I decided to shift my nighttime work from mining the deposit to building a warehouse he tunranbsp; We already have multiple stockpiles outside the tunnel, and as those piles grow, it'd probably be better to have some of the materials stored under a roof in case of rain. Mostly because of lead and arsenic potentially leeg out of the ores into the groundwater.

  I'll probably keep building warehouses here after the first one as well, just because in a decade or so they'll be useful for reasons other than mining. Ultimately, this is supposed to be a tuhat lets us cross the isnd ihan a day, which would mean it'd be ideal to have warehouses directly oher end of the tunnel, along with a potential inn, so that travelers set out early and have time to unload their goods oher side of the tunnel on the same day. That isn't even sidering that we might have even more ore deposits in other locations along the tuhat we may be mining at any point in time.

  In addition, to perform magic separations on the hematite, it'll o be crushed fairly small, so setting up some of the tainers and crushers, and putting a couple goblins on that task would be good, si will reduce the amount of space the hematite takes up in the warehouses when I finish them. Though I don't actually want to spend too much time making warehouses here. Before winter, I want to go up the mountain and make more of the mana draining liquid, and transport down a few trays worth of crystals from the cave down to this mine, which should improve the miners extra rate signifitly. Then I want to go bad build the hydroelectrierator on the dam, so we build a magic separator for the hematite ore.

  I spent 39 days making two warehouses. For effective use of space, I ended up digging a basement out for both of them, and adding a sed floor to eabsp; They're both fairly rge warehouses, bigger than ones I've made in the past, but I figured it'd be a good idea given the volume of rock that es out of the mi any given time. If something new is extracted, it could take a year or more for a facility to be built to process that ore, so having a rge amount of ste space to hold it seemed prudent. Thankfully, we're utilizing a lot of the materials being mined, so the only thing building up over time is the hematite.

  After those were done, I had exactly 29 days until the eclipse, and only 2 months until winter, so it was time to start extrag the mana draining poison from pnts. I decided to borrow a few of the goblins in charge of forest ma to e help me for a week, so I could harvest plenty of the pnts. This time, rather than attempting to haul all the crystals down in e tainer, I made a different pn.

  I brought down only rger natural crystals, but I put them in a box with many holes in it, and suspehat box in the mana draining fluid. Then, at periodic locations down the road, I stationed a new tainer with the mana draining fluid. When the eclipse finally came, I had a few hobgoblins help me with transport, and at each of the stops, we'd quickly trahat box to the new tainer, and haul it down further. This way, we could haul a rger pertage of crystals down irip, while redug the amount of fluid we had to carry stantly.

  The dowo this method was that we ended up ing a siderable amount of the mana poison pnts, but both myself and the forest ma goblins collected seeds from quite a few of the pnts, and while I rocessing the mana poison from the pnts, I had the forestry goblins begin pnting the seeds periodically throughout the highnds he cave. If Tiberius's research bears good fruit, we may eventually even farm these pnts to make a dried trate that could be incredibly useful.

  Long story short though, I ma down 5 trays worth of natural crystals, and a few medium crystals for determining where the charging room should be built into the mining tunnel. By the day, we had a small charging room set up that the miners could use just like in the cave mine. They bring a tray along when it's avaible and recharge in the mine, allowing them to extract more rock at once before needing to make the nearly mile hike out of the cave to recharge.

  Though with only five trays, it's not quite enough to actually keep up with ption. I'd pn t more down soon to make up for this problem, but I'm a little worried about potentially driving the mana poison pnt to extin, so we'll show restraint until we know if the seeds we pnted will actually sprout or not.

  After handling the crystals, I had less than a month until winter, which meant I o go and manage our trade goods, a a list of what trade goods we need. lenty of salt and paper to export, so getting those crated and ready to ship was fairly simple. Rather than relying on asking people for what trade goods they might need moving forward, I took the time this month to actually set up things more properly.

  Previously, we'd just get word of mouth information spread of x person needs y item. Now, I've added a new worker iy hall, who's entire job is just gathering those requests over time. This year, I still o go ask people, sihey didn't know about the new gobli, but after this year, they're to make their requests to that goblin.

  Unfortunately, we don't have any spare goblins who know how to write dwarvish. The goblin I've picked, however, has shown some aptitude for learning patterns quickly. When he receives a new request, he's to go find one of oblins who do write in dwarvish, and ask them to write down the request on paper along with the amount requested. Many of the requests are the same year over year, so he should learn those words fairly quickly. Ultimately, I'll probably have to get one of the goblins who read dwarvish to read the list e trade time, but that's still signifitly faster than how we've been doing things.

  It also es with the added be that I eventually dedicate someone else to handling our annual trade permaly, since I myself will be able to put in trade requests, and leave it to them to iate. This will be especially important once we get a harbor set up and have multiple merts we're dealing with every year.

  The mert came a little ter than normal this year, meaning a return trip in the same year would be impossible. There was a sed ship with him, which Shasta was on. His reasons for being te were the more ing part of the ordeal though. Tensions on the dwarven ti have been rising for the past year, and acquiring goods takes longer and more money as all the warlords are beginning to stockpile goods. There are murmurings going on of a rebellion against the king , which is quite the problem for us.

  Given the dwarves are our only trade partner, if they have a sudden civil war, it'll be very inve for us. Thankfully, the only dwarf that we have a mutual defensive pact with is Kao Ostark. The other dwarves who have traded crystals with us have traded to guarantee our independenot for us to aid them. Beyond that, our defensive pact with Kao really oends to his isnd, with no expectations to help him on the mainnd, though we may voluntarily do so, given how much help he was when we were threatened.

  We also got some unication back from Konkur at st. The lead from the first deposit is middle of the road in silver tration, so it's really up to us if we want to refi, si does result in some amount of the lead being lost in doing so. Given we have an excess of fish bones anyway, I don't see any reason we shouldn't collect the silver. Fish bones are teically renewable for us, where as the ore is not, so extrag as much of the more valuable silver is likely better long term for us.

  The mert did have another fluorite sample for us, and it's very simir to the hydrogen produg sample, and the mert said it has simir properties. Konkur also respoo our question about fluorite, and I got a little more info about deep fes from that. It seems that fluorite is generally kept deep underground where mana 't reach it, and it's used ieel making process in deep fes. Given its votility when exposed to mana, it's rarely brought to the surface, which is why we have difficulty getting any. The mert also gave us a small refund, given this was all he could acquire, and giveuation on the ti, he won't be attempting to find any more.

  Acc to Konkur's note, fluorite is actually fairly on, and we're likely to run into some, so it's a good thing we asked about it before we actally transported it to the surfabsp; He'd fotten to mention it, si hadn't occurred in our other deposit, but we should take care to keep it deep underground and away from any mana sources. It's definitely something I'll have to inform our existing miners about, and make sure they keep safe while handling it.

  We pleted our trade with the mert, though it was actually quite a bit more expehan previously to plete, and while our salt went up in value, paper has plummeted in value given its general status as a luxury. So, we ultimately ended up spending a bit more money for less goods overall for this year.

  After the mert left, Shasta stuck around for ara day and we discussed a few more details about the tensions on the ti. While all of the information is hearsay, it seems that an anti-king fa is generally tered around the two dwarves who I've sold a crystal to. That's the reason Shasta is here. We aren't being targeted or bmed for the matter, but it has strummed up some troversy, and we should be aware of the situation.

  Kao himself is less worried about the overall situation though, since his territory is quite far from both of those fas, and while his obligation is to the king, he won't overexert himself, and if the anti-king fa takes power, the fact he facilitated the crystal sales will probably be enough to maintain his own power. So, basically, we don't have much we o be worried about directly for the situation. The st bit of news was expected, but a disappoi. Giveurmoil, it's very likely that year's au will be celled if tensions tio rise.

  We should be prepared in case tensions fall, and an au does occur, but she wanted us to be aware of the overall situation. It made me gd we'd struck a new ore veily, given we'll have a hard time trading, and an even harder time making money during wartime. However, I do want to capitalize ouation a little bit. If salt is up in value, and paper is down, we should pn on imp less items and saving our paper exports while expanding our salt produ to capitalize on the market disruption. When all the prices stabilize iure, we then sell our paper stockpiles. We'll still likely have a trade deficit for the ing years, but we at least minimize the problem somewhat.