Chương 84: CHAPTER 81 — Roads and Kitchens

Cora had spent the last full day reading through the book Mark gave her. The name of the book was Trail Surveying and Route Planning. It made her think about the trails and paths as something different. She had originally thought of them as just a way to get from here to there without much thought. The chapter on understanding grading and drainage really hit her. There were a few wet, muddy stretches along the path she traveled most.

Wayrest → Forest's Rest → Cave Camp Wayrest was near the marshes, and as such, it was wetter than the areas that were mostly forest. There was a spot that the carts heading east and west got bogged down in, and if two carts tried to pass, the whole area became a mess. The book made her realize these were no longer hunter paths but infrastructure. It needed to be maintained and built just like the longhouses were needed to house all the people that kept coming into the area.

She had scheduled a meeting at Wayrest today to meet with a group of 10 individuals that she felt could best help her to solve the issues of the trails in the area. They included laborers, scouts, haulers, and builders. Garrick could not make it, so he assigned one of his assistants to join. Cora pulled up her class advancement screen again to look at it as she waited.

[Apprentice Trail Warden] Advancement Requirements: • Survey and map 50 miles of safe travel routes (18 / 50) • Establish 3 maintained regional trails (1 / 3) Wayrest → Forest's Rest → Cave Camp • Identify and mark 10 hazardous travel areas (4 / 10) • Coordinate safe movement for 100 travelers (37 / 100) • Improve travel efficiency between settlements (0 / 1) • Organize 3 trail crews or patrol teams (1 / 3) • Establish a recognized regional road or route network (0 / 1) Potential Advancement: Journeyman Trail Warden She had thought when she first saw the requirements that she would never be able to get her rank to Journeyman, but Mark did a good thing by assigning this task to her.

It gave her an opportunity to step up and, better yet, increase her class. She had been leveling pretty well already, level 9, almost level 10 which was ahead of the curve for those like her that spent most of their time on the trail. But her class had just been sitting there. This was the motivation she needed to get it to move along. They settled into one of the benches outside the cooking house it was modeled after Dales but a bit smaller. They were between meals so there was plenty of room to sit and talk.

Cora started out the meeting by laying out what she thought was the most pressing problem in the network of trails. When she talked earlier with Garrick, she had found out his desire to make real roads across the major arteries crossing the zone and then smaller roads but bigger than current trails everywhere else. He talked about future wagons and the need to have them be able to pass each other and turn around if needed. The current paths worked well for haulers and scouts who used them heavily.

But they would not scale to what was needed. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. He also talked about bridges to cross the stream. It was not deep, but the traffic was already turning the banks into a mess. It would eventually ruin the stream if they did not fix it. She then pulled out the book and explained what it was and where it came from and shared a couple passages she had marked.

She came up with a plan to meet weekly to organize the needs of the area with a steering committee for transportation in the region, and this group was going to lead it. She pulled out a map that she had made of the general area, and they, as a group, discussed the priority order of which trails were going to be widened and improved first and also picked three locations of where trails could be added to make the network work even better.

The lunch rush had just ended, and Dale sat down in his office to read another chapter of the book Mark gave him. The book was titled Advanced Food Preservation Methods, and it not only talked about food preservation but also about how to feed and take care of large groups of people, including supply lines, staffing, and kitchen management. The book had arrived exactly when he needed it. Life in the kitchen had been getting out of control.

Each week they seemed to be feeding nearly twice as many people as the week before. The logistics of getting the supplies they needed were becoming nearly impossible. They were needing to get trade contracts out to surrounding areas to make sure the variety of the food could be kept; local sources alone were no longer enough. Travel times were getting longer because of the poor upkeep on the trails, and prices were rising on nearly every important staple. Shipments in bulk were expensive.

They also needed to be able to find new items and create different meals to keep his crowds happy. Dale again pulled up his class requirements to see his status.

[Journeyman Survival Chef] Advancement Requirements: • Prepare 5, 000 meals using gathered or locally sourced ingredients (3, 870 / 5, 000) • Maintain food service during 3 regional emergencies or shortages (1 / 3) • Develop 5 long-term food preservation methods (1 / 5) Basic Smoking Rack • Supply food to 3 active settlements (2 / 3) Forest's Rest and Cave Camp • Train 3 assistant cooks or kitchen workers (1 / 3) • Create a sustainable regional food storage system (0 / 1) • Successfully prepare meals using 10 unique regional ingredients (6 / 10) Potential Advancement: Master Survival Chef When he got this rank initially, he thought the hardest one on the list was feeding 5000 meals, but that was close to being the first thing he completed.

Now he realized the hard ones were the preservation methods. The book talked about a dozen ways to preserve food, and unlike previous things he had learned going to chef school, these methods were designed for frontier conditions like theirs. There were step-by-step instructions on how to preserve and store food. If he mastered them, he could probably complete the preservation requirement within a week or two.

It also had a chapter on kitchen management, ways to get more people in less space, and how to pre-prep things. One of his favorite chapters was one on different recipes using spices they had found but he did not know how to use. Some of them sounded amazing. He also realized he needed to triple his staff and train far more cooks. He was causing a bottleneck by having the best food. He had 4 kitchens available to him now. Forest's Rest, Cave Camp, Crossroads, and Wayrest.

Soon he would also have Eastwatch, but it was still behind schedule on its construction. He formed a plan to hire a Chef for each one. He would shift into more of a teacher and organizer role and rotate between them on an every-couple-day basis. He could then spend more time on creating recipes, logistics, and managing the kitchen, as that was the highest need at the time. Who knew maybe if Mark really starts a village down south, he could go do the same thing in that area and make sure the masses get fed in style.