Ten days of work, and I've gotten the final guardhouse plete, and the public bathrooms are done and funal. I've started work on the first of the high density housing buildings. It's basically a two story building with a tral hallway eg four units on each floor. It takes the space of about four houses, but si houses eight goblins, it's not just more effective time-wise, but also space wise. I pn on building three of these buildings for the time being.
The prisoner's moods have also beeeriorating even more over this time. What started as general unease amongst them has ged to an even more foul mood. The goblins on duty have reported that they occasionally yell at each other now, although we don't uand what they're saying. I've decided we should keep moblins statioo watch them, in case they fight each other. If that happens, we'll probably have to move some to the smaller cell to keep them from hurting each other.
After another six days, the group of prisoners had an i. It seemed like tempers had been fring, aually, a fight broke out between the human and dwarf who had been wearing armor before. Although the goblins on duty tried to stop the fight quickly, both the human and dwarf ended up quite beaten up. They also ended up harming not just the two goblins who tried to stop the fight, but also the elf who attempted to break the fight up early. I'm personally just thankful it wasn't a ploy to escape. When I heard that they had started fighting and the goblins watg had attempted to stop it, I immediately thought of the possibility that the goblins might be killed and the prisoners might attempt to escape.
Although they hadn't been very unicative up until this point, the dwarf we had talked with in the past helped us to at least identify that the human had been the aggressor iuation. As such, they've been moved to the solitary cell for the time being. Unfortunately, they now occasionally shout at the other prisoners from their lone cell. The whole ordeal is being even more of a headache.
On the bright side, I'm nearly doh the first of the apartment plexes. The basement in the plex is a bit weird though. I wasn't sure what to do with it, si's teically shared by all the domiciles, so for now it's just empty. It will at least give the inhabitants a pce to hide, even if it is quite dark.
After two more days, I've finally fihe first apartment plex, and the humao have finally quieted down. There is a ce he's just lost his voice though, and the yelling will resume soon. It's hard to say. sidering how long it's been, I'm actually quite surprised no one else has shown up to try and rescue the prisoners. We've now got two steam on charges of Zaka's blood stored up again. Holy, it might be worth building a stationary siege engine like a trebuchet or catapult to give us extra defensive capabilities against targets on the ground.
The steam on was necessary for dealing with the eagles, due to them flying, but having a trebuchet would probably be useful if we had an army trying to attack us. Of course, that could turn out to be entirely useless thanks to magic, but based ohing we've seen so far, I think it should at least be somewhat useful. Although magic exists, and some of it is fairly powerful, it seems like the overall power level of most individuals is fairly low. Following that logic, siege engines should at least be useful for cutting down the numbers of low power individuals.
Before I finish building the artment plexes, I think I'll try my hand at designing a trebuchet, and if it works out, we build a few around the walls of the vilge. It should be possible to try to build a ballista as well, given we have rope and wood. The I have with a ballista is that the wood here is a bit softer thah wood. If we make it work though, adding ballistae to the walls would also vastly increase our defensive abilities.
We have a few goblins who already throear almost like a ballista, and I've seen it be useful, so allowing oblins without that skill to perform that feat should also be useful. At this rate, I'll end up turning the vilge into quite the fort. When the only threats were wildlife, it seemed like building heavy defensive ons might be a waste. The only time it would have been useful, when the lizards were sieging the vilge, we were trapped without enough resources to attempt to make any siege ons. Now that the threat is ing from intelligent creatures, I'm kig myself for not sidering building them sooner.
I've spent twelve days w on designing a w trebuchet, and things haven't been going great. I've learned some valuable lessons w orebuchet reted to the strength of the wood here. The first four days were spent building a small model trebuchet, and the fifth day ent calibrating it so that it would properly throw the projectile, which turned out to be quite the hassle. The bigger issues came after that. Since I made a smaller model, I figured all I would o do is scale up.
That turned out to be harder than I thought. I mentioned before that the wood here is quite soft pared to earth wood. The rger scale trebuchet's arm snapped. Multiple times. This trebuchet is about the size I would actually want for defensive purposes. From top of the arm to base, it reaches about seve over the height of the city walls, for a total height of 18 feet. I've been w on a few different solutions for the arm snapping, but I'm getting quite frustrated. I don't particurly want to thi the throwing arm any more than I already have tried to, as it's starting to signifitly reduce the capacity of the device.
While I've been w on this, Zeb has been w on building the apartment plex, and he's about a quarter of the way done. I often fet just how much time and mana I save with improved stone shaping, but when I see it in a, it's quite astonishing.
After five days, I had an idea and a breakthrough. I was at my wits end trying to reinforce the wooden lever arm of the trebuchet. Stone is both tid and heavy, and any bination and attempts resulted in failure. However, I finally realized that I do have the option of usial for this. While cht work, the new metal also should be useful, albeit bor inteo make. Ultimately, I made rings of metal that I embedded in the wooden lever arm, and then ran a longer reinf beam between each of the rings.
Thankfully for my sanity, this resulted in a success. The rger trebuchet was pleted. The bad news is that I want three more made, and it does take quite some time to process all the wood to make these. Thankfully, I had help building the first trebuchet in the form of the carpenter goblin alongside two retly summoned goblins who are now living in the first apartment plex. I'm hoping that I leave most of the stru of the other three trebuchets to that group, and only step in to help when it es time to add the metal parts.
As long as they end up being able to hahat stru, I want to move on to designing a ballista.
pared to the trebuchet, the ballista has actually been a bit easier to design. Although it has its own issues. I've been w on it for five days, and although it isn't perfect, it's funal. The biggest issue with the design I've e up with is that after firing it between ten and twenty times, the wooden bow ses oher side tend to give out. The wood here just isn't quite to the stru standards I'd have liked really.
That's fihough. Uhe trebuchets, it's easy enough to repce these ses on the ballistae when they break, which holy, if you get ten shots out of them during a fight, then you probably will have time to repce these parts. I've desighis oh a stone base capable of being rotated and aimed, although it's maximum vertical angle is only about thirty degrees or so.
The downside of this is that I'll actually o expand the wall of the vilge iions where I want these built. The trebuchets are just being built behind the wall, sihe lever arm and sling shoot over the top safely, but the ballistae o be built on the wall, which would leave no room to walk around the device or store ammo for it. As such, ahat I want to build a ballista will need a rger rounded se behind it in order to actually be useful.
I'd like to say that is easy enough to do, but we've actually mao run most of our stone reserves dry again from all the other stru. Which means to actually build the ballista like I want, we'll need a new source of stone. I'd like to just expand the reservoir area to get the stone, but given that we still are unsure about being attacked at any moment, I think I have a slightly better idea for a way to get excess stone.