I had po return to the city to move the crystal back to the temporary bathhouse by the sea, but as per Zaka's request, it's bei iream. Over spring, both the farmers and the fishergoblins noticed much better successes in their endeavors, and everyone who was drinking the stream water, even after boiling it, was feeling filled with energy, though it robably just a small amount of excess mana. Based on the info I'd gained from talking with Shasta about Kao's territory, and the dwarven capitol, I'm not surprised. The reason their capitol is as successful as it is seems to be due to their massive crystal, ParTor.

  So, despite everything, I'm moving the crystal I just made to the temporary bathhouse, and then I'll be headed back up the mountain again to grow another crystal to be presented in the au. Though this has given me something to think about. I wouldn't be able to grow these rge crystals without some amount of knowledge of crystal structures and vacuums, but I've really been ing magic teology researbsp; Until now, I've basically been propelling us through the stific tech tree, with a few magic tweaks thrown in here and there to shortcut some processes.

  The first giant crystal was being used as a way for us to recharge our mana, and seemed to attract rge animals, resulting in quite the bad initial experience, and some fear of messing with the teology further. I might have been a bit too servative when it came to further crystal experiments. I'm still very worried about what would happen if you shattered a rge crystal, but outside of the giant lizards and eagles, we haven't experienced any other problems from our crystal, and further, it sounds like the dwarven capitol generally doesn't experience problems from theirs either.

  So the giant crystal, while a facsimile of something that occurs in nature, could be sidered my first actual iion, though it still borrows a lot of cepts from earth knowledge. So maybe I should sider better iiohods for it into our society. For instance, I could grow an even rger crystal than ht foot crystal in town just to check it's effects, though I'd hate to actally attract more eagles again. Though it would be o know if it proportionally affects our crop outputs and fish yields by making it rger, or if the size of it doesn't matter much to those factors.

  Actually, as I'm thinking about it, outside of being hurt by directly toug the crystals, mana itself is more like an easily vertible energy/mass source than it is it's own thing. Mana itself seems closer to a transmutatiohan it is to magic, at least as far as I tell. In a way, it's sort of like light or electricity, though the differences are clear. It's somewhat like light in that it seems to be ing from the sun, life uses it for all sorts of processes, and ck of it doesn't kill you directly. It's somewhat like electricity in it's ability to flow through materials in non-linear ways, be verted into other useful things fairly easily, and that an overcharge will hurt or possibly kill you if you duct it.

  The issue really es down to finding ways to utilize it. Life seems to have evolved plenty of ways to utilize it for it's own be, as sampled by pretty much everything I've ied with, so there are clearly ways to use and vert it to do other things, and it seems to be universal as a power sourbsp; Evidence for it's universality follows from the fact that the same mana works for pnts, fish, demons, and all of them work with mana from the crystals. Further, what Konkur told me about other crystals indug certain effects on exposure to mana seems to further reinforce that idea.

  Crystallography is starting to sound more and more iing as a research topic, rather than tinuing to pursue the biological harvest and use idea, but I won't be upset if Tiberius keeps it up. Though ohing I o remember is that some of the crystals are incredibly dangerous, and from the sounds of the symptoms, produce deadly amounts of radiation. Though the flip side of that is that I could, in theory, produething akin to magic powered furnaces powered by a rge mana crystal. Then we wouldn't eveo cut trees down for smelting and cooking. Heck, we could even make a mana powered desalination pnt if we could produce heat using crystals in a harvestable form.

  Though all of this is just daydreaming, as I don't currently have the means to pursue any of this. Though it might be worth attempting to iate for some crystal samples as part of the au year. Then I pursue the idea further. Which means I really do o go make the crystal for au.

  Moving the new crystal to the temporary bathhouse, hiring goblins to help me grow the crystal, aing Tiberius set up with more funding took six days of time, then I returned up the mountain to grow ane crystal. The growth process took ahree months and twenty-two days, but I've made ane crystal.

  I stopped growing the 1 foot crystals, mostly because I've already got a det number of them grown already. The storeroom now has fourteen one-foot crystals, eleven two-foot crystals, and five four-foot crystals. The resulting crystal for au is once again six and a half feet tall.

  In that time, the sea wall has gained a few more feet of height. At this point, it'd probably hold back a storm of the size we had st year. Well, as long as we mao seal off the tuo the other valley before it floods us. Which means we should build a sea wall in that valley immediately after, so we won't o close that valley off in case of storms.

  At this point, though, we're only about two months from the potential au date, which means I should probably get other things prepped for it. It's not my io just bring the crystal and be doh it. I o dress the part, and put my best foot forward. So my iion is to get some fancy leather armor made, and pick a few higher level hobgoblins from uard force to apany me.

  I also want to design a fg and emblem to represent our try. I'll o sult with Zaka and Zeb, and arguably also Lu and a dwarf, for design ideas. I'm thinking of reusing some of our designs for both, but again, Lu and a dwarf each would probably have good feedback as to what the normal sort of designs are.

  After that, I want treeting gifts for the dwarven warlords. I'm thinking a crate each of paper and salt for each dwarf warlord will have to suffice, since we don't have other materials to offer. It's important to leave a det first impression if I pn on doing these aus repeatedly. If only one party is leaving with a rge crystal, then I want to make sure that the other parties don't feel like they've gained nothing, even if it's a minimal gift.

  I scheduled a meeting with Konkur, Lu, Zaka, ao discuss the design of a fg and emblem for our try, though it took fourteen days for everyone's schedules to line up such that we could hold the meeting. I opehe meeting off by asking what sort of designs were used in the dwarven and human tries fs and emblems.

  In short, I realized that things are more simir to medieval times than moder es to fgs and emblems. Having a plicated coat-of-arms seems to be generally sidered a sign of wealth and power by the humans and dwarves, though elves seem to enjoy using basid simple designs. sidering what I've seen, I think that the elves might be on to the right strategy of having everyone uimate them.

  Thee Lu and Konkur's opinion, I said we should probably go with something simple, uhe pretehat we actually don't have the wealth and power necessary to easily reproduce a plicated coat-of-arms. It's only partially false though. For a repeatable emblem, we could, in theory, have aremely plicated coat-of-arms without any issue thanks to stone shaping. For the fg though, we do actually ck good abilities to dye any fabric properly. So, I proposed a fairly simple design. A regle with a dark blue bottom half, a light blue top half, and a bck triating up through the ter from the bottom to the top.

  It generally just represents the isnd in the o. I've seen a few different flowers around the isnd that are colored in both dark and light blues, and bck is fairly easy to make with charcoal as a color, so I think that the aking goblins probably figure out how to make a fg with that design in the remaining month and a half. The emblem will then just be a simple triangle, which I verified with Lu and Konkur that they weren't aware of anyone else using such a simple emblem. Though they were ed that an emblem that simple might just be misinterpreted as an instrual marking on crates. Although, taking a page from the elves, it's probably for the best if people don't see us as a massive threat.