The physical growth of Oakhaven was explosive, but a city is more than its walls and its workshops. It is a system of organization, a shared understanding. With a population that now numbered over five thousand, my piecemeal decrees and ad-hoc council meetings were no longer sufficient. The knowledge from the [Civic Governance & Administration] packet needed to be made manifest. Our society needed a skeleton of bureaucracy to support its growing flesh.
The center of this new civic skeleton was the Hall of Records. We built it next to the Market Hall, a sturdy, fire-proofed stone building with a single, heavy iron door. Inside, rows of wooden shelves were constructed, designed to hold thousands of our baked clay tablets. This was not just a library; it was the memory of our nation, its legal and social DNA made permanent.
I appointed a young man named Elian to be our First Scribe and Magistrate. He was the son of one of the Oakhaven originals, a quiet, intelligent youth who had been the first to master the expanded cuneiform I had taught. He possessed a logical mind and a meticulous, incorruptible nature. He became the warden of our laws.
Under my guidance, Elian and his team of apprentices began the immense task of formalizing our government. Every law passed by the council, every judgment rendered in a trial, every trade agreement with our allies, was carefully inscribed onto a tablet, stamped with my seal, baked in the kiln, and filed in the Hall of Records. The rule of law was no longer a matter of my personal decree; it was a physical, unchangeable fact, accessible to all who could read.
The census data was used to create a comprehensive tax code. It was not a punitive tax like the King's, but a fair and logical tithe. Every citizen and resident owed a portion of their production to the Confederacy: the farmer a tenth of his surplus crop, the artisan a tenth of his crafted goods, the herder a tenth of his new lambs. This tax funded our army, our public works, and the growing machinery of our government. For the first time, our people could see exactly where their contributions were going—to the new road being built, the new well being dug, the new city wall being raised.
This new bureaucracy extended to every part of life. The Ministry of Public Works kept a detailed inventory of every tool and every wagon. The Ministry of Agriculture tracked the grain stores, the health of the herd, and the crop yields of every field. The Ministry of Civic Welfare documented every birth, every death, and every family unit.
This level of organization was met with some resistance. To people who had lived their entire lives with an informal, tribal structure, the idea of registers and official deeds seemed like a needless complication. A dispute arose between two farmers over the precise boundary of their adjoining vegetable gardens. In the old days, it would have been settled with a shouting match or a fistfight.
Instead, I had Elian consult the Hall of Records. He returned with the original property tablet, surveyed when the plots were first assigned. It clearly showed the boundary line marked by a particular stone. The dispute was over. There was no argument, no bloodshed. The tablet spoke with an impersonal, irrefutable authority.
This single event did more to cement the power of the new bureaucracy than any decree. The people began to understand that the system was not there to control them, but to protect them. It ensured fairness. It protected the weak from the strong and the honest from the deceitful. They began to bring their contracts to be recorded, to register the births of their children, to see the value in this new, ordered world.
The 'Magistrate' unit designation, which I bestowed upon Elian, gave him an intuitive grasp of legal principles and precedent. He became a respected judge, settling dozens of minor civil disputes in the Market Hall, freeing me to focus on grand strategy. Our government was becoming a self-sustaining organism, its functions delegated to skilled ministers and administrators. Oakhaven was no longer just a city I was building; it was a state that was beginning to run itself.