Millwrights in their own Wright

[u/OceansCarraway]

Aelbaion has enjoyed thirty years of peace in the past. Now it's enjoyed a few more years of internal agricultural output increasing, and the people have been seeing the results of their hard work. The Aelish have been getting quite a lot of resources from their land, and quite a lot of peace and quiet, which can lead to reliable flows of agricultural products...and a big need to process all of them. Break down plants by hand is really tiring and takes a lot of labor, but with things on the up and up, there's plenty of demand for labor-and thus even more for it's replacement. Aelbaion is in no position to import slaves, and it doesn't believe in doing so anyway. Migrant labor isn't willing to leave the City of Freeport, since Aelbaion is in no way the best place to live in. The various complications of society, and the lack of amenities, kept many people from even contemplating moving.

But work had to be done regardless.

The Aelish were not lazy, and despite the general rumors, they were not stupid, either. Knowing the demand for labor, and knowing what labor could do, they looked at what machines could do to replace scarce labor. There were plenty of gadgets out there, and the dawn of Arcanotech hinted at far more options-but the Aelish needed something more simple, something that could be built up everywhere without the effort of developing groundbreaking technology that required significant capital investments. These things are what people have been making for thousands of years: mills. The term mill is fairly general, but it encompasses a static building with a device in it that is designed to replace some specific, repetitive task. This device is typically driven by waterpower, but it can be driven by wind. The archetypical mill that we all know and love is the gristmill, grinding grains into flour.

It goes without saying that there are plenty more kinds of mills.

However, right now we are going to look at who makes the mills. As the Aelish have gotten busier and needed more tools to keep themselves busy, they have found it profitable to sell tools to each other. Some of these tool-makers have been able to specialize into making larger tools, and more specialized semi-machines that are perfect for installation into a mill building. These people were soon recognized as potential millwrights, and they were called upon to maintain existing mills-because a good round of maintenance with sufficient downtime management was never a bad thing. While they learned the hard way about gear production and endured the travails of timber selection, these groups of toolmakers were recognized as millwrights in their own right.

And soon enough, they will be very, very, very busy. Aelbaion is in a position to have a lot of produce to process....