I let Zeb know about my pn to build a temporary bathhouse over by the sed artificial tidepool stru site. He gave me a cautionary warning that I should move the crystal somewhere else before springtime, on the off ce we have another major storm this year. I agreed that would be a good idea, so as I worked ohhouse, I started thinking about where I would build another bathhouse to make the crystal useful in springtime.

  I had a lot of trouble deg on a spot for the crystal in springtime. The four pces I'd prefer to put it, the two valley coasts, the dam, and the harbor, are all at risk or not usable in spring. Ultimately, I couldn't really e up with a good new location for it to move during spring, but I did think of something that I figured might be nibsp; I recalled that the dwarven capitol had their bathhouse upstream from the waterways in their city. From the sound of things, it made the capitol a nicer pce to live, so I spent a day carving out a small pool a hundred feet downstream from the dam, and I'll pn on submerging the crystal there in the spring, aing the spring stream bring the mana through the city.

  It probably won't have a huge impa things, but sidering the pnts and animals iy seemed to respond positively with the existence of the bathhouse, it might help our crop yields as the stream flows down through the valley. If it ends up being very useful, then I'll probably o make aniant crystal and leave that one iream.

  That said, the temporary bathhouse iher valley only took four days to make, and I noticed a rapid increase ie that stone was able to be cut from the future tide pool over the following six days. With that dohe winter months are only a few days away, so I'm going to make sure everything is gathered up and moved to the other side of the isnd to the warehouse for trade, then I'll work on some more infrastructure over there to pass the time while we wait.

  After four days iy getting the most ret items ready for transport, myself and about fifteen goblins made the two day trip to the other side of the isnd while hauling goods. Ohere, it was another sixteen days before our first visitor arrived. In that time, I built part of a sed warehouse for st trade goods. Ultimately, we're still produg more than we trade with our one mert, so we're going to build up a rger and rger stockpile unless we entierts to the isnd.

  I'd start work on a harbor myself, but holy it should only e after we've gotten sea walls built iwo valleys near our city. After that, our popution will likely be rge enough, and oods output high enough, that building a port will be the most productive rge scale project, and we then move the sedary crystal to this side of the isnd alongside a stru team to begin work. Until then, I'll just have to tinue building out some of the other infrastructure, like warehouses.

  The first visitor was the dwarven mert, alongside Shasta. I years, Shasta's importance as a transtor has gone down for iions like this, as the mert and I have picked up enough words of each other's nguages to be effective at trade without her assistanbsp; The mert unloaded the goods we traded for st year, and then we began new iations for this year.

  I iated with the mert for a bunch of items, and requested a sed trip to our isnd this wi a disted rate on oods. We have a signifit stockpile of gypsum, salt, and paper that is filling our warehouse, and even if we're selling it at a cheaper rate, it's better than it just sitting and doing nothing. In exge, we're getting a bunch of neroofing supplies to more than repce what we used because of the storm, and then also imp some iron to help supplement what we're getting from salvage. Our iron demand has slowly been climbing alongside our popution, as more individuals want steel tools and cookware.

  After iations with the mert cluded, Shasta had other things to discuss on behalf of Kao. I few years, it had bee apparent that the rge crystal we gave to Kao, which was installed in the mountains in his territory where the eagles are from, was increasing the productivity of the small unities nearby. Those unities have slowly been growing in popution as dwarves migrated during the occasional bad season.

  It wasn't just apparent to Kao though, as other dwarven groups have noticed the increased productivity, aually the cat was out of the bag that we provided a giant crystal that was the cause. Kao is keeping as muformation from leaking as he , but it sounds like other dwarven leaders are greedy for their own crystals. The Dwarven King isn't that ied, likely due to already having his own crystal, so we don't o worry about any sort of grand invasion.

  Shasta did warn, however, that we'll probably want to start sidering produg the giant crystals to use fotiations and trade with the other dwarven warlords. We don't o worry about being invaded directly, but if another war were to occur, other dwarves might join in on the opposing side at the prospect of potential riches being won.

  So, after thinking on it for a night, I decided on a potential solution. If Kao will help facilitate, for a fee of course, I'd like to run an au on his is year for a rge crystal. To be upfront about the situation, I'll also inform the partits that the au will be three years after the first one, so they should pn accly. For fairness purposes, those who already have a crystal will be excluded from the au.

  Shasta told me that the idea would probably work out as long as we don't have another war in the en years or so. Though she wasn't able to make any promises as to Kao's willio participate in the ordeal. Since we want the au to happe year, rather thaiating at a ter date, I told her what we're willing to pay Kao to facilitate the events, even if we're overpaying.

  I told her we'd be willing to give him a sed crystal, to be paid a year after the first au's success, and each following au we'll give him a 5% cut of any trade goods or currency we receive for the au. In exge, it'd be up to him to promote the initial au to the other dwarven fas, a his isnd ready to receive such a retinue, including security to protect against any problems. Ultimately, by having it on his isnd, it should help prevent espionage and any potential trickery that might occur if the dwarves all travelled to our isnd for the crystals.

  We'll pn on having the au in the dead middle of winter, on the fifteenth day of the twelfth month. That gives us time to transport the crystal to his isnd, and time for the dwarveio make their way there safely, aurn safely to the mainnd. Ultimately, I don't want to disrupt the power symmetry on the mainnd, or make any enemies in the process, so I'm going to keep the crystal sizes to 6' and not go much rger. I don't want this to be perceived as any kind of threat to the Dwarven King's power, though propping up Kao in parison to the other warlords might not be a bad idea. Perhaps the crystal I'll pay him with will be a bit rger, if he accepts.

  All this being the case, I'm going to o grow another crystal this year, so we have it avaible for the au. If things don't work out, then we'll just have a third rge crystal that we use ourselves. I was quite hesitant in the past to doing something like this, but if we egotiate defensive agreements as part of the exge for these crystals, then it'll help us drastically reduce our risk of war.

  If that was the end of our visitors this year, I'd have said that it was very successful, but unfortunately another ship from Elloetta arrived eleven days after the mert left with Shasta. Acc to Elora, Elloetta overruled the lowered priegotiation, and challenged us to 'make enemies with the elves if that's what we choose to do'. I'm really not a fan of the way the elves are behaving, but Elora has been useful to us, so I suppose I view this as payment for her services, though I'm not actually going to think of them favorably.

  So, we ended up sending them off with even more trade goods. After the mert returhe end of winter, we'll have pretty much emptied our warehouse of goods on this side of the isnd. The whole process with the elves took a few days, because we had to send a messeo fetch Elora, then have her calcute the value of what we sent, and write and sign a esting to her assessed value of the goods we sent. I had her sign an additional dot for ourselves saying that with this the initial trade agreement was fulfilled, and that any additional requests made by Elloetta foods would be cssified as 'extortion' and we could use that dot plus the bckmail we had tried to leverage before to cause some real problems for them.