My little cramped office was a mess, still the view of the water was nice. There was many advantages to belonging to the ship builders guild, well really any guild but I enjoyed being right near the water. Unlike the Empire we didn’t have walls to block waves and protect the habitat, well they called them cities but same thing. Officially it was to not disrespect the Aqua Spirit and that is what most people were told, but certain people knew better. We saved resources by not building them, it was nice not being the lower class and being lied to. Honestly given that they were paid in rations while there housing and jobs were all decided for them, they were basically slaves as they couldn’t go anywhere else or refuse to work. Still religion was used to keep them at bay by giving them something to feel passionate about while they were told how lucky they were.
Starting from the bottom and moving up, the lower classes were the manu, sea gathers, most religious personal, the runners managing simple manufacturing sites and habitat based food processing plants/farms and finally the sea watchers. They all helped those above them live nice lives by working long hours 6 days straight. And all the fun stuff like alcohol, pot and more was saved for middle and high class individuals like me, they were told at the house to fear these things as evil substances.
They were also told to fear and hate the Empire but really the Empire didn’t even think of us as they had a larger military and more resources both domestically and from the crater. They could make more food so that left them more spare food for trading, even with the lower classes pitiful diet reducing how much they got to eat we still had less spare food to trade. Still this whole society was based off them being slave labor and if the truth was revealed to them, this whole society would fall apart as there was a lot more of them. Plus we needed what they made so a revolt would hurt the whole system, what guilds made were essential to but as oil, water filtration, water pods, boats and more required a lot more skill and what we made could help suppress revolts by those below us. So if we revolted with them the whole system would fall apart for sure, that is why we enjoyed better lives than them even if guild members were the bottom of middle class.
I was distracting myself as I had spent hours working on a new ship design, the Empire had it easy as they just took the same mass produced large ship and used it for many purposes. There military was honestly using cargo ships so they could get new ones easier compared to boats meant for military use. Of course with more resources they could make far more of those than we could of dedicated military vessels. Then of course despite having a larger population we didn’t want the manu and the like learning to fight, the Empire didn’t hide the truth so they in practice had more people available to join there military then we did. Granted there was more variety in there smaller vessels and we couldn’t use speed boats like they did. The amount of parts needed to be replaced was far to much for us to keep up with, I had heard how they sent speed boats in our fleets to attack and leave. Only to renter and repeat this over and over again.
As a result we put so much time in our designs trying to make the best ships and honestly used better tactics in battle but that didn’t matter. There was always more of them shooting back, that did hurt moral at this guild knowing all of our hard work made no difference but still most of us tried our best. I decided to call it a day and get some thing to eat, also I did want some beer.
