For the remaining eleven days until I start csses tomorrow, I decided to che on all the various dwarves who have moved to the vilge and see how things are going with them, save fgs who I've been w with retly. It had been a while since I'd ied with a few of them, so I figured it would be good to check how they've beeling in.

  Karsh's family is doing well, and it seems like they've beeing along well with Konkur's family. Sihey both have young kids, it seems that Karsh's wife, Rishi, and Konkur's wife, ta, have been trading off childcare duties with each other alongside handling something resembling education for their children, which I'm gd to hear. I would have been worried if their childrens' future was in some way being sacrificed for their parents' work. If Arat and Maka decide to have children, I hope that those kids also find a good education within our try.

  Arat has obviously been busy helping with the bargas herds, and while we haven't quite had our harvest yet to make flour for baked goods, Maka's bakery is pleted. So despite the fact we don't have any leavening agent, I hope that she has a few treats to make. They seem pretty tent with their life, and although they haven't quite paid back their new house, I suspect they will get it paid back before winter once Maka is w.

  I had worked with Konkur earlier in the year, a him to his own devices for a number of months. He had a bit of iing information that he's figured out while he's been w on the various samples I gave him. First, he did a few different things with the steel ore that we had gathered to try to determis position. Between magic separation using some lodestone he brought along with him and some flux based tests, he says he's at least somewhat sure of the position of our metal.

  Unfortunately for me, the words he uses are useless by themselves, but they at least give me a pretty det idea. He said that our steel is about 87% iron, based on the magic recovery of particles. The word for the seetal he recovered has no meaning to me in dwarvish or demon, but he refers to it as bonifus gok. For text, gok in dwarvish means iron. Konkur said that bonifus gok is frequently found near iron deposits, or in some amount mixed in with them, but usually iher much higher pertages or much lower pertages than what was within this ore.

  The dwarves themselves apply a small amount of bonifus gok to irohey're steel smelting because it seems to improve durability and corrosioao their metals. Which leads me to my final clusion based on the color of oxidation from before along with various properties of our steel alloy, bonifus gok is most likely manganese. We've mao stumble upon an incredibly unlikely ore deposit which just so happens to have iron and manga a ratio within the range of mangalloy, or Hadfield steel.

  As far as I'm aware, no deposits oh were ever found with the two metals at a close enough ratio to produce that particur alloy. It's incredibly unlikely, to the degree that I'd suspey other ore deposits we find even on this isnd won't tain it in quite the right quantities to reproduaturally. Thinking about it long term, I hope that other deposits that we find at least have close to the amount of manganese so that we're able to still produce the mangalloy in the amounts we'd like to. To do so, we'll also o get our hands on some mags. The issue with that is that magic properties outside of lodestone are actually a retively advaeology, and without electricity, we're pretty stu that front.

  I'm also not fident that the manganese ore dust will actually have that different of a density pared to the iron dust, which means I 't just use the same process I want tss making. Ultimately, this is quite the problem. If I at least e up with a way to gee a det amount of electrical current, I could in theory make some perma mags, and that would be the end of the issue. I don't, however, have that, and it'd be a long process to make such a thing, especially given the fact we don't currently have mags.

  The issue being that the process of making someowerful perma mags requires already strong magic currents and precise trol of the cooling of the material that will bee a mag. While I don't doubt my ability to actually produe given enough time, that same issue of time is actually the problem. Just trading for the right metals to make something like an AlNiag would be difficult. Aluminum is especially difficult, and I'd likely o trade for the ore and make the whole aluminum refining process myself. This is ign the possibility of produg stronger 'rare earth' mags, which would be even more impossible given the world's current teology.

  Electricity geion would be quite the difficult process to start as well, although I do at least see a path towards making a basic amount of useful electricity. Something as plicated as making aire electrical grid is far beyond my own abilities however, let alone our current teology. Well, that's something I'll just have to think on for some time, and hope that our existing ore supply sustains us long enough to solve the problem.

  While I was thinking through this process, Konkur had been describing some of the intricacies of our isnd's minerals, which was lost on me. I did get at least some of the basics though. I was already aware that we were a volid, but it seems like we're a bit unique pared to the voloes he's familiar with, but we do match the isnd that Kao Ostark trols within our isnd . The roposition is quite unique, and doesn't seem to match with his current uanding of what voloes produce, but I think I uand why.

  It's very likely that our isnd is formed by a maspot. sidering our distance from the mainnd and the fact that the isnd closest to the mainnd is much ftter than our own isnd leads me to believe that teics weren't the cause for our vulism. That means the reason our rocks would seem so out of pce is that they're likely basaltic, or some other simir dense oic robsp; Not all the rocks on the isnd are basalt obviously, and in fact, it seems like only a slim majority of them are based on Konkur's estimates.

  That also expins why I o refine rocks to produce lightstone and gss. If lightstone is lighter i and tougher than the darkstone po, it's likely sili dioxide. Further evidence of this is that it be used to make gss. Darkstohen, by further dedu is probably the remaining other metal oxides iremely fine grains. I'd be hard pressed to make lightstone from just any ro the isnd though. Much of the rock is so uniform in color that I couldn't just produce lightstone from it with magibsp; Sili dioxide occurs in higher trations in tial rock rather than oic rock, providing me further evideo reinforce the hotspot theory.

  The rocks which I 't easily separate are probably the true basaltic rocks. The two rocks that I've been using, rocks from ihe cave, which seem to have a rger grain size, and the reddish rock with a higher pertage of white grains have been my lightstone sourbsp; Those rocks are clearly rarer, and likely involved some unique eruptions in the past to produce them. Unfortunately, the bination of so maal oxides in a sierial makes it hard for us to extray of the individual metals. Under moderh ditions, it wouldn't even be worth it to extract the metals, as better metal sources would be avaible elsewhere on the p.

  We, however, do not quite have that privilege. If we need metals and 't find more metal ore deposits, we'd be stuck trading other lower value goods for them, and while salt and fish are plentiful on our isnd, the idea of having a permaly agrarian society that trades for what little metal we get doesn't quite sit right with me. If Taiwan have a thriving first world ey despite it's ck of natural resources, there should be no reason that we 't also have this. How, exactly, we actually achieve this is something I'll have to think on for some time though.