As I started making the crates for salt and paper to take to the au, I realized that I should actually take a few days repg some of the stakes along the road with perma stone posts, rather thaing most of the wo to waste. Ultimately, I spe days doing so. I repced every ninth stake with a rger stone post that I stoneshaped onto the bedrock or the road, depending on the location. I also repced the sed stake, and the sed from the st stake, so they be used as retive points for aiming the eventual tunnel.

  However, rather than doing the math now to figure out each post's altitudinal ge and linear distao the st post, I'll save that for ter. I have a feeling that I'll be waiting on Kao's isnd again for some time for the au, and while I'd like to spend some of the time learning dwarvish, I also spend some of my time doing those calcutions. Though it means I'll o prep some payment to Shasta to cover her teag costs.

  With that in mind, I spent an additional six days getting 110 crates ready. Four each for the partits, and ten for Kao, in appreciation for the work he's putting into this. Those ten are in addition to the 5% of the au's earnings that he'll be getting. Irospect, 5% might be a bit too stingy sidering all the de that seems to go into iing with other dwarven warlords, but I suppose that ultimately depends on how well the crystal aus go moving forward. I did also give Kao that sed crystal, which is, in essence, aire au's ine...

  Well, outside of the gift, I won't offer up extra moo Kao for free. If he brings it up, I'll be open to iatierms. I do still have a bit less than a month left until the actual trip to Kao's isnd begins, so I do a little more work here before I leave, so I think I'll focus on building the rest of the tools for the mining crew.

  I've made a handful of tools to assist the mining crew to ehat everything is dug as accurately as possible, though I'm sure that will also slow down their rate of excavation somewhat. The first item is a sled supported on two long rails, one oher side. Sihey're mining using stone shaping, the idea is that you use the two rails to mark the edges of the tunnel, and their ft base to make sure the tunnel is staying level with itself.

  I've decided on a very, very gentle slope for the tunnel, with a 1:200 slope. That means for every 200 feet the tunnel runs, it should only rise one foot in altitude. It's not quite as gentle of a slope as some aqueducts are built at, and it means that that I had to add funality to the sled that they'll use, si's too hard to properly read a plumb bob on a protractor for that gentle of a slope.

  Ultimately, by making the sled 8 feet long, I embedded a water level into it. This water level is someecial though. I built the sled on a work area that I made exceptionally level initially, and built a water level into it. Then I tilted the sled to match the slope I wanted, and cut a notto the back of the water level, so it draihe level slightly. I then cut a horizontal mark along the new water level along the water's meniscus at the slight ine. This way, whehey want to check that they've been w at the right level, they simply add water until it overflows, and check that the water hugs that horizontal marking, this isn't perfect, but it should help prevent them from getting too far off the expected grade.

  Beyond that though, I made a tool for them to verify and correct their work long term. With Karsh's help, I made a fifty foot long copper pipe, twht angle ectors, and some marked measuring tanks. By filling them with water, we check the level in both tanks, and see what the difference is, sier pressure will correct the level in both tanks to be horizontal. We'd expect the lower tank to have 3" more water than the uphill tank. If it isn't that, we either manually correct the tu that point, or simply keep track of the differences, and attempt to correct it ter, while digging from the other side. If, for instance all the error is in the same dire, then we might simply be able to use the same sled for the other tunnel, and the error would even out.

  The final tool I made for them is a smaller sled, used for marking the draiter, and the stone rail locations for eventual carts. It's ultimately just there to help standardize the final product, sihey could just eyeball both of those, and it'd be retively fine. With all those tools pleted though, I have about ten days until Kao's ships pick us up, so I o head to the other side of the isnd to be ready for that.

  It only took Kao's ships 9 days to arrive, and after fact in hauling oods and travel to the far side of the isnd, we had four days of actual waiting. Though I didn't let that time go to waste. I used the opportunity to get aimate for the height betwee measuring stake on this side of the isnd and the approximate high-tide mark, which was about 41 feet, give or take a foot. Ultimately, waves made it harder than I expected to measure the exact high tide point, but we got pretty close, all things sidered.

  The trip to Kao's isnd was less iing the sed time, but I still used my telescope to look over the other isnds for anything of value. While I didn't spot anything valuable, it does seem like the lizards on the sed isnd are still thriving. I also noticed a few locations that would probably be det for setting up new vilges iure.

  When we arrived on Kao's isnd though, I noticed quite a few things had ged in three years. The port area had been expanded with multiple new docks, likely to aodate the expected number of ships. Beyond that, the road from the port to the fort was expanded, and the road tinued up the slope beyond the fort now. The fort's walls also expanded beyond just the half of the slope it covered previously, and now enpassed the whole of the slope, meaning you'd o pass through the fort to ehe raised ter of the isnd, or else scale the cliffs elsewhere.

  On the first night, we stayed in the fort, but the day, I was shown to the new addition to the isnd. For all is and purposes, there was now a rge vilge in the ter of the isnd, with a tral arena. Upon closer iion though, it's not really a vilge, but more like a bunall mansions with walls around each of them, demarking their own yards. It seems, due to their of waiting until all the expected warlather before any of them meet with each other, this is the result. Each warlord occupy a mansion with their retihout iing with each other.

  The tral arena is, as expected, the location that the au will take pce, and just seems to be a much rger version of the previous au's arena. Though this time there are rooms on top of each other as well, so it's even more intimidating than previously to be in the ter of it all. Shasta did inform me that I shouldn't expect all the warlords to actually be present this time. Given the y of the first au, those who participated where ied enough to arrive in person, but this time, I should expect a lot of representatives, rather than all partits being the warlords themselves.

  Well, regardless of any of that, it'll be a month before the au begins. I've brought along a det k of dwarven currency to pay Shasta for more lessons on dwarvish, and I have calcutions to do for the posts along the road. U au, I don't pn on doing a bunch of physical bor leading up to it.