During the remaining two months of winter, we checked about as many spots for sulfur as I had in the first month. Each spot got further and further from the road, which led to slower progress. Ultimately, we found a sed potential source of sulfur. The new one is even more remote than the first, though it does appear to only be 20 feet underground. We decided that while the first potential source is having a scouting tunnel dug into it, the forest ma teams will start searg for a safe path to this sed source, so we repeat the process there as well.

  All these potential areas that we've checked have either been on the side of the isnd with the road going around it, or close to the ore roasting area, meaning we have about a quarter of the isnd that we have basically left untouched due to the difficulty travelling through the craggy terrain there. It's probably worth sidering expanding our surface road infrastructure around that side of the isnd, if only to aid in potential future projects.

  I talked it over with Zeb, and he had a pretty good idea. Currently, in fall and winter, we're having some goblins manually breaking rocks in the reservoir to expand it and potentially gain stone shaping when they prestige. Apanying them are a handful of dwarves and goblins who up the jagged rockfaces behind where the manual breaking is happening. This spring, that group is doing the digging into the potential sulfur deposits. During this uping summer, the reservoir will be in use for hydroelectric power to separate hematite. Zeb had po have them expand out some of the terrace farms during this time, but he was indifferent to having them build out some roads instead.

  After additional discussion, this also means we'll have to halt jetty stru during those months, meaning we'll have even more teams avaible for road stru. Building a road uses much less stohan building a jetty, but without a rge supply of stone, building the jetties would quickly e all our stockpile. So, during summer, we'll have multiple teams building out roads. In fact, we have too many teams for w on a single road, so we also picked the heaviest travelled dirt path used fetting to some of the terrace farms, and we'll be turning that into a proper stone road. Being able t carts along that road should make harvest season much easier for the farmers who work there.

  Fifteen days int, the first potential sulfur deposit was breached, however, there wasn't any sulfur present. What we found instead might be more valuable though. Reddish e crystals that appear to be fluorite. By the time the tunnel had been opeo the atmosphere, and I was informed of the find and came to look, the tunnel had bee unbearably hot. Even I couldn't eve halfway dowunnel, and I have heat resistanbsp; I was ed about the crystals potentially melting themselves, so we re-sealed off the tunnel with almost te of stone.

  Unfortunately, to use this fluorite, a lot of work will o be doo access the deposit safely. I 't quite get close enough to determihe absolute size of the deposit with teise, but I could at least determihat it's rge enough to be worth exploiting. Even then, just because some of the fluorite seems to be the heat produg variety doesn't mean all of it is. For the month, I'm having all the miners who were close to the deposit report in for daily checkups, and once a month after that, just to keep an eye on their health.

  In order to access the deposit safely, I'll likely o dig in from an area a det distance away, so that mana in the air doesn't seep in too quickly. Even then, I suspect the crystals will get very hot due to the sheer volume of them. Generally speaking, individual crystals seem to be able to dissipate their heat into the air quite easily. The issue is likely the volume of the deposit, alongside the thermal ductivity of the surrounding robsp; The heat that the crystals produce just doesn't have ao go easily, and so it just builds up over time.

  Oential option, if I wao get a handful of crystals at a time, would be to reopen the mine every so often, and then cut as many crystals as we out before it gets too hot, thehe mine off again and wait for it to cool down. That might at least work until a lounnel is dug. One issue with that, however, is oxygen deprivation. If we leave the tunnel open to get oxygen in, it'll heat up, driving the air i of the tunnel, and the only way to cool it is to close it off, pulling a vacuum inside. When we opeunnel up, the air outside will rush in, likely bringing a bunana with it. Meaning the window to actually harvest crystals before everythis up will be very small.

  Regardless, I want to wait until the end of the month to make sure that none of the miners get sick before we open it back up. I will, however, start excavating a unnel myself while I wait. I pn on digging to the side, and then tunneling around the deposit, aering it from the back, with the hope that the extra distance will be enough to make the heat bearable inside. It'll take much lohan a month for me to mihat far myself, so I won't o worry about an actal exposure to potential toxins in that time.

  Thankfully, in the month of monit, none of the goblins got sibsp; Well, outside of the first day where a few showed minor symptoms of heat stroke when they left the mine shaft after it heated too much for them to stay inside. The sed potential deposit did produce sulfur, so we're ba business for sulfur harvesting. I am worried about us running out of elemental sulfur at some point, so I've started to think about how I'd go about rec sulfur from the sulfur dioxide given off from roasting our ores.

  We're likely losing literal tons of the stuff to the atmosphere, which I'd prefer to recover if possible. Unfortunately, things like this are never free, and I'd want to find a renewable resource we could trade to produce the sulfur. If we end up trading something else that is limited in exge for the sulfur in a rea, it's just not worth it. If fluorite research yields good results, then I could potentially use hydrogen as a reat to produce solid sulfur and water vapor.

  We could do that currently with electrolysis as well, but that would require signifit energy ption from the hydroelectric facility, which would mean we wouldn't be able to separate as much hematite. If the fluorite research doesn't yield as by the time we've run out of hematite to refihen I'll sider it to be a viable option for recovery.

  I'm only about the third of the way doh the tuhat I'm digging to the fluorite deposit. Given that no o sick, and we don't need everyorag sulfur at this point, I'm pnning ing those miners back here to help me dig this out, so it get finished quickly. With the extra bor, I might eveend the tunnel further before turning back, just to be on the safe side.

  With the extra bor, we pleted the unnel in just uwenty days. It would have been less, but I decided to extend it further. The tunnel current digs into the mountain for 200 feet, then turns, goes another fifty, before returning and running into the deposit after another 110 feet. The temperature is still a bit too hot for other miners, but with my heat resistance, I ha, meaning I extract fluorite. So, that's exactly what I started doing.

  Due to the potential danger ing too much of it up at once, and also exposing more of it to air, I dug multiple small rooms he deposit, which I sealed off with doors. As I break the surrounding rock to recover crystals, I'm being careful not to let too much of it pile up. I take the time to sort it as I go, and store the partial produ the rooms with the doors closed to limit their exposure to mana. That said, as I've mined into the deposit, it's gotten a little hotter due to the increased surface area as I've dug into it.

  To help with this issue, I've started to cover the floor, walls, and ceiling of my mining tunnel with stone, which seems to have helped a little. Most of the crystals I've recovered are quite small, but I've recovered three that are parable in size to the ohat the mert gave me.

  I took a few days to test how much of what size crystals I could reasonably store in a box to transport from the surface to the b basement. As previous experiments indicated, the smaller the crystals, the rger the total volume I could safely transport as their efficacy goes down with their size.

  After awenty days, I called it for now. I got those three rger crystals and about two hundred pounds of smaller sized crystals that I experiment with.