Alexander Smith
For better or worse, peasants in a feudal society have almost no rights. Alex wouldn't have much difficulty repopulating his domain as long as the other domain lords are willing to sell him their peasants. For this, he just needs to approach his immediate superior, the Duke Of Romana. The duke happily agreed to sell him three hundred peasant households when Alex came up with the proposition and even offered a discount if Alex is willing to take in more peasant households. This is because Alex just offered a solution to the duke's slum problem. The overcrowding and poor sanitation in the slums is a recipe for disaster if a plague ever broke out. Removing a part of those population will go a long way in reducing the risk of a plague breaking out. Reading between the line, the duke also seems to have the nefarious intention of selling Alex the more unruly households while keeping the more desirable ones.
Aside from purchasing three hundred peasant households from the duke, Alex also bought from the duke the privilege to produce salts. If not for the fact that he needs his own supply of salt to keep his peasants healthy, there is no way he is willing to entertain the duke's exorbitant demand. Not only does the privilege came at a hefty price tag, the duke also demands a fifty percent tax on all salts produced.
With this privilege in place, Alex can begin building his salt evaporation fields on the shore of the barony. It is great that he has Joshua and his army of undead skeletons to help with construction. Without the undead army, he will have to wait for his new peasants to arrive before construction can start. Salt, being a valuable commodity in Middle Ages means that the wealth generated will also attracts a lot of unwanted attention. He will need to have the barony's defense up and running before salt production can begins.
When it comes to the barony's defense, there is a reason why the family chose the Barony of Redshore among the numerous other baronies that are open for purchase. It comes down to an islet located a mile from the shore of the barony. The plan is to build a small fortress on the islet. With the fortress in place, it will be the barony's primary defense against future pirate invasions. The islet is the size of a football field and without a source of fresh water, it makes any attempt at building a fort or settlement on the islet unfeasible in the past. What is unfeasible to the previous lord is not even a hurdle to Alex. With modern science in collaboration with runic script, it is not difficult for them to build a magic machinery to produce all the drinking water they will ever need through reverse osmosis.
The planned fortress will be built using cement. This ensure the fortress will be completed way quicker and cheaper than a medieval fortress built using stones. Stones are difficult to work with and it is very time consuming chiseling every block of stone to the right size for construction. It is unfortunate that he won't be able to rebuild the rest of the barony using cement until he can provide a reasonable explanation to his abundant supplies.
At the core of the fortress, Alex intends to build a mage tower. As an aspiring and ambitious Apprentice Mage worth his salt, it would only be natural for him to built himself a mage tower in advance. The mage tower, once completed will be where the family will store everything that needs to be kept a secret and away from prying eyes. The ocean surrounding the islet ensures a lot of privacy and any uninvited visitors will be discovered before they ever have the chance to reach the islet. Given the islet security, the future minor gateway connecting back to Eldorin will also be built in the basement of the mage tower.
After defense, Alex needs to solve the barony food security problem. With the barony being left in neglect for three years, it will be a massive undertaking to reclaim all the farmlands especially when he have to refrain from using any modern farming machineries. Survey has revealed that once he is done reclaiming the abandoned farmlands and converts the rest of the plains into farmlands, the barony will have in its possession eight thousand acres of farmlands.
However, Alex has no intention of owning vast tracts of farmlands like the rest of the nobles in the kingdom at this point in time. Throughout the kingdom, the nobles have a horrible habit of excessive exploitation of their peasants. Most peasants are left will barely enough grains to survive after each harvest. The peasants being kept half starving is bad enough, adding on the mandatory corvee makes their life even tougher. Although he won't be able to change the fate of these peasants for the time being, it doesn't mean that he needs to propagate such practice on his barony as well. As his nominal master likes to say, excessive exploitation sows unnecessary bad karma.
Aside from that, using traditional means to reclaim land for farming is highly inefficient. It would be depraved of Alex to get his peasants to toil needlessly on farmland reclamation when he is well aware of a better solution. Modern farming machineries could get the same job done a hundred times faster. In summary, he will just maintain whatever farmlands that are still being cultivated but instead of growing mundane crops, it will all be converted into planting spirit crops.
Since Alex is not going embrace the conventional way of feeding his barony, he will have to come up with an alternative solution to his food security problem. The barony being next to the sea provides him with an easy alternatives. Seafood is great source of nutrients to keep his peasants healthy. As for the grains and vegetable need to keep a balance diet, he can just trade for it with the salt that he will be producing.
The beach along the shoreline makes it an ideal site for building vast tracks of salt evaporation fields, but it is an entirely different story when it comes to building piers. The shallow water makes building piers extending into deeper part of the ocean highly inefficient and costly. Off course, there are modern solutions making pier construction more viable but once again Alex needs to repeatedly remind himself not to introduce too many foreign and advance ideas that will attract unwanted attention. The fortress and mage tower made up of cement stood up enough as it is. The family is quite powerful in the kingdom but there are still three big fish that their family still can't contend against. Before the pier issue has been resolved, he will have to make do with a small fishing fleet.
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Being well aware that his new peasants will be arriving by sea, Alex had the pier built in concurrent with the fortress. The pier was completed just two days before his first batch of peasants arrive. Each batch of arrival will consist of fifty households and it will take another five more trips before he will have his three hundred peasant households.
Alex immediately put the fifty new households to work building their own settlement in front of the pier. The new settlement will be housing the families working at the salt evaporation fields and the fishing fleet that currently consist of two thirty feet fishing boats. The two fishing boats are pathetic by modern standard but it is another one of those scenarios where Alex has to hold back. On a positive note, the two fishing boats just needs to look medieval externally. He can get away with modern fishing equipment as long as the ten fishermen working on the two boats kept their mouth shut. It is not a difficult task since he can just make all ten fishermen sign a non-disclosure magic contract.
The two fishing boats should barely be able to support the three hundred and sixteen households in his domain for the time being. Even if Alex wants to expand his fleet, the current pier can only support two more fishing boats. That means if he refused to compromise on his peasants' food intake, the barony can only support up to six hundred households for the short term.