Work proceeded steadily on making the barge and its pos. A basic steam engine is actually fairly easy to make, though we had to use more of our dwindling iron to make a rge portion of it. While I worked with Karsh on that during the days, I spent the evenings making copper wires to make into cable. After thirteen days of work, the steam engine retty muplete, including our testing and adjustments to make sure it worked. I also had made enough copper cabling to attempt my first tests to see if I could use the copper cable to pull materials from the o using a winbsp; So, at the far end of the jetty, I set up a winch made of stone as a trial, and wound the copper cabling around it. For this first test, I'm going to see if I recover anything from the nearby shipwrebsp;

  The first day I just explored the shipwreck a little at a time. I'm gd that I hold my breath for a signifit amount of time, but even then, searg a shipwreck is dangerous. It'd be easy to get stud simply run out of air and die. There was some good news for my test, in that a portion of the ship had broken, exposing a few ons fag the jetty. It looks like when the ship hit the seafloor, it had damaged some of the hull's iy, which caused the failure in addition to whatever damage was done by our artillery.

  So, on the sed day, I dragged cable behind me, and tied it off to a on. The on is embedded in a wooden cart, and that looks like it had beeo the ship wall which was now broken away. In a perfect world, I'd remove the on from the wood cart seg it first, but the wood had swolleo being submerged in water for so long, making it hard to work with.

  So, I tied the cable down as best I could, auro the winbsp; I didn't expect success from this trial, but I wao get a feel for a few things. First, if the cable would easily snap or not. The ao that ended up being no, but it would snap. The cable snapped after turning the winch for a bit less than a minute.

  While disheartening, when I went to go see what had happened, I leasantly surprised. The on had, in fact, moved. It had been pulled out of the ship, and as it fell, it lodged itself firmly between the colpsed wall of the ship, and the remaining hull. As I had tio turn the winch, it had sheered the cable at where I had tied the cable to itself. I gathered what copper I could from the , auro the jetty.

  The good news is that it seems like the cable was at least capable ing the on. The bad news is I 't really tell if it lift one. If the on hadn't gotten wedged in wreckage, I would have liked to recover this on, the up a test rigging to see if the cable could lift it vertically on nd. So, I'll o either recover a different on, or free this oain.

  Thankfully, it seems like a det time to see if any of the hobgoblins with water resistance break the ship hull. If they , we might be able to free the first on, and possibly some others for recovery.

  There were exactly two fishergoblin hobgoblins who had served in the war with Rathnd who had capabilities that I was looking for. They both have water resistance, heighterength, improved endurance, and the improved throwing spell, meteor shot. What they found was that they could hurl onballs from the ship, while uer, with enough force to shatter the soaked wood of the hull. Which holy terrified me. They also could hold their breath even lohan I could, which was a good sign.

  If more of the ships were very close to shore, I'd even say that the ship was a waste, and these two could just go out and gather onballs, but in actuality, even with how long they hold their breath, many of the ships are much further from shore. So, we worked together for a bit to free the one on from before. Every so often it would get stu a rock or other object as I pulled it in, and they'd have to either move the rock, or work together to move the on, but we got it onto the jetty.

  Betweeing them, and the on, we spent two days getting it up oty, and then I ended up having to have both the hobgoblins help me push the on off the jetty, and out of the way, where I could start testing cable for lifting the on. I io use the e we've been designing here first, because the e will also o be capable of handling the weight of a on.

  After eight days, Karsh and I got the e set up to attempt to lift the on, and the cable snapped. While it was disappointing, it wasn't that surprising. I have a pn to fix this, though it's going to take some time to plete. First, I need more copper for cables. My pn is to make the cable a little thicker, and thewo winch drums instead of ohat make it a little easier for the hobgoblins to secure their cargo.

  Normally, multiple lines on a single e could be a problem, sinight actally tip what you're hauling, or the lines could get twisted. We're trying t up ons though, which are long ders, so it might actually prove beneficial, as long as the operators keep a careful eye on what they're doing. This way they wine side up if it starts to tilt too much, and straighten the load, so it doesn't slip.

  The biggest dowo attempting this is that I o go up the mountain and mine more of our native copper deposit to manufacture the wire necessary. It'll be o che the gypsum deposit though, and see how Konkur is handling that vein. I haven't really been keeping track of what they've been doing, so It'll be good to see exactly what quantity of material they've beerag.

  Konkur's team has been hauling a few tons of gypsum down a week, which has slowly been filling a warehouse up in town. sidering I pn on trading most of it away, I've started to think about making tainers for it, like how we made tainers for paper, and building a warehouse on the far side of the isnd, but I'm obviously nervous about theft happening. We'd o have our trade post occupied, at least during the winter when ships e by, to prevent that. It'd save the traders a lot of trouble if they didn't have to travel all the way to the other side of the isnd.

  Plus it would give us a good location to store some of these goods that we only pn on trading away, so they aren't slowly filling up our city's ste, which the goblins also rent out to store their own goods. I also have a feeling that our one mert who es by will be uo actually haul away all the gypsum we'd like to trade in a year, so having a location to store the excess for future trade will be good. Depending on the profit margins, it might also allow the mert to justify making multiple trips in a single season, since he actively see the goods that we'd like to trade.

  I've also been thinking about making a proper harbor for loading and unloading goods again. There are three pces that we could do that in my curreimations. The far bay would be the easiest, as the terrain is naturally set up for it. If we build it there, in the long run we'll probably end up settling a sed town on that side of the isnd for venience sake. Plus, if we settled a sed city there, it be more easily fortified, which would help protect us from any future invasion, as the natural bay there would be fortified. An added boon over my previous estimations oter.

  The sed location is the other valley, where we're currently pnning on making another artificial tide pool. This would prevent us from building the tide pool there, but it would be much closer to our existing city, though still far enough we'd want to keep people statiohere over wio prevent any theft. I really don't want to build a harbor there, as it would be more ve for the city to have access to that for food.

  The third location would involve signifit more work, and would involve terraf the craggy terrain outside o our valley into an artificial harbor. That would involve moving a lot of rock from the crags into the o, and engineering the whole area to be maneuverable. In an ideal world, that would actually be our best location, as it's a little closer thaher valley is, which means it would be fairly easy to manage from our city. Unfortunately, it'd take years of work with our current task force w around the cloake that into a viable harbor.

  Perhaps in the distant future, that could be a project we attempt, as a way to increase our own naval capabilities, but for now, I think building it in the far bay is our best bet. I'll talk to Zeb about the idea, and see what kind of projects he's currently w on, and see what he thinks of the idea. Though if I had to guess, it'll be on the backburner for a few years as we grow our city's popution.