The Redblaze Wasteland.
The migrating column of twenty thousand people resembled a giant python. Under the vanguard and escort of the player convoys, they finally reached the perimeter cordon of the Crimson Dawn base.
When the front row of residents looked through the billowing dust and saw the wall standing tall on the wasteland, a suppressed gasp rippled through the crowd.
The three-and-a-half-meter-tall stone wall cast long shadows under the setting sun. Players armed with guns stood guard in the watchtowers atop the wall. Inside, neat rows of barracks and rising plumes of cooking smoke were faintly visible.
"Is this... is this really their base? Did they really not lie to us?"
An old miner from Bordeaux Town rubbed his eyes, his voice trembling.
He had lived more than half his life. Every so-called "base" he had ever seen was either a bandit den retrofitted from an abandoned factory or a crude shelter built into a natural cave.
"Dad, look at the wall!" his son pointed to a section of the wall.
Painted in white on the stone was a line of massive characters, each one half the height of a man:
"Labor in Exchange for Survival. Dignity Comes from Struggle. — Crimson Dawn"
And beneath it, in slightly smaller letters:
"Slackers Go Hungry. Saboteurs Catch a Bullet."
Simple and brutal.
"They're back!"
Up in a watchtower on the wall, [Fugitive Cogboy of the Mechanicus] lowered his binoculars. He had built them himself using real-world knowledge and components from the shop. The accuracy was average, but they did the job.
He turned and shouted to Blood Angel, who was just about to head off to give an ideological class to the workers.
"Zeke is back with the convoy! Look at the length of that line... there's gotta be at least ten thousand people!"
[Blood Angels' Second Emperor] stopped in his tracks on the wall.
When he saw the dense, black mass of humans in the distance, even though he was mentally prepared, he still couldn't help but draw a sharp breath.
"Good god... Three towns really scrounged up that many people?"
"Human life is the one thing the Warhammer world never lacks."
Cogboy's tone was perfectly calm. He adjusted his mechanical right arm—a model he had just upgraded the day before, now equipped with a compact plasma cutter and precision pincers.
"The question is whether we can afford to feed them."
As they spoke, the familiar roar of an engine echoed from below the wall.
The two looked down just in time to see the hydraulic system in the legs of Paul's Power Armor compress and release at the front of the column.
Paul launched into the air like an artillery shell. He kicked off the top edge of the three-and-a-half-meter wall, using the momentum to flip over and land perfectly on the rampart.
"Paul, your entrances are getting more and more Primarchesque by the day." Cogboy couldn't resist a jab. "With hops like that, why even bother driving back? Couldn't you just run the whole way? Next time, you wanna try smashing down in an orbital drop pod? I can cobble a budget version together for you."
"That requires having an orbital drop pod first." Paul lifted his faceplate, revealing his face.
He looked out at the crowd outside the wall, then turned back to Cogboy. "Did anything change at the base while we were gone?"
"Massive changes."
Cogboy's mechanical arm tapped the empty air, and a pale blue holographic projection materialized.
It was a floor plan of the base, but it looked completely different from the version Paul had seen when he left three days ago.
"First, the agricultural zone has been expanded outward by five hundred and seventy acres."
Cogboy pointed to a massive section on the east side of the map highlighted in green. "All potatoes."
"Modified seeds redeemed from the shop. Forty-day maturation cycle. Estimated yield is three thousand kilograms per acre. By Warhammer standards, this is already Agri-World level output."
"What about water?"
"The water purification system has been upgraded."
Cogboy switched the display to a schematic showing a complex array of pipes and filtration units. "The heavy-duty purification system can process two hundred tons of water a day. It's drawing from that heavily polluted major river in the Redblaze Wasteland. It's enough to provide basic drinking water for fifty thousand people."
Paul nodded, looking at Blood Angel. "The resettlement plan?"
"Prepared long ago."
Blood Angel pulled a paper-bound manual from his coat. Written on the cover in neat handwriting was Crimson Dawn Base Provisional Management Regulations, Third Edition.
"Based on the resettlement experience with the original two thousand workers, this incoming wave of nineteen thousand will be divided into several batches."
He flipped open the manual. The first batch, based on the intel Paul sent ahead, consists of those with specialized skills. This group of roughly five thousand people will be assigned directly to production posts.
The second batch consists of able-bodied young and middle-aged adults with no specialized skills, numbering around eight thousand. They will first participate in basic manual labor, with literacy classes and skills training scheduled for the evenings.
The third batch is made up of the elderly, the weak, women, and children. These six thousand or so people will primarily handle logistics, such as mending, tailoring, watering crops, and farming. Furthermore, all necessary materials and textbooks will be provided entirely by Crimson Dawn.
Blood Angel paused, looking down at the children huddled close to their parents outside the wall, fear still lingering in their eyes.
"...Children's education."
Paul remained silent for a few seconds.
Talking about "children's education" in the Warhammer universe sounded about as absurd as preaching pacifism to a Khorne daemon army.
But the path Crimson Dawn was walking was never going to be the standard Imperial way anyway.
"What about the teaching materials?"
"I wrote them myself." Blood Angel smiled. It was the specific kind of smile belonging to an educator with Imperial characteristics. "For basic literacy, we're using the Imperial Gothic Primer. The shop sells it for a hundred Imperial Coins a set. But for the ideological classes... we have to handle the curriculum ourselves."
He flipped to a specific page in the manual. Written in sharp, clean handwriting were three lines: Lesson One covered why they trade sweat for equality. Lesson Two asked who was exploiting them. Lesson Three explored what kind of world Crimson Dawn wanted to build.
Blood Angel closed the manual. "Out of the original two thousand workers, over half have now voluntarily joined the Aurelian Youth League—our militia reserve organization. Of the remaining half, the vast majority at least fundamentally understand the basic principle of 'labor in exchange for survival, contribution earns respect'."