Chapter Twenty-Five: The Marian Lighthouse
Unlike the Holy Alliance, the free city-states have always had a more open trade policy and are popular with merchants, as can be seen in the number of ships moored at the docks, the university town of Gudris has a full six docks, and even then there are still cases of new ships not having to wait in line to enter the port, while the port of Setvia has only two docks, one of which is still in a semi-abandoned state most of the time, and the ships moored in the port are sparse. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info
Usually the wharf in the university town of Gudries will be very lively, all kinds of loading and unloading, and the return of ships is endless, but today the weather is bad, there are a lot fewer ships leaving the port, many cargo ships have decided to wait for a long time, wait for the fog to dissipate before setting sail, because of the fear of accidents, Rob and the captain of their ship ordered to lower the sails early, and use oars to row instead, reduce the speed of the boat, and reduce the risk of colliding with other ships.
Fortunately, on the shoreline of the university town of Gudris is the Marian Lighthouse.
Lighthouses in ordinary ports are generally lit by charcoal fires, which can provide a limited range of vision, and in extreme weather like today, it is difficult for the light produced by burning charcoal to penetrate the fog.
To overcome this problem, the dwarves developed a new type of oil lamp that uses whale oil instead of charcoal as the main fuel, which produces a purer flame and better illumination, even on a rainstorm night, when ships are miles away from each other can see the light emitted by the lighthouse.
The dwarves proudly call their lighthouse artificial wagra, which means bright moon in the dwarven language, but compared to the Marian Lighthouse in the university town of Gudris, the artificial waghera that the dwarves are proud of instantly becomes artificial fireflies.
To quote a traveler who once visited the university town of Gudris—" The Marian Lighthouse is a unique miracle in the history of navigation, another incredible product of human magical civilization, anyone who sees it at first glance will not have any other emotions except shock, its light shines all over the strait, and even crosses the strait to the dwarven port of Portodi, any light source looks colorless in front of it, I even doubt that you can see it anywhere on the sea, to be honest, I actually don't understand why those magicians want to make this thing so bright, tmd, when the beam hits the head-on I feel like my eyes are going to be blinded!”
The Marian Lighthouse has a history of more than 1,200 years, and its existence predates the emergence of the free city-state, when the Marian Lighthouse was not called its current name, but was just an ordinary small lighthouse on the edge of the university town of Gudris, whose main role was to provide positioning and rescue for nearby fishermen to go to sea.
Before the advent of magicians, the university town of Gudris did not have the size it has today, but because of its liberal environment and strong academic atmosphere, many scholars, painters and musicians lived and studied here, but due to the innate conditions of the city, there were few special products that could be used, and there were few resources to be mined in the surrounding area.
Therefore, this cultural port city was not very valued by merchants at that time, and there were not many merchant ships coming and going, and this situation continued until Roland founded the Academy of Magic, and more and more people with magical talents gathered from all over the world to the university town of Guderis, and the large influx of people caused the output of the university town itself to be somewhat unable to keep up, which also indirectly provided business opportunities for merchants.
So in the following period, the merchant ships began to transport shiploads of goods to the university town of Gudris, in exchange for bags and bags of gold coins, and on the other hand, the population explosion also brought more employment opportunities, and magicians had to eat, entertain and consume the same as ordinary people, and at the same time needed a lot of materials to do experiments.
Although merchants can pull goods from other places to sell, whether it is land or sea, they need to consider the cost of transportation, in order to exchange for more profits, for some goods that can be produced locally, more and more merchants began to consider setting up workshops in the local area, which also revitalized the economy of the university town to a certain extent.
And the real rise of the university town of Gudris to become the largest port on the southern coast was after the appearance of magic guides, or more precisely, after the appearance of the second type of magic guides that can be used by ordinary people, the originally elusive power of magic was gradually mastered by humans, and its mystery was lifted little by little.
The advent of non-combat magic guides such as magic lamps was a significant milestone in the history of magic, meaning that magic began to enter the lives of ordinary people.
Of course, until today, most of the people who can use this kind of magic guide are still nobles, but this does not prevent the second type of magic guide from becoming the most sought-after commodity in the entire Dawn Continent.
Even if the Terran side later listed the magic guide as a strategic item and strictly prohibited the outflow, because of the potential huge profits behind it, it still couldn't stop someone from secretly smuggling the acquired magic guide to the dwarves and elves.
Especially in recent decades, the Dawn Continent has ushered in a rare period of peace, time has eliminated the hatred and trauma caused by the war, the interaction and exchanges between various ethnic groups have become more and more frequent, and underground activities such as smuggling have become more and more rampant, and sometimes the rulers will indulge this part of the gray trade to a certain extent in order to make up for part of the trade deficit and control the outflow of gold.
In short, the emergence of a number of magical items, including magic scrolls, enabled the university town of Guderies to successfully transform from a pure commodity consumption market into a two-way trading port with both commodity input and export, and finally became the economic and cultural center of the free city-state.
At this point, the original small lighthouse was a little insufficient, so someone later proposed to expand and renovate the lighthouse, and invited a magician to participate in it, mainly responsible for solving the problem of light source, and the magician really lived up to expectations, after countless experiments, finally created a new type of magic light source that is both bright and penetrating, on the basis of which people built the first Marian lighthouse.
However, probably because the presence of the Marian Lighthouse in the dark night was too strong, it was destroyed by the giant war puppets summoned by the dwarves with alchemy not long after the outbreak of the Second Magic War.
After the war, led by the Magicians' Guild, local nobles and merchants contributed money and efforts to rebuild the Marian Lighthouse on the original site.
In fact, the new Marian Lighthouse has almost nothing in common except that its name is the same as the old lighthouse, this time the Magicians Association has gathered the wisdom of a group of top magicians to develop an incomparable super light source, the brightness of this super light source finally reached an extremely terrifying level under the addition of hundreds of magic arrays, directly running through the entire strait, shooting at the dwarf on the opposite side with a confused face.
For the most part, however, the Marianne Lighthouse has been a bit too bright, and has even affected the sleep of residents of several nearby towns, including the university town of Gudries.
After all, no one wants a small sun hanging outside their window every night, so the Wizards Guild had to renovate it a second time.
Now the brightness of the Marian Lighthouse changes with the distance, once you enter a radius of 10 nautical miles from the university town of Guderis, the brightness of the Marian Lighthouse decreases, and the closer you go, the brighter it becomes, and finally only the brightness of an ordinary lighthouse, on the contrary, the Marian Lighthouse can still be used for passing ships at a distance of 10 nautical miles.
In addition, in order to avoid a repeat of the previous incident, the magicians also built a complete defense system for the Marian Lighthouse, which is enough to withstand the bombardment of super-magister-level masters for a whole day, and now the Marian Lighthouse has become a defensive shield on the coastline of the university town of Gudres.
(After it was put on the shelves, I felt that there were a lot fewer clicks and comments, is everyone still there?) (To be continued.) )