The stability Kael had engineered over months—the neutral financial ledger, the steady output of the Kiln, the meticulously calculated 22% grain buffer—was shattered not by the Duke's political warfare, but by the indiscriminate chaos of human tragedy. The crisis arrived abruptly on a cold afternoon, announced not by the calculated movement of an army, but by the mournful, ragged appearance of close to two hundred desperate souls on the northern access road. They were survivors from a southern march town, victims of a catastrophic military and bandit raid that left their settlement incinerated and their stores looted. They were a sudden, unmanaged input of raw human need, instantly overloading every system Kael had built.
Sergeant Rylen, immediately recognizing the threat to the barony's fragile internal order, placed the entire defense perimeter on high alert. The crossbows were manned with disciplined speed, and the gates were sealed shut. This was not an invading force to be repelled, but a wave of desperation that carried the potential for far greater systemic collapse than any siege. The refugees, seeing the high, functional walls and the reassuring smoke rising from the efficient Kiln, sank onto the frozen ground outside the fortifications. Their exhaustion and silence were more profoundly demanding than any aggressive charge.
Kael surveyed the refugees from the northern bastion, his logistical mind immediately struggling to cope with the sheer scale of the unquantified variables. He saw not 200 individuals, but an immediate, unquantified input of caloric demand and a disastrous logistical failure. The sheer mass of unexpected humanity instantly invalidated his entire survival plan. His internal calculations screamed the truth: the 22% grain buffer, secured with immense labor and intended to guard against a single crop failure, was eliminated in the first day of their arrival. At the current rationing rate for 300 citizens, the total remaining reserves would now last less than two months, plunging the entire settlement—the original 300 and the newcomers—back into the acute crisis of famine.
Kael's first action was to establish absolute control over the input variables and secure the existing assets. He issued a series of rapid, precise commands, ignoring the pleas and murmurs rising from the huddled mass outside.
First, Security and Contamination Protocol: Kael commanded Rylen to maintain the sealed gates and deploy all Core defense personnel to the ramparts, emphasizing non-aggression but absolute vigilance. The immediate danger was contagion. Kael dispatched Healer Mara and her Core assistants, instructing them to establish a strict quarantine perimeter fifty yards from the walls. Their orders were specific: document the precise number of arrivals, identify any visible communicable diseases (fever, dysentery, open wounds), and log the estimated age and physical condition of every person. Mara was authorized to use minimal surgical supplies for immediate triage, but her priority was absolute containment. Kael could not risk introducing a plague into his sanitized, enclosed aqueduct system; that would guarantee total collapse.
Second, Data Integrity and Audit: Kael summoned Steward Elms and ordered an immediate, total, and uninterrupted audit of the granary. Every sack of grain, every cask of preserved tuber mash, and every reserve briquette was to be recounted, weighed, and logged against the new population figure of 500. Kael needed the precise, hard data on the total remaining caloric budget to begin rationing. This audit, conducted while the refugees waited, was critical: he had to know exactly what was left before committing the barony to their support. Elms worked through the night, the small accounting team utilizing the new literacy skills to produce a single, cold figure.
Third, Labor Reallocation: Kael ordered the entire Contingent labor group to cease all work on new construction, including the Iron Works expansion and the advanced mapping project. Their operational focus was immediately reverted to emergency survival mode. They were deployed to the fields for intensive foraging and hunting, maximizing short-term caloric retrieval. The industrial projects, the fruits of months of stabilization, were temporarily shelved; survival was back on the immediate agenda. The sudden suspension of work in the Iron Works was a measurable loss of production, a direct cost of the crisis.
The final report from Steward Elms arrived at dawn. The total caloric reserves, including the processed grain and the fortified tuber mash, amounted to enough food to sustain the 500 people—the original 300 plus the 200 refugees—for fifty-two days. The 22% buffer was gone, and the barony was operating with a 52-day deadline before mass starvation began. The only viable path forward was to assimilate the 200 newcomers immediately into the production system, demanding immediate output to earn their share of the fast-dwindling reserves. Kael prepared the Entry Protocol, transforming the chaotic input into a controlled, quantifiable resource.