correct. You cannot harvest with the equipment you have?”
When I said I couldn't, she said, “Well, then you shall want to look at the quest tab when we are done. You will need to hire the thresher and then a team to do the harvest. Luckily, they will work for food and then take payment after the crops have been sold. They come in six-person teams. There are plenty of people to hire. We have to complete our contract as well before the day is over. The bishop can see all contracts, so he will expect our contracts to be completed without dey.”
Home goods were up next. It had a huge list of things. The items I was considering included:
3 gold – Chicken coop
1 gold – Washboard
1 gold – Oil Lamp
1.5 gold/Gallon – Vinegar(comes in a stoneware crock),
1.5 gold/gallon - Whale oil (limited to 10 gallons per homestead per year)
1 gold – Stoneware Crocks
2 gold/25lb sack – Flour
1 gold/LB – Sugar, Salt, Bacon
10 silver each – Soap, Toilet paper, Gss jars for canning.
"Alright, what do we need for home goods?" I asked.
Please don’t say whale oil…
Emily began listing things off. “We need 10 gallons of whale oil for the mps. Then ten sacks of flour, ten gallons of vinegar, fifteen pounds of sugar and salt, five pounds of bacon, and finally ten bars of soap and ten rolls of toilet paper. We already have a chicken coop and a washboard.”
Damnit, she said whale oil. That just feels dirty. At least it’s not avaible in rge enough quantities to tempt me to use it for biodiesel.
That left us with 380 gold and 40 silver.
Raw materials had a bunch of things like cloth, and blocks of iron. There was also coal, which I'd want some of for running my stove. They sold the coal in 100lb increments. It was 6 gold per hundred pounds.
"Hey, I haven't been in the house yet. Do you have a pot-bellied stove? Do we need coal?"
She said, "That would be wonderful. We’ve been burning wood all winter. It is not as easy, or as even as coal. We burn around twenty-five pounds per day on average. Can you get 2,000 pounds for now? That should get us close to our wheat harvest."
"Sure thing," I said. 284.6 Gold left.
Next was a tab that said, Seeds, Garden. I did look at it, but my welcome package provided most of the pnts I'd want there. I didn't see any new seeds I really wanted.
Emily said some individual fruit trees would be nice, but they wouldn't produce fruit this year, and we could pnt the trees in the fall, after we were hopefully filthy rich.
Next was Skills. This tab truly intrigued me. When I opened it up, I was both pleased and shocked. It included skills, like you'd expect to see in a homesteader-type game. It also included a couple of support csses. But the prices…
1,000 gold – Butcher, this support css gives you the skills necessary to properly dress, and cut, any animal.
1,000 gold – Herbalist, this support css gives you the knowledge needed to create brews and poultices that help with minor ailments and make them 25% more effective.
1,000 gold- Seamstress, this support css gives you innate knowledge on how to make clothes. It allows you to reproduce your work perfectly.
500 gold – Lesser Strength, increases your strength by 10%. Requires Level 10.
500 gold – Hardy Constitution, makes you far less likely to get sick or get an infection from an injury. Requires Level 10
500 gold – Animal Whisperer, gives you an innate ability to control all types of domesticated animals.
500 gold – Preservationist, gives you knowledge of proper food preservation techniques, and makes all food st 10% longer.
100 gold– Alchemist, this support css allows you to transmute materials.
Please check in on this tab every spring. New skills and csses become avaible once a year when the Albion Empire brings new settlers and civil servants to the Western Territories.
Alchemist was the outlier here, the bishop really thought he got me there.
“Emily, two questions. First, shouldn’t Butcher or Herbalist be a primary css instead of a support css?”
She answered, “They still are for some people. You get normal skills from each of the three types, and you can still go as far as you would like. But the System gives bigger, broader categories for main csses. Butchers or Herbalist would be likely to have Shopkeeper or Tradesman as their primary. Wizards who have gone to college might have Schor. If you don’t have parents who can help you learn Shopkeeper or Tradesman, most people just get Laborer or Farmhand if they’re rural. Homesteader is a big step up so a lot of people applied for the lottery to come out here.”
That seemed weird to me, but I wasn’t an expert on csses or anything.
"Alright, second then. Emily, you don't have a support css right?"
I could hear the irritation in her voice as she said, "That is correct, I do not. Do you see how expensive they are in the shop?"
“Aside from Alchemist you mean?” I said.
I could hear her give a derisive snort-ugh. Not the type of ugh I was hoping to coax out of her.
“Which css would you want? You said you're making clothes, but would Seamstress still help?” I asked.
“Hmm,” I heard her think. “Perhaps. It would make all of my clothes look professionally made, and make it way faster to sew. Honestly though, if I had a support css I would probably want Preservationist. It would synchronize well with my Primary css.”
“Why? Are you going to purchase me a support css?" I heard that snort again.
"I am," I said. "If things work out this fall, you and Colin will have all of your csses. Can women have a combat css?"
She sounded a little shaken but said, "Well we can, but it would be scandalous."
"Oh well," I said. "If I have the gold, I'm getting you both all of your csses."
Silence followed that procmation.
I was starting to wind down my Shop Interface time. Weapons, and then I'd buy animals.
Weapons was an interesting tab. It included items that were probably way cheaper for me now than they normally would if they weren’t subsidized.
100 Gold– Rifled Musket, includes 50 cartridges and primers.
100 Gold – Pike, Cavalry Saber, Pistol, includes 50 musket balls, casing, and a single powder horn
50 gold – Iron Shod Spear
50 gold – Hunting Bow with 50 arrows
I had to buy my musket. Colin had said that it was subsidized to 100 gold. Luckily, that was before my new discounts. 80 gold down. Now I was low on gold. 204.6 left.
Finally, I went back to the animals.
20 gold- Cows, Oxen, Draft Horse
12 gold – Riding Horse
10 gold – Donkey, Mule
4 gold – Lmas
2 gold - Dwarven Rabbit
2 gold- Goats, Sheep, Pigs
50 silver – Turkeys, Geese
20 silver – Chickens, Ducks
"Alright Emily, we have 204 gold and 60 silver left. Tell me how many chickens, and ducks we should get. They're 20 silver each. Turkeys and geese are 50 silver each. Are your geese as big of jerks as mine were? I remember being chased by my great uncle's geese as a kid."
With some amusement in her voice, Emily said, "Geese are always jerks."
She continued. “John. First, look to see how much a roll of barbed wire costs. I have been told it has come down in price a considerable amount in the st few years. We will need that to keep the goats and pigs out of the garden.”
Oh shoot, I hadn’t even thought of that. I knew barbed wire had been ubiquitous even in the Old West. Barbed wire was as big a symbol as a six-shooter in a lot of artwork from the period.
I pulled up the tab. 5 gold for 100lbs.
“It says 5 gold for 100lbs. I have no idea how many feet that’ll be though.”
She answered, “1650 feet. Enough to put two strands up on an acre of garden. Buy two please.”
“Okay,” I said. She had that number down pat. It was 8 gold with my discount.
“Do we need to buy barbed wire for the fields? If not, how do we keep the animals out of the fields?”
Emily didn’t speak right away. “John, you never had animals with the farming you did with the tractor?”
I felt like this was a trap question.
“No ma’am,” I said.
She answered with a neutral voice. “Ah. Unless they are starving, all domesticated animals will naturally stay out of designated farm plots.”
Well, that was handy. “Good to know,” I said.
When Emily dropped it and kept speaking, I was grateful.
“John, next will you buy ten chickens and a rooster. Then ten female ducks, and one male. Get five geese. Also get at least two female rabbits, when we’re ready to breed them we can take them to the Newtons. How much gold do we have left then?”
I was confused about the rabbits, so I asked her about them. “Should we buy rabbits, and why are they so expensive? Won’t they get into the garden? Those don’t count as farm plots, right?”
Silence greeted me momentarily.
“What?” I said nervously.
Colin asked me. “Why would dwarven rabbits get into the garden?”
This definitely felt like a trap.
Emily spoke up then. “John, dwarven rabbits are carnivorous. They’ll help with pest control, but they’ve been bred not to eat other domesticated animals.”
I was stunned, but I didn’t want to get into any trouble, so I just said, “186.5 gold left. Goats, sheep, and pigs are all 1.6 gold with my discount. I've raised pigs before. We should definitely get them.”
“Sounds good,” she said, “buy four sows and a boar, and then four does and a billy. That's 16 gold. You'll have 170 gold left in case of an emergency, and to buy more perishable food when you go into town for your militia duty.”
I did as she said, and I hit the confirm purchase button. I received a message that my goods and animals would arrive by mid-afternoon three days from now.
Now it was time to get some groundwork done!
