The Russian (Jr comes to the rescue again) trading block didn't turn out to be that hard a trading block to bust up. Once they used their very limited supply of Phants testing if our spears actually worked, they just seemed to hide in their trading camps and let us come to them. They tried to expand our knowledge by teaching us bureaucracy but we just laughed at them and used this knowledge to help irrigate our farms. We did find a new island with Iron on it and we wanted to stop others putting a trading camp near by. Thus one of our warriors mounted on the thunderbeasts hid in the forest and played havoc with anyone silly enough to drop by. We also saw a ship with a flag that we hadn't seen before ... from what was printed on the remains of the flag after our sailors were done with it, we think it was from the nation of Grindia.
Jr reported that N'uncle had been looking for another God ... don't we have enough yet ... this time N'uncle was looking in a machine - simply crazy stuff. Anyway, the Russian trading block proved very fickle and decided to all join us in out trading block very quickly. There was some loud singing in one of the camps that we understood to be a celebration of sorts - apparently, one of their ships that went East (or West) many years again had finally returned from the West (or East - it doesn't really matter) and had proved that the world was round. Oh well, I wonder if any one will work that out again, some time in the future ...
One of the Mothers had been keeping track of our economy (and a whole bunch of other boring stuff) as well as keeping track of the goods flowing from other people. She had constructed this chart to illustrate that all this unbridled economic expansion was having a negative impact.
N'uncle said not to worry too much as he was going to tour the lands and inspire people start courting more in houses. There were some comments that romance wasn't going to help much, but N'uncle just wagged his finger and said that people in love seem to find gold in the most unusual of places.
Finally, one of our trading boats returned with news of the Flindians ... they had seen a huge trading city (this was no simple camp) with a large dock and many many boats. These people appeared as if they knew how to barter and trade like the best of them. Unfortunately, they, like everyone else we meet, seem hell bent on trading to us on their terms rather than our terms. It will be interesting to see which system of trade turns out to be the best. One other bit of news was that we seem to have found at least one source of fabled pig.
And so, we entered into a long inward looking period. We had incorporated the Japanese trading system and the Russian trading block. The Mothers argued that we had suffered from indigestion because we had grown so quickly. Our internal trading system was generating a lot of cash but the costs of running the system was eating a lot of this cash. It seemed that there was a conspiracy between the people of the same trade when they meet together. The Mothers met with them and convinced them to meet for merriment and diversion instead of money.
Out small ice bound ice stores were a constant source of concerns. There was much discussion about what you actually do with these sorts of stores ... the lucky think was that our trading system generated enough trade routes (all internal but you cannot have everything) so that these sorts of stores (almost) paid for themselves.
We knew that Jr was making long trips to these out lying stores but no-one could figure out why. N'uncle hit us over the head and asked why people do things? Umm, money? Err, dedication? Ahh, love? Bingo - we confronted Jr next time he was in camp and he just grinned and said "If love be the music of food, feed me!". We all laughed and took him to the pub for a quick beer (or two). He was later heard to say that he wasn't commanded to do this, unlike others who did this from fear of the 'grow the population' law. The people started to specialize, most people worked the land and traded, some spent time thinking, some building and some spreading the good word.
Another great religious leader was found in Summer Camp but he was more interested in the Christian faith than the 'official' faith. He was politely asked to leave Summer Camp ... we next heard of him in Thunder School where he set up a new religious gathering building ... the church of the Nativity.
The warriors started to complain about all of this internal trade ... going back and forth over land that they all knew. The started campaigning that the way forward was through expansion ... they said that it was easier to get what you wanted with a gun than with a kind word. They also complained that a man does not kill himself working fields for a half-pence a day, they wanted something that spoke to their souls. And so it was decided that we would first win the race to more advanced weaponry, then we would go to war with these Kindians. The Mothers counseled that only defeated soldiers went to war first, then tried to win. N'uncle reluctantly agreed that war was the best means of expansion and so a monument to this aim was started in Summer Camp while a military training camp was started on the point of land west of Kyoto.
Jr was back in town, and, naturally, we were at the pub listening to stories of his family live. After several rounds, we started the silly game of stupid sayings. N'uncle was barred from playing this game as he always won ... we felt sure that a future life would see him as a politician. Well, TJ got it started with "I cannot live without books". Jr thought that one was fairly good, however, he almost threw Pids out for his attempt ... "The wisest men follow their own direction". This just wasn't stupid, it was very sound advice. Pids complained that this was stupid as he didn't understand it one bit ... N'uncle said that this just proved the point. He said that it was just like "One doesn't discover new lands without losing sight of the shore" - bloody obvious!
We were getting a bit vocal in our corner of the pub when a introspective thinker type and his two buddies asked to join us. They had been discussing a new game, where instead of coming up with stupid sayings, they would explain stupid concepts and see if they could be quickly adopted. Alhazen started by talking about the power of teaching people similar concepts in an organized way. N'uncle said that was a great idea and the next day he organized the Mothers to start schools saying that knowledge would lead to wealth for all. Alhazen's mate said that was nothing and started to describe a machine that enabled the mass circulation of printed material. His final comment was that this invention would enable people to blow up their minds. Well, that is what it sounded like but, remember, this had been a long night at the pub. N'uncle said that was an ok suggestion. But the kicker in this night was Alhazen's other mate, Copernicus ... he took us outside and talked about the stars, their movement, the ability to predict where they would be and that they actually changed position when viewed from Kyoto, when viewed from Summer Camp and when viewed from Moscow. But then the real clincher - it wasn't the stars that changed position but it was our relative position that made it look like they changed position AND THUS it was possible to work out where you were by looking at the stars. N'uncle and Jr looked upwards and their eyes shown, their souls expanded and the jumped up and down knowing that this was the key to building bigger better boats and expanding our trading block. We had started to see ships like this just recently and there were stories of battles between our maces and kindese knights on the ex-Japanese beach fronts - the horses literally racing off the boats and attacking our boys.
And thus the next great push to expand our trading block started by some of our cavalry, maces and catapults sailing to the lands of the Indians in these new wonderful galleons.