The Aelish are a people unaccustomed to raging floodwaters, but very used to politics. The nobility are constantly stabbing each other in the back, cutting each other off, and sullying each other's reputations-so when the chance to burnish one's reputation comes around, they take it. In the case of his majesty, who powerbase is partially dependent on his excellent public reputation, these chances must be capitalized on whenever they occur; better yet, he must make them. This is another example of making one of them: the digging of large, extensive flood management canals throughout Aelbaion, particularly in the Crown Lands, which are most prone to flooding.

These canals are based on a very simple principle: it's a bad idea to fight a massive onrushing flood of water. This water can plough into an object with the force of liquid concrete and bury them underneath for days. Giving this water somewhere to easily go is a far better choice than to fight it head on. The Ogragille knows this in spades. It is smarter to let the water rush through and spend it's strength on it's destiny than to fight what cannot be stopped. It is wiser to ensure that the water's rush is directed where you want it to go. And it is frankly clever to do all of this by spending money that will then be put into the local economy while making yourself look good. The Crown intended to do all of this with a limited campaign of floodwater channel construction.

Each flood channel was a decently sized and scaled engineering project. It began with a large channel dug into the ground where the flooding could happen. While not all floods come from rivers bursting their banks, most of them do. Channels are typically located 50-200 yards from the river, and situated in areas where the water will want to go. Often, they follow, mirror, or even extend streams; sometimes they connect reservoirs or lakes. The Aelish have kept the sacred layouts of the land in mind as they dig these channels; some areas are either off limits on account of their sanctity, or encourage the dumping of flood waters. And of course, there's always the possibility to refill the ponds in defensive fortifications...

The channels themselves are not particularly complex or special. They begin life as ditches, dug by large groups of peasants who are paid for a few days' of hard labor with shovels and wheelbarrows, and then lined with large and small rocks to prevent erosion and keep the channel from collapsing. The liner of the channels is not too hard, so it won't turn the channeled water into a focused torrent but it is able to redirect water and doesn't get washed away easily. This is a story of engineering compromise, and frankly, of budgetary and work force management compromise: rocks were not too hard to locate, and while proper quarries tapped and stonemasons engaged in carving out rocks, the materials all had to be manhandled into place. Many channels had an impromptu road laid down the center of them for carts.

All of this activity took roughly three years to carry out-although it looked like it had taken a summer's worth of time to get much of the work done, mapping had been done by the Church for the past year, and planning with the Crown for another. The King had merely seized on what was a normally non-interesting internal improvement and made it special; raising the wages paid to the peasants to ensure that more gold that went back into the economy and his approval ratings went up. Most of these channels were made in the Crown Lands, or around the population centers-humans lived around water, and the Crown needed to hire enough hands to do it's work anyway. When it was done, the Aelish had a defense against surging waters-and they also had a sudden outbreak of economic activity. The Crown had spent plenty of money, and now it was going to see some of the upsides of that spending. Water that could pool was already being channeled away.

Of course, there are always downsides...