In the following days, we held a brief memorial for the demons who died in the mana surge, and the aesthetistru crew was told to make a memorial for them. Despite the fact that I 't actually trust anything that the elves say, I did follow up with Elora to try to get a better uanding of what exactly causes mana surges, so otentially prepare for them better iure.

  For a of that level, I was surprised that very little was known about what causes mana surges. They're infrequent enough that, outside of the elves, it's uhat any other humanoid lives long enough to notice a pattern themselves, at least without sulting some form of written record. The only piece of real evidence I have to go off of is that they seem to occur on the sun-lit side of the p. No information oher eclipses interfere, or whether there is any disable pattern to their occurrences.

  The evidence would point to some sort of effeing from our two suns, but that be the case necessarily. It's enough evidehat I do want to do some resear the subjebsp; There are some preliminary steps I'd o make to properly research this subject though. We've made some basic telescopes, but I'd like to make a slightly rger one, and then also make some tinted gss to use as filters. Fortunately, our isnd is tall enough to reach above some of the cloud yers, so I might end up being able to build a facility on the summit eventually.

  Before I do any of that though, I'll o start preparations for moving some medium crystals down from the mountain. The b have oalled retively soon, si already has an underground facility for housing one and the mine won't need much extra work to include a medium crystal, but the castle will o have a deeper extension dug to house a crystal. I'm also ed about us potentially overharvesting the mana poisoning pnts that we use for the transport of these crystals. Winter is only a few months away, so I'm pnning on only bringing one crystal down before then, and waiting until te spring t dowher two.

  The first crystal will go in the mine, since I only o spend a day or two adding in a chamber to hold the crystal and water for charging mana from. Sihe mine will be the first location with one of these charging crystals, at least temporarily, Zeb has agreed to dedicate some more of the stru teams t on expanding and digging the tunnel, siheir bor will be signifitly more effective there as pared to anywhere else.

  With a little less than a month left before winter, we installed a 4 foot crystal in the mine for recharging. Things really have slowed down siderably on the isnd, at least as far as stru and mining goes. There has been a general sense of unease on the isnd after the crystals broke. We had all gotteo the sensation, but it feels like the world is colder now, and it's not just because winter is ing. The air was heavily charged with mana from all the rge crystals on the surface before, and now that its go's really noticeable.

  We aren't heavily reliant on farming, but I'm still worried about our crop yields. The goblins w in the inal tidepool have noticed slightly less fish than previously, but the ide pool hasn't had any noticeable ges. I'm assuming that it had to do with all our mana charged water outflowing into the o he tide pool. Since we have signifit excess with the sed tide pool, it's not a threat, but it is somewhat ing. The manavores in our popution have also started to e some amount ur food again, as they aren't getting enough mana to fully sustain themselves anymore.

  All these faake me hope that the mis a yer flush with mana crystals. Ideally, I want to grow a new crystal parable in size to ParTor, such that mana surges are uo threaten the crystal. While it's not guarahat is the reason ParTor hasn't broken, I find it likely to be the case. If growing crystals to a certain size allows them to survive ambient mana, then growing them rger should increase that limit even further. If Konkur was here, I'd sult with him about the usual location of mana crystals. I suppose I ask around among the dwarves we have to see if anyone knows anything. If they don't, I could try to ask Elora, and maybe I could get her to send out a message and ask around, though I imagihat won't e cheap.

  None of our dwarves had ara details as to what sort of envirohat mana crystals are found in. As I thought about it myself, I did think of at least ohing though. They're uo form below sea level. All of them grow in bubbles formed in the robsp; If they're below sea level, it'd be reasohat the magma would be less likely to form hollow chambers. I don't know if it'd be impossible for them to form, but I think it's at least reasoo assume that we shouldn't dig down to find them.

  I took a asking Elora as well, but she didn't know, and trying to utilize the elves work would be expensive. In fact, the rate she gave me to have the elves gather that information was about a quarter of all our dwarven . If we get desperate in a few years, we could sider it.

  After a bit of discussion, Zaka and I decided to halt the trips to the other isnd until we get a rge crystal installed again. After we saw those two leviathans, I think it's reasoo assume that there is a ce of something dangerous happening if we veo deeper waters. As a sequence, we both talked with Zeb about prioritiziing more jetties built. They're actually retively inexpeo build mana-wise, and catg rger fishes is a det source of levels.

  Ultimately, this didn't lead to much ge in how stru nned. Quite a bit of excess stone had started to build up from the terrace work, and expanding the tunnel forward is only going to increase that volume. Oeam will go work oties on the far side's harbor, and aeam will start on a jetty in the sed valley. Terrace work is going to be put on hold, si does require a bit more mana. Sometime in the summer though, we'll fully drain the reservoir and have oeam dedicated t alongside manual borers there to provide us with a signifit amount of stone for work. That does mean we'll have to halt our hematite processing during that time, but the facility process more ore than the mine produces, so that isn't an issue realistically.

  sidering it's only been a few months, I think we're actually adapting quite well to the new reality of our situation.