Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 65: An Overlord, huh?
Ragnar awoke before the sun had fully crested the horizon with the Prime Minister, Gyda, slumbering softly by his side, he could not help but calculate the efficiency of her rest cycle. However, now was not the time to conduct a sleep study or audit the thread count of the Jernheim Velvet sheets. Instead, he quietly rolled out of bed and began his daily calibration routine. Today consisted of anaerobic conditioning; as such, he went for a weighted run around the perimeter of the Governor’s Palace before engaging in weapon testing with General Bjorn. By now, he was at least competent enough with the new "Can-Opener" polehammer to understand the physics of blunt force trauma.
Today was not a strategy day. Instead, he drilled rigorously, testing the tensile strength of the haft against a wooden dummy clad in Frankish-style plate armor; after nearly two hours of applied kinetic energy, Ragnar retired to the newly installed shower room where he scrubbed the soot from his pores before visiting his father-in-law’s chambers.
Ragnar arrived at the heavy oak door of the Royal Suite, where he knocked upon it several times with a rhythmic, professional cadence before a servant opened the door. The servant had a look of exhaustion on his face as he glanced upon the Director before ushering him into the room and shutting the door with a nervous click. Confused by the servant’s demeanor, Ragnar could not help but conduct a visual assessment of the environment.
"Status Report?"
The servant did not say much and merely led Ragnar to the bear-skin rug where King Horik was sitting, it had been over a week since the East Anglian acquisition, and the King’s morale had depreciated significantly during this time. The old Viking truly looked as if he had been pulled from the production line, his beard which was usually braided with gold was now unkempt and tangled, and his eyes were glassy with the haze of too much ale and too little purpose. Evidently, the man had been binge-drinking and repeatedly lamenting to the Gods for a glorious death he never received. Yet, all such actions managed to achieve was a significant decline in his liver function; he now looked more like a discarded prototype than the figurehead of a burgeoning empire.
Ragnar looked at his father-in-law with a great sense of corporate liability; if the Chairman of the Board was this despondent after a massive victory, then Ragnar did not want to imagine his condition if the Frankish Crusade actually made landfall. As a dutiful son-in-law, Ragnar took ownership of this morale failure and approached Horik, who was slouching in a state of existential dread on the floor. After grabbing hold of his shoulder, Ragnar spoke to the King, briefing him on the quarterly gains that had been realized over the last few weeks.
"My King! I want to inform you that you are now the Overlord of the East! Due to a successful hostile takeover of Thetford, I have liquidated Guthrum’s assets and forced him into your vassalage as a Regional Manager. As far as the resistance is concerned, I have received data that the Saxons are buying our velvet in record numbers. There is no reason to be brooding in the dark; the bard will surely compose a saga about your wisdom in delegating the war effort soon enough!"
Ragnar did not have the heart to tell the King that he was currently the target of a multinational coalition involving the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. Nor did he have the desire to inform the old man that the Order of the White Cross planned to launch a heavy cavalry assault on their beaches within three months to burn the factories and restore the "natural order." If the man heard that he was essentially the CEO of a company that the entire world wanted to bankrupt, he might literally die of stress, and Ragnar could not bear to lose the only mascot he had.
Horik burped loudly for the first time in a long time as he heard the news; it brought a brief interruption to the crippling boredom he felt for failing to swing his axe even once during the campaign. He spoke slurrishly to Ragnar with a cynical sneer.
"An Overlord, huh? I suppose that is good news for the accountants, my son-in-law, soon enough, you will pave over the entire world, and you deserve far more than a King who just wants to hit things with metal. I regret that I will not live to see the day you figure out how to tax the Valkyries..."
Ragnar could not help but check his watch as he heard these words; the King had truly given up on the warrior ethos, at the rate he was drinking, he would not even make it to the rib-cutting ceremony of the new capital, City Titan. Nor did Ragnar believe that Horik even cared for urbanization at this point. He tried to give meaning to the old man’s life in any way he could; as such, he thought about the legacy of the Empire and tried to urge the King to care about the long-term investment.
"My King, do not speak in such a manner; you will soon be the grandfather of a Dynasty. Do you not wish to gaze upon the walls of Titan, the city of steel and glass, where your name will be etched into the very concrete?"
With this, Horik merely scoffed and returned to his sullen state as he stopped looking at Ragnar and returned his gaze to the bottom of his empty ale horn. He voiced his complaints aloud, not caring how the Director of Industry would feel about hearing them.
"Pfft... A city of grey mud, the result of which will forever be a reminder that the Old Ways are dead. One of my Jarls kills people with a giant crossbow, and the other calculates the wind resistance of a rock. What a masterful job I have done leading this horde..."
Ragnar’s plan to boost employee morale had completely backfired so spectacularly that he had sent the King into a further state of nostalgic depression; Ragnar could understand his father-in-law’s grievances with the modernization of warfare. At this point, he was just happy that Horik was unaware of the "Whistle Stones" used at Thetford; if the old man knew that they had won a siege by annoying the enemy into submission rather than storming the walls, he might actually die of shame on the spot.
As such, the young Director could not help but sigh in response to the King’s resistance to change. There was truly nothing he could do; he was not emotionally equipped to troubleshoot a user error in the King’s worldview. His one attempt to do so had just managed to make Horik feel more obsolete in the face of the industrial revolution. He may have just caused several weeks of productivity loss. Ragnar needed to find something that could give the old man a sense of purpose, and quickly. If not, he feared the liver failure would take the King from him far earlier than the fiscal year projected.
Before leaving the room, Ragnar expressed his continued support for the monarchy while choking back the urge to lecture him about the inefficiency of self-pity.
"Review the quarterly reports, my King..."
With that said, Ragnar departed from the Royal Suite with a sense of administrative deadlock. He did not know how to fix this HR issue, and all that he could manage was to throw himself into the logistics of the upcoming defense to avoid the sense of frustration that had begun to take hold of his mind as he thought about the obsolescence of the Viking Age.
