I spent nine days getting the 12-inch fluorite growth chamber designed and built. I decided to slow down the dest rate even more, to pensate for the rger size. I had the 8-inch crystal desd over 3 days. I expect material probably deposits at a fixed rate based on the avaible surface area, meaning that the growth rate is probably approximately linear from the surfaces. So a 50% increase i would correspond to a 50% lrowth time. Just in case it's a bit slower, I'm going to have the crystal desd over the course of 5 days, equating to a 66% lrowth time.

  A 12-inch crystal's volume is about 3.5 times the volume of an 8-inch crystal, so I'm hoping that having a fifth of the natural mana down here will be enough to prevent issues. I've installed another nine of the ma sinks in the air lines, but haven't noticed that much of a ge ial mana avaible down here. I also o find a few goblins who I feel will make good operators down here for monit the crystal growth process. It's fairly hands off, but you do o make sure that the charcoal pellets don't get jammed in the dispenser, and refill the hopper if it gets low, or else the whole process ends up a failure.

  While I was able to get some goblins to help me and learn the ropes, the resultant crystal was still very hot and difficult to hahough it was successful. While we waited for it to grow, I made some new pedal operated crystal cutting saws down here, with a catt to get the extra fluorite dust that was cut away.

  At least cutting the crystal down makes it easier to handle, si's produg less heat. I started to wonder about the exact application and effects geometry had on the crystals. While regur shapes, like a regur prism and a regur octahedron, seemed to only be affected by volume, was that actually the case for all shapes? Did I mess up by cutting the heat sink mesh into the pte oirling engine providing air down here?

  That seemed easy enough to test using this new crystal. First, I cut the rge tral pte, about 8.5 io a side, and 1.5 ihibsp; Iingly, that pte has more total volume than the 8-inch crystal has in total. I know that es are weird when it es to calg volume, but it's still wild to think that such a small vertical cross-se has such a rge amount of the volume for this object.

  , I cut pairs of 1 in thick ptes out of the remaining two equal square pyramids left over from each half. For one of those ptes, I cut a grid through half the thiess, and for the other, I left it untouched.

  I crafted two buckets of equal size on the surface, and filled them with water, and then submerged each pte at the same time. Each of these ptes was an average of 6-io a side, making them parable in size to the ptes iirling engine on the surface, which I khat pte could boil water.

  The uncut pte boiled slightly faster. I repeated the test a few times, and the results were pretty definitive. There was about a 15% differen the time between the uncut bucket and the cut bucket. My w hypothesis is that it for any crystal that is a vex polyhedron, volume is the primary factor, for but a cave polyhedron, there is some amount of loss based on how isoted portions are. In the grid pattern, for example, the bottom is a solid pte a half inch thick, and the top is, for the purposes of this discussion, prised of about 16 smaller ptes.

  Now, why that only results in 15% slower boiling time is beyond me. Food measure, I tried cutting it even further, so only a sliver of material was left eg each se of the grid, and it performed even worse. I cut the uncut grid into individual pieces the same size as the grided pte, and this new pairing performed almost identical, with a slight edge going to the still ected grid.

  I could do all sorts of studies on how different shapes are affected, but for now, I'll work with the knowledge that making a shape cave is probably resulting in lost effibsp; Iure, I could also try making multiple shapes of identical volume, and duct simir tests to try to determine if all vex solids are actually the same or not. Previous tests with my initial crystal samples seem to indicate yes, or at least that the differences are negligible, but surely there exists a transitional point, where ara thin and long rod of the crystal would either under or overperform for it's volume as pared to an octahedron of the same volume.

  To duct such a study would require multiple grown crystals, so that I could carve shapes out that are rge enough to do a water boili like the one I just did.

  As I let the goblins run the new fluorite growth chamber, I noticed that we weren't redug the mana in the basement, even after adding in more ma sinks. I was intrigued, so I started testing various things to determihe cause. My first hint was that the stairwell, with it's stagnant air and e to the raw fluorite ste, had less mana than the fluorite growth room. The sed hint was something that I noticed before with the submerged mana crystals. While the mana seemed to flow downriver, it also did affect upriver some degree.

  So, I decided to move a few of the heat sinks from the io the outlet. Sure enough, within about an hour, there was signifitly less mana in the room than there reviously. I still think that we'll need a few more heat sinks installed on both sides to reduce it as much as possible, but we're already at about 1/15th of the surface's regen values.

  When the crystal was ready, while still warm, it was at least cool enough that it could be held in your hands without causing pain without needi resistanbsp; Since I don't yet kly urpose I'm going to employ these particur crystals, I'm going to have the goblins making them keep them stored away. I've made a small area in a er of the room, where the crystals be stashed, at least until I e up with a use for them.

  For the time being, I'm going to have them keep making the 12-inch crystals while I start designing the even rger growth chamber. The good news is that despite only mining once a month, the miill outpaces our current fluorite ption, due to how slowly these crystals grow. To everyone, including the dwarves, this just seems like novel applications of natural materials, no different than burning wood to make a fire. To me though, this is magid I'm bining it with teology I already know. The mana crystals, while grown with teology, were a sort of low tech, direct to body thing. These heat crystals are real magitebsp; A magical pohat drive teology.

  I settled on making the rge fluorite growth tainer 36 inches for the crystal height. Meaning it'd have 3 times the height of our current 12 inch crystal. Sihe vat o lower away from the heat source, I dug into the floor about two feet to make everything fit nicely while still making operation easy. Sihe 12 inch crystal grows over 5 days, I decided to go with 18 days of growth for this crystal.

  Building everything took ten days, and while I was eager to start, I was a little worried that the ambient mana might be a little too high still, so while I waited for more of the mana filters to be built, I decided I should start building the area where Tiberius will eventually work, if he chooses to pursue this research path.

  While we have quite a lot of cut quartz, I don't think we'd be able to make a massive room for it, so I've settled on two fairly small rooms, with double doored hallways eg them. The first room will be eight feet long by six feet wide, and six feet tall, with a small two foot by two foot alcove on one side where I'll install a small crystal grower like the ones in the main b area. This particur crystal grower will be much smaller than all the others, and is po only grow a 4-inch crystal over the course of two days.

  The double doored hallways are also quite narrow, only 2.5 feet wide, and 4 feet long, with a sliding door oher side. These are meant to help prevent air mixiween chambers if used correctly. That way, a small amount of heat produg fluorite be installed in each area, and should passively e most of the mana in the area, redug the odds of an act . The final room will be a small test chamber, six feet on all sides, making it a cube. Ultimately, I'll probably o add various funs to that chamber, but I'll wait until those requests e in before I actually work on them.