Vivid Stars Online

The area highlighted on the map was quite familiar once I worked out the scale, or part of it was at least. I could almost trace my meandering trip from the edge of what used to be explored territory through to the latest mountain.

The area didn’t stop there, however, instead continuing over twice as far into the wilderness northward. It also wasn’t just a small strip running up, instead extending both east and west of my route for several thousand miles.

In total, I estimated I had only explored at most one percent of the total area that was now mine.

“Indeed,” Henceforthe’s voice jerked me from my shock. “Duchess Milena understands you are an explorer at heart and has given you land where you can best use your talents.”

“Not only will this mollify the other nobles, as it is surveyed land that is in high demand, but its low value has resulted in your domain becoming quite large. Even ascending to Marquess would not be out of the question if you were able to develop it enough.”

I guess that explains the sheer quantity, I thought as my shock dissipated. “But how am I ever going to manage all that?” I blurted out as worry grew within me.

The professor laughed lightly, though it sounded amused rather than malicious, before responding. “Simply put, you don’t. That is why vassals exist, while having them manage your land will not be as profitable as doing it yourself, I have never met a noble who would wish not to have them.”

“Let me tell you what I would do if I were in your position,” he continued, before pulling up a much smaller map. This one covered the edge of a very familiar lake, with a small fishing village perched on the edge.

“Currently, this is the only settlement on your lands, one which you found the location for,” he started as he pointed to the village with his laser. “The simple way to start would be to move out from here, perhaps to the nearby mountains that already have a mine, or perhaps to the forest or further along the lake.”

He pointed to each spot on the map before continuing. “You would use your current abilities in exploring, with perhaps some guidance on what a village needs, to locate new spots for habitation.”

“Then you would build a village, and hand it over to a baron to manage. This would allow you to move on to another location, as you would only need to manage your new vassal.”

“Right,” I said with a nod, as the worry faded away. That sounded quite doable, exciting even. I had found a love for exploring since I started the game, and this would allow me to do it for myself, rather than for the benefit of others.

“So I would keep doing that until I had a few Barons,” I mused out loud, thinking through the process. “And then I would raise one of them up to Viscount to manage the others?”

Professor Henceforthe nodded with a bright smile. “Exactly. You may promote barons at your discretion, as long as you grant them sufficient land. When the time comes for a Viscount you will need to petition the Duchess for a town charter so they may expand their holdings beyond the level of a village.”

“Speaking of which,” he muttered, before turning and rummaging through a cupboard. A few moments later, he withdrew a furled scroll and place it on the table. “Here is your first one. While it is up to you how you use it, I would suggest beginning to expand the village that is already there.”

“That makes sense,” I said, pulling the scroll forward and opening it. It was covered in official-looking language that I decided to decipher later. “I’ll need somewhere to act as a hub for establishing more villages.”

That triggered a thought I’d been trying to ignore, which I voiced. “How am I going to afford to do that? I imagine setting a village up isn’t cheap. Also, how do I get people to move there?"

“There are two ways you can fund a village,” Henceforthe said with a grin, as if happy I brought the question up. “First, you may pay for it out of your house’s funds, or occasionally out of your personal funds, or second, you may accept a donation to do so.”

“We will start with the first,” he continued, flicking back a couple of slides, “as it relates to how you draw funds from your lands. There are two streams of income that you may access: the first is land taxes, and the second is a tax on goods.”

“Land taxes,” he said, gesturing toward the slide, which showed a variety of businesses laid out across a small town. “Are simply the rent that an individual or business pays for using the land that you own. This is usually suspended for several years for new villages or towns to encourage people to move there.”

“The tax is standardized based on the quantity of land that is used, with an increase if any non-renewable resources are removed from it. This tax is paid to you each year, in monthly increments, and forms your personal income that you may use as you wish.”

“Of course, some of it, twenty-five percent to be exact, is to be paid to your lord as part of your vassal tax, however, the rest of it is yours to do with as you see fit.” He looked over at me as he finished, no doubt checking that I was following.

I nodded in response, starting to get excited at what I heard. I could almost feel it, this was an opportunity for retirement if I built it up enough. While it was still in a game, many other VR games I had studied still had dedicated player bases decades after their first launch.

Given how realistic and popular VSO was, it wasn’t hard to believe that I could still play it in twenty years. If I did well here, then I might be able to play just for fun by that point, with my lands bringing in all the money I would ever need. That would be worth waiting however many years it was before the land taxes would start coming in.

Since I didn’t have any questions, he continued. “The goods tax is a percentage of the sale value of any goods produced on your lands. Much as with land taxes, vassals pay twenty-five percent of this tax to their lords.”

“This tax becomes the income of your noble house, which is spent on producing levies for the crown and protecting your land, as well as expanding your domain. You cannot use this money for personal purposes.”

So I can use that money to fix up the spaceship, though if I do so it might slow down building new villages, I mused, before a thought hit me. “Wouldn’t that be lower than the land taxes if it’s just a percentage of goods sales?”

The professor shook his head with a smile before flipping to the next slide. It displayed the percentages I would get, split up by the type of goods. The lowest was thirty percent, and it went up a lot from there.

“Oh,” I said with a nod. “Yeah, I could see why that would add up across my whole domain. Even if most of it will be managed by Barons or Viscounts and I’ll only get twenty-five percent of theirs.”

It was a pretty high number of tax people on, but then there were no income taxes in this system. When you thought about it like that, then the numbers made more sense.

“Exactly,” he responded with a nod. “And don’t forget that while you must provide levies to the crown, your Barons and Viscounts are required to produce their own levies which will be added to yours. That is where they will spend their portion of the goods tax.

“I see,” I said, though it was only just beginning to register. I would need time to think it through and come up with more questions. “So it’s from the goods' taxes I would usually fund the creation of a new village. You mentioned a second method, though?”

He nodded, flipping through to yet another slide. “To answer that, let us cover how the other nobles of this province will most likely react to your ascension. First, the Counts,” he said, flicking up to a section at the start of the slide.

“While they will probably be a little annoyed at how far you jumped in a single go, the Duchess’s move of granting you land they do not desire will help a lot. With time, they will most likely accept you as a peer.”

“It is the Viscounts,” he continued, moving down the slide. “That will be outraged, as they will see you getting the promotion they all desperately desire. It is unlikely that you will ever have good relations with the existing nobles of this rank.”

I winced at that but nodded anyway. It made sense that if there was to be a new count, the people one step down would have expected it to be one of them.

“The Barons and Knights, however,” he continued, moving to the bottom of the slide. “Will see your rise as an opportunity for themselves. A vast area of new land will need new Baronies, which the knights will petition you for.”

“Similarly, the current Barons will hope that you may wish for an existing, experienced baron to be promoted to Viscount, rather than a fresh Knight. Though,” he continued with a frown. “I warn against poaching Barons like that, it will sour your relations with their Viscounts and likely the Count at the top.”

“This is where your second opportunity lies,” he said, his face returning to a broad grin. “Many of the Knights who move to a frontier province like this will be from wealthy families out of the more developed provinces. Families that will think little of throwing money at the creation of a branch family.”

“While it is, of course, strongly frowned upon to accept a bribe to promote someone, a donation to the realm is a well-recognized method of acquiring a title. Much like your own donation of ships, in fact.”

“Right,” I muttered as I tried to process that. “So if they just paid me for the title, it would be bad. But if they, what? Funded the construction of a village, then it would be all right?”

“Exactly,” he responded with a bright smile. “They offer to donate a village to the realm in your lands. Then the best practice is to ask if they would like to oversee its construction. If they do a good job, then your reward their efforts with the title of Baron over the village and its surroundings.”

“OK,” I nodded as a plan started coming together for my initial expansion. Getting a few knights on board with donating like that would be ideal, as it would allow me to spend my goods tax on fixing up the spaceship initially.

While I didn’t know how long it would be before we were ready to take the fight to the pirates, I didn’t want to be the one holding us up. That would reflect poorly on me as the newest Count.

If I could find a few knights who wanted to donate, I could spend most of my time exploring to find good village locations. Then I could just allocate the spots one by one and put them in charge of setting everything up.

“Thanks, Professor,” I said, bowing a little in thanks to him. “Could you send me those slides? I’m sure I will have questions for you in the future, but I need some time to process everything first.”

“Of course,” he said, typing something on his watch. A moment later, mine pinged with a notification. “And one last piece of advice. If you don’t know how to do something and don’t have the time to learn it, find someone who does know and delegate to them.”

“Delegating the management of my own lands to my wife while I was regent for my cousin was the best decision of my life. She did so well, in fact, that I have left her in charge ever since while I focus on my academic pursuits.”

That was good advice, and I thanked him again as I turned to leave.

“Oh,” he said just before I opened the door. “You also have a meeting with the head of the palace guard after this. I believe you have a psionic power to choose?”

Nice, I thought as I grabbed the directions from him. It was time to select the last part of my deal with the Duchess.