Order Only

[alt_fred]

The team dealing with the camps and their personnel and the team tasked with stitching together the network that's going to be the spine of our new economy are overlapping quite a bit. Stands to reason, since the camps are our source for new helping hands, as well as nodes for trade and the repositories of goods we'll need to move around.

We have a GIGANTIC map of the Protectorate Albion in its entirety, and Mum, Charlie and I have inlaid reporting charms on twenty or so spots on it. Those spots are cross-indexed to the twenty corresponding regional maps that lay out these areas in greater detail. (We have this all set up in the Charms classroom). These regional maps, in turn, are keyed to duplicate maps we've distributed to our information sources within that region. We've infused the maps with about six charms so far, and we'll add more as we find them useful.

What we have so far:

• Top ten resource available to offer for trade


• Top ten resources needed (shortages)


• Key representatives - economic (colour-coded to show if they're wizard or muggle)


• Key representatives - political (again, colour-coded)


• Transportation (the colours show if they're lorries, trains, boats or something else)


• Population breakdown (This can be queried to find out all sorts of information: wizard vs muggle, men vs women, adults vs children, able-bodied vs dependent, Protectorate loyal vs Albion loyal, and so on)

So this is how it works: say you have a yen for kippers and you want to find out which locations have fish available for trade. You do the first query charm over the large map, and titles of the regions that have fish will glow. You see that Norfolk has fish, and you do the charm again over the Norfolk map. That will show you which locations (towns, camps, cities) have surplus fish to trade. Or say you have extra fish you want to get rid of before it starts to stink. You can use the maps to find out which locations are looking to get fish. See what extra resources they have, and then you have an opportunity to set up an exchange.

We have the charms laid, as I said, but the searches aren't showing much yet. This'll become more useful as we go as our reporting sources embed the information within their own maps ('Yarmouth reports it has three thousand extra barrels of kippers'), and we can then draw upon those facts and figures here.

Our muggle counterparts are brainstorming to try to come up with a similar method for doing this a muggle way--without using magic, in other words. Can't imagine how they can do it, but Davidson's people are working on it.

Alice and Remus: would it be all right for us to add the fideliused locations that we know about? If you approve, let Colin know to stop on by to give us the list we have so far.

If any of you lot can think of other information you want the maps to show, let Mum, Charlie or me know.

Comments

[alt_fred]

Right-o. Thanks.