Honorary Knight Taipal stood on the threshing ground of Village Three with his two adjutants.
All 600-plus residents of the collective farm had gathered. They seemed in reasonably good spirits, but their clothes were still tattered and they looked rather dispirited. The fear in their posture and the way their eyes kept darting away immediately reminded Taipal of the farmers from the old days he'd seen in some vintage documentaries. As they formed a loose square under the direction of the militia sent from Scarlet Keep, Taipal felt like some quisling warlord who'd come to their village to plunder it.
He hurriedly shook his head, clearing the absurd notion from his mind, and silently repeated "serve the people" to set himself straight.
Taipal was standing on a wooden platform hastily built to welcome the arrival of the "village chief." He and his two adjutants surveyed the place that would soon be designated a "starting village" at his command.
There were no low thatched huts, haphazardly stacked lumber, or penned livestock. Instead, what Taipal saw was a neat row of identical three-story apartment blocks.
They were residential buildings constructed for the collective farm by the Stone Masons' Guild, whose crews worked under the command of the Chosen Construction Worker. The village plan had been drawn up personally by Professor Chen, the guild's honorary president, and was imbued with the neat, orderly beauty of a "new countryside."
The Transian authorities currently lacked the manpower and materials to paint buildings, so the square, solid houses remained in their original state after being conjured through the Petrify-to-Mud spell: the cool gray color of stone.
Yet their uniform coloring gave the whole village a conservative, cohesive architectural style.
As expected, Professor Chen was a rare talent in his field. He'd done the best he could