Chapter 191: In Which Our Hero, Played As A Fool By The Spanish, Plots Revenge

…and he uses the French as his unwitting partners

Gadzooks, I need to catch up…nay, get AHEAD on these Doclopedia posts. Here is the latest entry.

The Doclopedia #256

Altered (United) States: New Hampshire The Granite Golem State

In 1850, the history of the United States and the World was forever changed when Elemental Magic returned to the world in several spots across North America. By far the most important of these was the strong presence of Earth Magic in New England, particularly in the Granite State of New Hampshire.

By 1852 there were 5,000 men quarrying granite specifically for use in the creation of granite golems. 400 other men and women worked around the clock sculpting the 10 foot tall humanoid shapes and the 26 person Earth Mages Guild of New England was enchanting the golems as fast as they could. Every other day, 10 new golems came off the assembly line. By 1854, that number had tripled and by 1855 had tripled again.

Granite golems were soon powering everything from factories to trains. Mining, already made vastly safer by both Earth, Air and Water Magic, was made even easier by using granite golems. Later, these golems were replaced by concrete golems that used mine tailings as part of their makeup.

Shipping was made faster and cheaper by the using golems to power the ships with the assistance of Air Magic.

The state of New Hampshire prospered, as did all of New England. Periodically, the Earth Mages Guild would use their magic to clear the stones from rocky land. These stones would be moved to the great gravel and concrete factories near Manchester for processing. The mages would also reshape played out quarries into everything from ponds and lakes to flat farmland.

Over the next 100 years, no fewer than 5 presidents were elected from New Hampshire. The only other state to come close to that number was California (where Earth Mages extracted 68% more gold than was extracted in our world) with 4.

In the current present (1980), there are an estimated 160,000 Granite Golems working tirelessly across North America and another 400,000 across the world. Many of those were made in New Hampshire, which nowadays actually manufactures very few golems due to massive depletion of granite. Of course, this doesn’t matter much now for the third wealthiest state in the union.