While it had its own challenges that he had a hard time understanding, Sven settled nicely into the role of teacher. The students were in awe of him to the point where it was a source of constant embarrassment and were mostly a good lot eager to learn. Leaving aside being able to return every night to a loving wife and kids. Never the less, he still had his old friends. Some of which more than others.While Sven had been off leading armies and breaking warrior hosts, Yanov had spent his time training up men at the rifle ranges. It was somewhat unusual for a Sergeant to have a close tie with a general, but he was an old friend. He had been seeing more of him as he found the old boy. One day he decided to pick up one of his favorite snacks, slices of potato fried in oil until they had a crust on the outside and covered in salt. He had a few of them before and they were alright. The only problem was the route that they had to go through to get to it. Last year it was near the end of the city, then something unpleasant grew around it rather quickly.In the year since the fall of the Black Ports, there had been a large surge of people coming into Dalatyr: many discharged soldiers, their families and freed slaves decided that Dalatyr was a better place to go than their old homes and the cost of travel went down as evergrowing fleet of trains, riverboats, paddlesteamers, wagons and roadsteamers was less burdened by carrying can's of meat, rifles, rounds of ammunition and troops about. There had always been more people coming in and the rate of new arrivals had steadily increased, but this was quite a surge of new people. From what he heard about 21,000 total, more than a goddamn division worth of men and about half the population that was in Dalatyr just before the fall. Only now did it look like it was letting up, going back to a more steady rate, even if it was slightly higher.This new workforce was given various jobs, from helping in the building of new factories to cooking, but it had needs. Food fortunately were handled easily enough as the Committee tended to store a surplus for further growth and more food was being made available. Water could be handled by new fountains and wells. Many new factories were now under construction to make the most of the new workforce. The biggest problems related to housing, as this surge of people gave rise to a new set of slums. For the past twelve years, more and more people were living in apartment buildings. They tended to be crowded yes, but they were definitely better places to live than what had come before or had been given new life by this new influx of people, the hovels.The basics of this were simple. Some farmland on the edge of the city would be bought up, either a small section of it by some businessman or a large section of it by the Committee, who would dig roads then offer up plots on it to whoever would construct a home on it. The people who built these were mostly men of some finance who could afford to hire a few laborers (which there was definitely a surplus of now) to cobble together a building to try to get some rent money out of it. They used whatever they could get their hands on to make a building. Brick, Timber, wattle and daub, Slag Bricks, stones from fields and the mines. Their had been some changes to their designs, now the average slum house was two stories tall. Even so, they smelled and people here were cramped like cartridges in a box. Not so much dwellings as storage. Definately not a nice place to walk through, even for these new "chips"."You know Yanov, this housing shortage is getting out of hand. Look at this, soldiers in tents live better than this.""Its not that I don't agree with you, what can you do?""I think I'll bring it up with the Committee."Previous- [link] Next- [link]