The snow ended up ing a little early this year, only about 10 days in to the month. We were well prepared though, so no problems arose from it. The first snow storm put about two feet of snow down, and two days ter, we got another foot, and were pretty muowed in at that point.

  Zeb has decided that he wants to work on the exploratory mining tuo see what he find using stone shaping. He's strong enough to push a cart up and dowunnel as long as it isn't too full, so he should be good to go. Ohing I told him is to che with me every few hundred feet or so to determine if the path should ge dires, since he doesn't have teise like I do. That way I do some pings along the path and see if there is anything iing that he missed in the nearby area, and direct him towards any potential iing finds.

  As for myself, I've decided to start on an iing projebsp; Being stu the mountain all winter, while not a problem, isn't ideal. So what I've decided to do is start digging a stairwell down and out. This definitely will take a long time, but we have that time now anyway. A big dowo a stairwell vs the path we made outside is transport of materials through it. Anyone who travels it will be stuck hauling materials by hand, whicludes myself while I dig.

  The snow line generally begins about fifteen-hundred feet below the cave entranbsp; The snow there is generally fairly shallow, but just in case, I pn on digging the stairs down two-thousa before trying to breach the surfabsp; I thought about starting the stairwell up by the cave entrance, but then decided it would be better to start digging it nearby the crystal charging room.

  The first reason is that it lets me easily recharge my mana while I carry stone up and out of the stairwell. The sed reason was something that I thought about as I walked down in the cave. From the entryway all the way until the crystal charging room, the path is almost pletely dark, and you have to follow the stairs by using the railing. Even then, it's not super safe. As such, I thought it would be o periodically light the stairway with embedded crystals, letting their soft glow light the way.

  Of course, anyone who touches them if they're missing mana might result ih darkening for a siderable amount of time, but without something like gss to prevent that, it's just the way it'll have to be. Maybe I'll embed them in the roof of the stairwell food measure.

  Something else that I haven't worked on in quite a while that might be worth sidering is the artificial crystals fhting up further towards the cave entranbsp; I 't work on that until the snow melts, since our smelting area is currently buried by snow, but as long as I'm not making giant crystals, I think that could be a potential way to make the main stairway safer.

  The first ten days of our winter work went well. A problem that we're both running into, however, is the distance we o haul stone, and worse, we'll definitely run out of ve space to store all of it by spring. We currently store them in nice piles, as we cut them into blocks already. e spring, we'll be moving all the blocks outside and have to find things to build with them. Until then though, we'll keep piling them up.

  The rate at which I'm cutting stairs is quickly falling due to having to haul the stone further which each step I cut out. I'm currently y steps in. Which means I've desded only about fifty feet. At this rate, this whole project will take years to plete, and the rate that I'll be cutting sto will only decrease, making it take even longer. Of course, now that I've gotten deep enough, a lot of the time spent w on this is actually just spent carrying stone, so the pace could speed up with help.

  As for Zeb's work, he's oended his tunnel by fiftee. That tunnel is rger and has a cart track though, so that has slowed him down somewhat. Plus the distance he has to travel to recharge his mana is much greater. The cart track is a be somewhat though, since he haul much more sto irip than I .

  It's been forty days of work since my st update. Zeb and I have been just banging away at our respective projects. Every so ofterade which we're w on for a day or two, just to mix things up. Sometimes we both work oogether as well. It's been o have someoo occasionally talk to while I work.

  As fress, Zeb's rate on expanding the tunnel has been fairly steady, so he's made it an additional sixty feet. I've done some teise checks, but the only new discoveries have been more pockets of crystal. I haven't bothered to harvest them, since we don't right now, but they're there.

  As for the stairs, I've only made it one hundred ay steps, which is a little less than double what I had carved before, and it took me four times as long. The stairs are about one hundred and fifty feet of dest now from the start. Holy, I've started to really feel exhausted with all the trips up and down this long staircase I make each day. I think I'll spend a few days helping Zeb with his tunneling to give my knees a break.

  We've been keeping up the work for the st two months of winter. Any day now the snow should start melting and we start w outside again. We've stockpiled a lot of stone, but we don't really have anything to use it on currently. Well, it's not like it will go bad. If we end up just stockpiling it outside, that's fioo.

  As fress, Zeb extehe tunnel another y feet, and I added another hundred feet to the stairwell. Unfortunately, Zeb's work didn't discover anything new. All we found were more crystal patches. The stairwell at this point is about ah of its total length pleted, and about one fifteenth of the total work that will need done pleted.

  All the stone we've cut has started to really pile up in pces, and made areas feel a bit custrophobibsp; Ohe snow melts, Zeb and I agreed we'd spend the first few days just hauling all the sto of the cave, aing an area outside set up to store it.

  The sually melted a bit ter than normal this year. Twenty-two days into the month. In past years, it would usually melt within the first two weeks. Either way, we've gotten quite the stockpile of stone piled up, so we'll o ftten some areas outside where we store all of it, and then haul all the stone io the new outside ste location.

  It's o days until the envoys from the goblin vilge should arrive this year. This will be the first year that the goblins will have held a vote as to whether I should remain expelled or not from the vilge. I'm holy a little nervous about it. I've basically just be iing with the envoys, and I haven't even talked to Zaka all year. It'd be o get the opportunity for things to return to what they were before, with some more safety measures, obviously.

  We noticed something a little weird while we were hauling stone blocks out of the cave for the past few days. It's been eerily quiet outside. Normally you'd hear some birds chirping, at least when it isn't raining. This time of year it's proo raining for days on end, so I'm not surprised we haven't heard much, but he-less it's been quieter than normal. It's a bit unnerving.

  Something is definitely up. We were finishing up hauling all the stone from ioday, ae the suns shining down, there still was almost no noise of animals. I've told Zeb to keep a for anything out of the ordinary, a him know to be on high alert, as something is wrong. We'll tinue w, but we'll make sure we aren't ever resting outside, just in case. Hopefully it's either nothing, or the goblin envoys inform us if something happened. They should be here in just two days now.

  The goblin envoys are te, which is a bad sign. They should have arrived yesterday. As ht now, we're waiting for them to arrive. We've decided to wait inside, and limit our outside activity, food measure. I've got the windows open, so that I hear if anyone arrives, or hear if something else happens.

  Just as the sun is about to set, I hear a goblin yell out. What's weird is that it doesn't sound like it's ing from below, or directly outside, but instead from the sky.

  Then, much louder than the goblin yell, I hear a blood curdling screech that sounds almost like a bird. As I rush to the window to look outside, I see a massive shadow of wings move across the ndscape and up the mountain. I rush outside, and look up. As I do, I just barely make out the shape of a hawk le like creature. Withialon it holds aire goblin.

  I pause and stare in awe of its size. It heads up, aually over, a ridge and out of sight. I think that the goblin vilge might have a bigger problem than myself right now.