Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 489 Father's eyes watch over and protect us -
"Tell me about the Maelstrom, P... Pepé?"

Walking on the newly built second-floor walkway of Wandering Harbor, one of the dynasty archons gazed at the starry sky outside the new French windows with his ice-blue eyes.

From the side they are currently on, there is no sign of activity from the terrible subspace storm "Mouth" that separates the Wandering Port and the Landing Port, but they can see the bloated pale blue gas giant planet in the Rubicon II system and the bright spots of light distributed in the asteroid belt. These spots of light never go out on a daily basis, and only the workers illuminated by them will be replaced in three shifts.

These are the recently opened, massive hydroponic farms and assembly line factories that belong to the Carlosini dynasty.

These two mysterious, adventurous and wealthy dynasty archons don't seem to worry at all that these low-value business projects that cannot be moved or taken away and look as crisp as juicy apples and peaches will be plundered by pirates, orcs, dark elves or their peers, and are wantonly expanding their investments here.

Many shallow-minded outlaws or drunken pirates might easily see this as short-sighted and foolish rookie behavior, but senior officials and Rogue Traders with more strategic vision expressed great concern about this.

The blatant disregard for Imperial laws and the Adeptus Astartes by the Dynasty's "security guards" never attracted the attention of the Inquisition. On the contrary, most of the Inquisitors or their representatives stationed there all year round began to evacuate the area one after another, leaving the remaining Imperial personnel confused and even more afraid to act rashly.

The big businessmen held a nonchalant but not optimistic attitude towards this: in any case, the fact that primary agricultural products, fresh water and basic industrial products were beginning to be supplied in sufficient quantities was not a bad thing for them in this most remote and barren corner of the galaxy, but it was not a good thing either.

Originally, they only needed to transport relatively cheap food, drinks and other resources from other agricultural star regions here to exchange for rare, unknown but potentially very valuable exploration gains from alien races or explorers, but now they had to choose some rarer and more expensive goods.

Although this will not reduce their profits, it will increase cost risks and further raise the threshold for small businesses to enter the industry.

Many small traders with equally meager capital and profits have turned to work in the Carosini Dynasty's factories, where the resources for survival are more stable, which is much better than running small businesses, where you might be robbed by pirates or worse at any time, or have your throat slit and all your wealth taken away in the dark of an alley.

So after a peaceful, natural, and unnoticed period of slow transformation, the Merchant Guild suddenly discovered that the Carosini Dynasty had quietly and without resistance gathered in their own facilities more than 70 percent of the labor force in Wandering Port and surrounding areas, and that this number was still increasing, which made the remaining big merchants become alert.

These facilities of the Kalosini Dynasty, with their surprisingly abundant and stable energy supply, now house a large number of migrant workers willing to exchange their labor for food, fresh water and throne coins, and the children of these families are sent to schools opened on a newly developed asteroid.

After considering and listening to the preaching of the priest wearing the holy skull helmet, most parents chose to use some throne coins from their wages to send their children to boarding school, because this would free up mothers and older children in the family to work in factories, and older people could also take up jobs in caring for children in school.

In short, according to the Emperor's angels who would descend back and forth to preach among mortals, this way a family could earn double or even more wages, create more value for the throne, and devote more of their loyalty - and the factories and schools would provide two meals a day, which was much more cost-effective than leaving the mother at home to take care of the elderly and children!
This gave rise to more urgent demands for accommodation around these factories and schools. In order to facilitate unified management and planning of school bus shuttle routes within the galaxy, several more asteroids were bought by wealthy dynasties. Under the covert or overt observation of the Mechanical Temple of Wandering Port and more and more Ohm Messiah believers who flew in to observe, energy systems and gravity generating devices were expertly installed on them. Subsequently, many ecological domes of various sizes sprang up like mushrooms after a rain...

But just when everyone thought that the Carlosini Dynasty was planning to operate some profitable shipyards or rent out these comfortable domes to nobles as villas or places of enjoyment, the new orders from the consuls left those nobles and businessmen puzzled - according to the orders, the "security guards" of the Carlosini Dynasty swiftly built many so-called "workers' new villages" on them, and rented them out to mortal farmers or workers' families who worked for them at seemingly unprofitable prices!

The exterior is a simple multi-story residential building painted in yellow and black stripes, with a cement color. The design is rare, but it is square and made of solid materials. Each suite is large enough to accommodate a whole family. Short-distance passenger terminals have been built on all the asteroids under their names, and there are also small aircraft operated by the Dynasty for transportation.

Now, when it is time for classes or work to end as stipulated by the Kalosini Dynasty, from the central watchtower, command deck or monitors of the Mechanical Temple on Wandering Port, one can see short-distance shuttles swarming out like migratory birds and starting a large number of interstellar transportation activities.

The pilots and workers of the shuttle dock guild in Wandering Port were a huge force, but now they are as quiet as a chicken - most of the workers have entered the factory, and more than half of the pilots in the guild have enthusiastically devoted themselves to this new job that is more stable and has pleasant passengers after hearing about the salary and benefits. The rest are also very satisfied: after the number of competing jobs has decreased, the needs of tourists and the port itself have greatly improved the income and mood of the remaining pilots, and their service attitude has also become more friendly.

The end result is that there are fewer and fewer idle people in Wandering Harbor, and the owners of shops and bars feel that people's tempers have become kinder, and business is more prosperous. The missionaries of the State Religion are bewildered to find that although the number of donations has greatly increased, they can find fewer people willing to follow them to explore the wild galaxy. Even newcomers will be quickly pulled away by impatient professional brokers at the dock. Only determined pilgrims will continue to make the pilgrimage to the "Torch of the Holy Shelter" and receive the "Holy Communion Cup" - but it is hard to say how much will be left for the State Religion after listening to the sermons of those tall angel priests.

With the Court of the Dead where restaurants and specialty stores are located as the center, "security guards" wearing silver power armor were sent to demolish a large number of old illegal buildings with complex and dangerous structures. Every day, people could see them excitedly pointing fingers at the "engineers" who were also wearing silver power armor. But no matter what, in the end, new roads and cabins were replanned to combine elegance and firmness. Even the most picky Father Ackles, the chief designer of Wandering Port, could not find any fault with them.

Now, some non-main roads are almost empty except for cleaners and robot servants during working hours, so it is possible to take an undisturbed walk like this.

"Why do you suddenly want to know this?" Walking on the left side of Ramezane, Perturabo BC turned his eyes from behind his special eyepiece and looked at the other party inquiringly.

"Well, I don't know why I've been paying attention to the Ultima Star Region these days. When I look at the star map, I think of the Maelstrom... I think, maybe it's possible that Guilliman is about to wake up? But the people led by Master Kaduer haven't found any movement of the Eldar Death Army or other people."

"His psychic power is not as good as before. After all, his divination method is not so popular in the current universe." The border collie patted its tail lazily. "Besides, it's mainly because you didn't pay enough attention when you were studying, so you didn't remember the specific time and place! You can't even remember the general direction of such a major event. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack!"

"How can you blame me? Who would have the time to read all the relevant books? I already spend two hours a day just taking care of you!"

"Heh, first of all, I'm not your dog. Why should I care about the time you spend with your dog? Secondly... Hey, wait a minute."

Perturabo BC turned around in his camouflaged dreadnought, and to outsiders it looked as if the Archon had turned his body to look at the entrance of the passage they had come from. A face with an excited expression and a pair of pine green, shining eyes first emerged from the shadows, and Ramezane heard Perturabo BC roar with a mixture of anger or more complicated emotions.

"What's wrong? Isn't that Torgarton?"

The dog lowered his lips, revealing his canine teeth, and unconsciously licked the tip of his nose - of course, this was appropriately handled by the illusion camouflage as the brown-eyed Archon licking his lips.

"You're right," he murmured. "He's Tariq Torgaddon."

Ramizarn looked at Perturabo BC strangely, then turned to ask Torgadon who walked up to them and saluted the two highnesses.

"What's the matter? What's the emergency that has you coming here to see us? Are the Black Templars dissatisfied with their roster of meeting Magnar in turn? Or is Lucius yelling that he must go to see his Highness Angron or he will die of a broken heart? I told Tarvitz to shut up Lucius and stop yelling Angron's name so that everyone can hear it!"

"No, no, Your Highness! These are the goods we purchased from the Ultramar sector..." Moon Wolf said excitedly, "They were looted by pirates!"

"...Why are you so happy when our ordered goods were pirated, Tariq?"

"Of course! Your Highness! According to convention, an expedition must be held immediately as punishment! We are about to duel in the gladiatorial cage to decide who will be the commander of this expedition fleet! Now the Emperor's Champions of the Black Templar have already started fighting among themselves!"

"..."

"..."

Perturabo BC stared silently at the account book in front of him, which was growing excitedly, and bared his canine teeth again.
-
The other side of the universe...less than halfway there.

Although the Maelstrom is not as horrific in size as the Eye of Terror, which was caused by the sudden tearing of the real universe by the birth of Slaanesh, it is an "overlapping" area of ​​the Warp and the real universe that most studies now believe to have "appeared" in a natural environment. Its superior geographical location makes it a more preferred safe haven for pirates and a prosperous and shady trading zone.

Silver Heart.

The geographical location at the center of the galaxy makes it possible to distribute and circulate any stolen goods.

As one of the lengthy and numerical administrative names given to it by the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs, the name of the region in official Imperial documents before the Badab War was "Maelstrom Adjacent Autonomous Imperial Resource Extraction Zone Grid 004-357", and was described in the documents under it as "the galactic center region between the Solar and Ultramarine regions."

So it is obvious that the wealth of this area, especially the Extreme Star Region, is the important foundation that can support more than a hundred alien empires, pirate groups, chaos gangs and worlds of all sizes in the Maelstrom.

This is certainly not to say that there is anything wrong with being wealthy, but being wealthy to a certain extent that can always be rebuilt is an undeniable factor that allows these guys to come and reap the benefits every once in a while.

As a spaceship pilot or half navigator in some of the original plans of "Hongsuo of this Time", the mechanical priest Cecilin, who had been invaded by the Annihilator virus, had a series of destination data extracted from the remaining storage crystals through the exquisite restoration technology of the pharmacist master.

Since he couldn't judge which planet he originally planned to plunder... well, to get some decent food and drink, he decided to turn on the divination scanning array on the way to the Extreme Star Region to see if he could find any merchant ships passing by.

Although Vannas and Grendel were pessimistic about this, after all, even if it was a mature route, the void was too empty compared to the ships sailing in it, and they couldn't know in advance what cargo the passing merchant ships would carry. Maybe they would only get a shipload of unhusked grains or something worse after working hard for a long time. This was like throwing a net into the sea and expecting to catch a net full of fat Grox beasts.

"How is it?" On the merchant ship they had just captured, which was loaded with customized fresh fruits and vegetables, processed canned and bottled secondary agricultural products, as well as a large amount of rare metals and smelted ingots that could be well processed into weapons and a large amount of processing equipment, Hong Suo stood up from the cargo hold with a smile and clapped his hands. "I said, my father's eyes are watching over us and protecting us."

“Maybe.” Vannas looked around cautiously, “For some reason, I have a feeling I’m being watched, and it’s very ominous.” But when the former Raven Guard looked over, they only saw the terrified gazes of the captured merchant ship crew.

"Ha! Don't worry about those worldly opinions, Vannas. Let's take stock of our gains first. Then we can decide whether to go to the original planet..."

(End of this chapter)