Chapter 88: Ten Departments

The following morning, Raymond discovered that creating a government was considerably easier when discussed as an abstract concept than when someone placed ten blank sheets of parchment in front of him and asked what, exactly, each part of that government was supposed to do.

Alaric had arrived prepared. The Lord’s Council gathered around the long table again, though Marianne had already begun reducing her involvement now that the transition away from emergency administration was underway.

Boris sat beside Jonathan, Harlan had brought Gideon with him because agricultural responsibilities were about to affect both of them, and several of the specialists Raymond had introduced two days earlier waited farther down the table.

Mara, Selene, Ormond, Ysabel, and Corvin had been invited because Raymond already suspected their expertise would shape several of the Departments.

Lily sat beside him with his tea and personal notebook, looking immensely satisfied that none of the stacks of territorial records on the table belonged to her anymore.

Raymond picked up the first blank sheet and looked toward Alaric. "Ten?"

Alaric nodded. "Approximately. Fewer would force unrelated responsibilities together. Significantly more would create an administration larger than Althoff currently needs."

Raymond considered the population of 5,143 and nodded. "Good. I have no intention of creating thirty Departments so twenty of them can spend their days sending paperwork to each other."

The first was obvious enough that Raymond barely needed to debate it. Money required its own institution. Until now, House Althoff’s personal resources, territorial expenditures, emergency purchases, wages, market collections, and development costs had been handled through a mixture of household accounts and temporary ledgers.

That arrangement had survived winter because nobody cared which account bought grain while people were starving. It could not support an expanding city.

Alaric wrote Department of Treasury and Revenue across the first parchment. Its responsibilities would include territorial revenue, approved taxation when Raymond eventually introduced it, government expenditure, wages, public contracts, financial records, auditing, and management of the physical territorial treasury they intended to establish.

House Althoff’s private wealth would remain separate. Raymond emphasized that twice. "If I buy myself a ridiculous chair someday, the citizens of Althoff are not paying for it."

Boris glanced at his current chair. "Planning ahead?"

Raymond ignored him. Alaric continued writing. The Department would eventually prepare budgets for every other Department, forcing each Administrator to explain what they needed instead of appearing at Raymond’s door asking for money.

Agriculture came second. Harlan had been personally coordinating enough farmers to populate his own small village, and spring expansion would make that impossible.

Raymond settled on Department of Agriculture and Husbandry, broad enough to cover crop production, farmland allocation, livestock management, irrigation coordination, seed distribution, grain planning, agricultural tools, soil improvement, and future agricultural settlements.

Harlan listened while Alaric read the responsibilities, then frowned at the parchment. "That sounds like everything Gideon and I already do."

Raymond nodded. "Exactly, except now you won’t do all of it personally."

Harlan looked unconvinced. "Someone still has to make sure it gets done."

"Yes. That’s why Departments have staff."

One of the agricultural specialists added that field supervisors could manage groups of farms while central records tracked acreage, planting schedules, expected yields, livestock numbers, and irrigation requirements.

Harlan slowly began to understand the difference. His job would no longer be remembering which farmer needed another plow.

His job would be ensuring the system responsible for that farmer actually worked.

The third parchment went to the problem currently threatening to consume half of Althoff’s labor force.

Department of Construction and Public Works. Mara leaned forward immediately. Roads, bridges, drainage, water channels, government buildings, defensive civil construction, street planning, construction permits, maintenance, public wells, and eventually sewage infrastructure would fall beneath it.

The Department would coordinate closely with Luca on architecture and Talia on urban planning, while Torren and the existing construction crews would become part of the practical backbone beneath professional supervision.

Raymond deliberately included construction permits after remembering the merchant who had somehow ended up asking Boris whether he could build a warehouse. "From now on, if someone wants to build something significant inside Althoff, they go here. Not to Boris. Not to Marianne. Not to Lily. Preferably not to me."

Boris looked genuinely relieved. "This may be the greatest institution we’ve created."

Raymond pointed at him. "Wait until I find somewhere to send people who ask you about missing goats."

"I’ll personally fund it."

Trade followed naturally. The winter market had transformed from a handful of desperate exchanges into a growing commercial center, and merchants were already arriving because

Althoff had food, Magic Beast materials, security, and an increasing population. Ysabel helped define the Department of Trade and Commerce.

It would manage markets, merchant registration, business registration, caravan arrangements, commercial permits, standard weights and measures, trade records, merchant disputes, stall allocation, and eventually trade agreements with outside settlements.

Raymond refused to introduce complicated taxes or tariffs immediately. Althoff needed merchants more than it needed to squeeze coins from them.

Ysabel agreed. "Make trading here predictable first. Merchants tolerate fees. What they hate is uncertainty."

Raymond liked that. A merchant should know where to register, what rules applied, what he owed, and who settled a commercial disagreement without needing to bribe three different people simply to discover which one mattered.

The fifth Department required the longest discussion because Raymond refused to create a separate civil policing institution before Althoff actually needed one. Crime existed, certainly, but the settlement was still small enough that guards, gate personnel, military patrols, and local authority could handle ordinary security.

Creating another organization with overlapping armed authority would reproduce the exact jurisdiction problem they were trying to solve.

Instead, they established the Department of Military Affairs, covering conventional territorial forces, recruitment, training, equipment, military supply, fortifications in coordination with Public Works, patrol organization, gates, territorial defense, emergency mobilization, and strategic planning.

Boris would remain central to that structure, while Jonathan’s Household Knights remained directly attached to Raymond rather than becoming ordinary soldiers under the Department.

"The Household Knights can support territorial forces when required," Raymond explained, "but they remain House Althoff’s direct military arm."

Jonathan nodded. That distinction would matter increasingly as the army grew.

Selene Arward helped establish the sixth: Department of Health and Sanitation. Marianne looked almost visibly lighter as responsibility after responsibility moved away from her.

The Department would oversee medical facilities, physicians, healers, medicine supplies, disease prevention, public sanitation standards, waste management policy, inspection of water sources, emergency medical response, and eventually larger clinics and the planned Medical Hall.

Construction of drains and water systems remained with Public Works, but Health would establish sanitary requirements and identify dangerous conditions.

Raymond liked the division. One Department determined what was medically necessary; another possessed the engineers and labor organization to build it.

Selene also insisted on maintaining disease records once Althoff had enough trained personnel. "If twenty people in one district develop the same fever, I want to know before it becomes two hundred."

Nobody argued with that.

The seventh parchment represented the mountain of paperwork Lily had escaped.

Raymond named it the Department of Population and Civil Registry.

Citizenship, births, deaths, marriages, household records, immigration, residency, occupations, property records, land assignments, and official identification of citizens would eventually pass through it.

Oren would be heavily involved during the transition because refugee communities trusted him and he knew many families personally, but Raymond wanted trained adults managing the permanent records.

Most importantly, there would be one authoritative population registry. Not Lily’s ledger saying one thing, warehouse ration lists saying another, agricultural records containing a third number, and military recruitment records using names nobody could match.

Alaric underlined the principle. "One citizen, one primary civil record. Other Departments may maintain records relevant to their work, but identity and legal status originate here."

Raymond nodded. "Good."

Resources became the eighth Department. Althoff’s territory had expanded tenfold according to the System, but most of those lands remained poorly understood by everyone except Raymond’s partially obscured Family Map, and even that only showed recognized or surveyed information.

The Department of Natural Resources would manage forests, quarry rights, future mines, clay deposits, stone extraction, timber harvesting zones, Magic Beast materials, hunting resource regulations, and government-controlled strategic resources.

Ormond immediately warned that management had to follow discovery. "We cannot regulate deposits we haven’t found."

Raymond smiled. "Conveniently, that brings us to number nine."

He turned another parchment around and wrote Department of Territorial Survey across the top.

Ormond’s attention sharpened. The Survey Department would map the 1,500 square kilometers Raymond now intended to govern properly. Boundaries, roads, rivers, forests, abandoned settlements, elevations, potential quarry sites, mineral indications, farmland, dangerous beast territories, bridge locations, and suitable sites for future villages would gradually be recorded.

Edran and experienced hunters could support survey teams because they already understood portions of the wilderness, while Kael provided geological expertise and professional surveying methods.

Raymond privately knew The Lord’s Eye would make his own understanding far better than theirs, but he could not build a functioning state around information only he could magically see.

Althoff needed physical maps that engineers, soldiers, merchants, farmers, and future officials could actually use.

The Department would also establish recognized territorial markers wherever practical, because claiming fifteen hundred square kilometers meant considerably less if nobody knew where those square kilometers began or ended.

That left one parchment.

Corvin Rusk had been quiet throughout most of the discussion, but Raymond already knew where he belonged.

Winter had taught him that supplies could determine whether people lived long before swords became relevant. With construction beginning, the problem would multiply.

Thousands of workers needed tools, food, wagons, animals, stone, timber, and equipment delivered to the correct places at the correct times.

Government warehouses needed inventories. Construction materials needed distribution. Agricultural supplies needed transport. Military stores needed accountability. Raymond wrote Department of Logistics and Stores across the final sheet.

Corvin leaned closer as its responsibilities developed: government warehouses, transportation allocation, supply chains, inventory standards, wagon pools, draft-animal allocation for public projects, emergency reserves, material distribution, and coordination of large labor supply requirements.

The Department would not own every merchant wagon or private warehouse in Althoff. Its purpose was to make government resources move without Raymond personally asking where three hundred sacks of grain had gone.

When they finished, ten parchments covered the table.

Treasury and Revenue. Agriculture and Husbandry. Construction and Public Works. Trade and Commerce. Military Affairs. Health and Sanitation. Population and Civil Registry. Natural Resources. Territorial Survey. Logistics and Stores. Raymond walked slowly around the table reading them again.

There was no Department of Education yet. Althoff did not even possess a proper academy, and creating an entire bureaucracy for something that barely existed would be ridiculous.

Education could remain under the central Administration temporarily until the Elementary Academy was built and the population justified a dedicated Department.

There was no separate police organization either. If crime, population density, and urban problems eventually made one necessary, Raymond would create it then.

Government should grow because Althoff required it, not because Raymond remembered every institution that had existed on Earth and felt compelled to copy them.

Alaric gathered the responsibility lists into groups beneath each heading. "The next problem is leadership."

Raymond looked toward the specialists and existing Althoff figures around the table. That part would require care.

A Department was only a name until someone possessed the authority to run it, and Raymond had no intention of handing positions to people merely because they had been useful during winter.

Competence mattered. Experience mattered. Existing trust mattered. So did knowing when someone had already reached the limit of what one person could reasonably handle.

Harlan was studying the Agriculture parchment. Mara had already begun making notes beside Public Works. Selene was quietly discussing sanitation records with Marianne. Corvin had taken the Logistics sheet without apparently realizing he had done so.

For the first time, Raymond could see the shape of something larger than a collection of people taking orders from a Baron inside a castle.

Althoff was beginning to develop institutions.

And now those institutions needed people capable of leading them.