The Last Outpost

Not until the humex trained and became adept at military operations and had manufactured enough weapons, did they begin to leave their new and hastily put together Mesa Camp. The mounted hostiles that had attacked them were dead or scattered throughout the region, no longer potent. At first a few well guarded wagon trains were allowed to continue to Prairie Lakes Outpost. The humex leadership finally declared that the passage from Desert Lake Camp to Prairie Lakes Outpost, posed no undue risk of further marauding hostiles.

With endless wagon trains now moving inexorably toward Nexra, many of the humex from those trains decided to make Prairie Lakes Outpost their home. Copper had been discovered above the shores of the five hundred miles of interconnected lakes that were cumulatively referred to as Prairie Lakes. First a shipbuilding industry was developed to transport mined ore to smelters at Prairie Lakes. The shipbuilding engineers took the ideas from the river rafts and sailing hardware, as well as the hull development achieved at Plateau Lake. Two years of basic study and experimentation resulted in deeper and wider hulls, larger sails, more masts and improved sail manipulation hardware – miles of stronger and lighter rope, tackle hardware improvements, gaff-jaws that scaled the masts almost effortlessly, larger booms and so on. But to put the topping on the cake, the highly efficient and ship-stabilizing centerboard was developed. Finally, detailed engineering manuals were prepared to instruct sailors as well as the shipbuilders in the most efficient use of the new sailing apparatus. Sailing had finally moved from an art to a science. The basic foundation of the science was now in place to facilitate continuous ship improvement.

While the new ships were being engineered, yawning berths and railed gantries were being built to accommodate the imminent ship construction. Large smelters were being built to handle the eventual influx of ship-loads of copper ore. Fledgling manufacturing operations began to spring up to assemble a variety of copper (and other) products for the modern humex consumer and to aid modern industrial progress. Prairie Lakes Outpost, then, was destined to be the largest city in the empire by far and required a large and complete cross-section of humex to administer it. Nexra would not catch up to Prairie Lakes Outpost in population or industrial might for nearly one hundred years.

The city became ever more cosmopolitan with the addition of the humex' former enemies, the nomadic peoples, immigrating from the northern steppe. These peoples were the largest single group of non-humex ever to request entry into the new society. Since Airam had been experienced in the cultural assimilation of new incoming human groups for more than ten years, she was appointed to head up the group to welcome and help the nomads assimilate into humex society. The nomads reciprocated by bringing with them colorful dress and music and the two most important contributions to humex civilization to date – the horse and the windmill.

Brin, Lun, Ahlu and Airam, stayed on at Prairie Lakes Outpost until the city was up and running and had sufficient population to administer and manage its explosive growth. Meanwhile the trail to Nexra was nearing completion, although Nexra’s comprehensive city plan was developed by the humex leadership still ensconced in Prairie Lakes. Prairie Lakes was the empire’s last outpost, and for now was its capital city only surrendering that title to Nexra much later. However, Nexra, and the idea of Nexra represented the center of humex spiritual thought, even before a single shovel of Nexra dirt was displaced.