I want to pce a total of twenty ballistae on the walls around the vilge. For each, I'll need around 400 cubic feet of stoo improve the wall near it. Initially I thought I'd just make the expanded wall se solid, but after thinking about it for a bit, I think making the semi-circur expansion ber and hollow with a stairway down inside will be the better option. That way ammo and spare parts be stored directly underh the ballistae themselves.

  As fetting that 8000 total cubic feet of stone, I said I had an idea. I want to carve aunnel. This time, the tunnel is going to be headed up the mountain, rather than down. The purpose? A sed escape route. I mentiohat heading up the mountain is probably the safer bet if we had to flee the vilge, and that's exactly what I want to make a way to do. The tunnel is po be about 4 feet wide by 6 and a half feet tall. Which means it'll run only about 300 feet by the time I have enough stone for the wall ses. We'll probably have to go a bit further as well though, since more stone will also be needed for the neartment buildings. I don't want the tuo end there though. I'd like if it could go much further before surfag, so for now, it'll just be a dead end.

  Overall though, I don't actually expect the stru to take too long. I should be able to cut quite a bit of stone in a day, and with some goblins helping haul everything to the stru sites, I suspect that my own travel time to and from the bathhouse to recharge mana will actually be one of the biggest time ers on the project.

  I was surprised by how fast we actually pleted these additions to the walls of the vilge. A mere ten days is all it took. Of course, that isn't including the ballistae. Right now the carpenter is actually still w on the sed trebuchet, so it'll actually be quite a while before any of the ballistae are made. Although I myself am quite ied in building them, things have been quiet, and most of the vilge has gotten quite pt again. Ultimately, I want to know if there actually is a threat lurking somewhere on the isnd.

  My demon nguage has e along somewhat i few months, which obviously has e in handy for stru, as I haven't needed Zeb to transte everything for me. It's also helped me build rapport with the goblins, which was something that I hadn't really sidered as a cause for the strife between the goblins and myself before. To help build that rapport even more and for safety reasons, I want t three or foblins with me on my short exploration mission.

  By leaving Zeb in the vilge, the neartments also get more stru done, plus I trust him to keep an eye on the prisoner situation. Speaking of the prisoners, they've beuch more depressed in the jail cell tely. Is it the five stages of grief, or something along those lines? Sure seems like it. I mean, I guess they're in a pretty bad situation. If they cooperated, they wouldn't be ihough. They've chosen this path for themselves to some degree, but the opportunity for them to e around and cooperate is still oable, if they'll accept it.

  By tomorrow I pn on having the goblied and beginning our exploration trip.

  Today we carefully did the first stage of the exploration trip. Which simply involved slowly using the road to return up to my cave home. After we checked that it was safe, and that no one was hiding inside somewhere, we stayed the night. We took about twice as long to actually reach the cave house as normal because we were trying to remaihy on our . This left us with aire half a day to spend at the cave house. The goblins were tent to just rex, so I let them. I myself decided to take the opportunity to weed as much of the terraces as I could, and then harvested some spuds for us to eat for dinner.

  The i for the few days is to use the cave house as a base of operations. Since we're quite high up, there are occasional clearings which make seeing rge swaths of the isnd possible. oal is to find these clearings, and use them to at least get a cursory look at any ges to the isnd.

  We went to the first clearing today. This was ohat I've known about for a long time, but I haven't e back to in years. It's the area where I first found the slightly sweet flowers that I've used for seasoning on occasion. Ultimately, if you head up through the difficult rocky terrain for a bit, you end up above the tree line by a few doze, a a good view of the isnd from there.

  In fact, while up here, I was able to see the main goblin vilge. Although hard to tell, I think I also spotted the sed goblin vilge. It isn't nearly as pronouhough, and I couldn't spot any buildings, just the fact there seemed to be an area with fewer trees. The main vilge has been clear cut in such a rge area that I clearly make out the regur city walls along with little dots i, which are the buildings.

  Other than that though, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

  In five additional days, we found two more clearings, and both didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. With that in mind, tomorrow the pn is to climb to the peak. I know for certain that we at least see every side of the isnd from there, although the view is from so high up that it doesn't tend to reveal muformation.

  Our trip up towards the peak today was far more fruitful than I imagi would be. First, we found not one, but two abandoned eagle s. Both were built in rge rocky areas using rge branches and trees as the base. One of the s also tained an exceptionally rge number of bohat were goblin sized. The other one also had a few bones, although not nearly as many as the first.

  After that, when we reached the peak and walked around the rim of the mountain, I spotted something that was different from the st time I here. On the far side of the isnd, opposite the valleys where the goblins live, things looked a bit different. That area already didn't have nearly as thick of forests as the goblin side. Now however, there is a rge se he coast where it looks like trees had been cut down and a makeshift fort was made with palisades.

  To make it all the way down there would probably take a full day, maybe more. After a discussion with the goblins, we've decided to start our trek down to iigate. We should be able to make it to the fort a few hours before nightfall. That should give us adequate time to scout from a distao see if we spot anything.

  We made our way down the mountain today towards the fort. From a reasonably safe distance we kept watbsp; No oered, no o. By nightfall, no fires were set either. We've retreated up the mountain a short distao sleep for the night, tomorrow we'll observe for a few more hours, and if it looks clear, we'll attempt to ehe fort and see what is inside.

  The fort ended up being abandoned, but it did leave us with some valuable clues. While there were a few buildings ihey were mostly makeshift structures made entirely of wood. Two of the six had already colpsed, and there were very few items left inside. The only things that were left were pieces of furniture that had clearly been made from the nearby trees that were also used to make the palisades. A quick t of makeshift beds gives an approximate headt of 30 people.

  A small path had also been cut between the fort and the o. While there is evidehat small boats had been perched in the sand higher up the beach, any evidence er boats have been lost to the tides.

  I recall from the first time I climbed to the mountaihat the view of this beach stretched quite a distah sand, but right now it seems fairly short. This is just a hypothesis, but I think that this beach actually reaches a det dista uhe drastic tides that this isnd experiences.

  Whoever had been here has clearly packed up a. I'm tempted to burn the fort to the ground and y traps everywhere, as an obstacle to any future nding parties, but if there is still a ce of peace talks, then I probably should refrain. With this valuable new information, we decided it was time to return to the vilge.