The arrival of four thousand prisoners transformed Oakhaven from a bustling town into a sprawling, chaotic metropolis overnight. The carefully planned order of our city threatened to collapse under the sheer weight of the new population. Our wells ran constantly, our food stores were being depleted at an alarming rate, and the sanitation problems of housing so many men in a temporary camp were an immediate and foul-smelling crisis.
Panic began to set in among the original citizens. They were now a minority in their own home, surrounded by the very soldiers who had come to destroy them. Fights broke out. Hoarding began. The social cohesion I had worked so hard to build was fraying at the seams.
I used my new [Civic Governance & Administration] knowledge to tackle the crisis head-on. This was not a problem to be solved with a single project, but with a system.
My first act was to conduct a census, a concept utterly alien to this world. My new 'Administrators'—bright young men and women, including several former prisoners who had shown aptitude—went through the entire population, citizen and prisoner alike, with clay tablets. We documented every person, their former profession, their skills. For the first time, I had a true accounting of my human resources. We had 280 skilled masons, 400 carpenters, 80 blacksmiths, and thousands of strong, healthy laborers.
My second act was to establish a formal bureaucracy. I created 'Ministries'. Kael, the First Herdsman, was appointed Minister of Agriculture, responsible for overseeing our farms and livestock and managing the food supply. Oakhaven's blacksmith, a man named Jor, was made Minister of Public Works, in charge of all new construction. My mother, Elara, with her innate ability to manage people, became our first Minister of Civic Welfare, responsible for housing, healthcare, and the fair distribution of rations. Borin, of course, was my Minister of War. Each was given a staff of administrators to carry out their duties.
My third and most ambitious act was to unveil the plans for 'New Oakhaven'. I gathered the entire population before a massive, smoothed clay tablet on which I had sketched the future of our city.
"Our home is too small!" I declared. "The victory you have won demands a capital worthy of it! We will not live in fear of our new brothers. We will build a city for all of us, together!"
The plan was breathtaking. I laid out a new city grid that would expand Oakhaven to ten times its original size. It included dedicated districts: a craftsman's district for the forges and workshops, a residential district with standardized, multi-family stone housing units, and a civic district that would house the council hall, the public records office, and a new, massive aqueduct system.
The aqueduct was the centerpiece of the plan. Using my advanced engineering knowledge, I designed a system of arched stone channels that would bring fresh water from the spring in the hills, not just to a central well, but to a series of public fountains throughout the city. A parallel channel would serve as a sewer, carrying waste far away from the city to be used as fertilizer on the fields. It was a solution to the sanitation crisis that would simultaneously improve health, increase agricultural output, and stand as a monumental testament to our ingenuity.
The prisoners, organized by their former trades under the command of the new Ministry of Public Works, became the engine of this great expansion. They were given a clear incentive: every block of stone quarried, every yard of canal dug, earned them 'labor credits' that could be exchanged for better rations, better living quarters, and could eventually be put towards earning their citizenship. We were not just using their labor; we were giving them a stake in the city they were building. The work was hard, but it was not slave labor. It was a path to a new life.
The transformation was astonishing. The chaotic, sprawling camp outside the walls was methodically replaced by neat rows of new stone barracks. The sounds of construction filled the air from dawn until dusk. The first arches of the great aqueduct began to rise from the desert floor. The prisoners, once a sullen and resentful mass, now worked with a grim but growing purpose. They were not just building a city for their captors; they were building their own future homes.
The friction between the old citizens and the new began to ease, replaced by a shared sense of purpose. The sight of the new city rising from the dust, a city grander than anything they had ever imagined, united them. They were all citizens of Oakhaven now, defined not by where they came from, but by what they were building together.