My versation with Karsh was retively short. Him and his family have lived here for about two decades, and while he has some memories of the eagles being somewhat territorial with each other at certain times of year, he doesn't have maails on the specifics of what that looks like. Shasta, oher hand, had multiple insights that were actually very helpful as to what we should expect.

  The eagles living along the coast are pretty territorial, and usually only allow their mate onto their mountain or in the air in the surrounding valleys. During mating season they'll pair bond, and stay bonded until their juveniles leave their territory, at which point the male usually also leaves the area.

  If that was the only info we'd gotten, it'd seem like my s would have been assuaged when it es to setting up an exceptionally rge crystal here. However, she went on to describe how the eagles in the mountains surrounding the dwarven capitol, with Par-Tor as a feature, behave differently. Those mountains each have over a dozen eagles ing at different altitudes. The capitol has grounds to the eagles set up at the base of each mountain. When the s are pced, the eagle that lives highest on the mountais first, and then each eagle eats in desding order based oitude their is built at.

  In other words, with an abundance of food and mana, the eagles bee less territorial, and we will have to e up with a good way to handle many eagles showing up on our mountain again all at onbsp; To further plicate matters, when the eagles he capitol ehe breeding season, even just going t food to them bees a somewhat dangerous task, and travelling up any of the mountains where they bees extremely dangerous.

  I had Shasta give a rough estimate for where the feeding point would normally be structed, and above which height they at. The results were not good. While we don't o go up our mountain proper that often, the level where a feeding area would normally be built at is already below the level where one of our vilges is built, and our road around the outside of the isnd goes above that height for a while. The s would be generally found above those levels, but could easily also be found along the ridges desding beside the valleys, including some of the areas that we've terraced.

  The dwarves, who farm their lownds and have been digging tunnels and mihrough their mountains for millennia have learo coexist with the eagles. There is a non-zero ce that part of the reason they're as underground focused as they are is because of the threat from the skies that the eagles posed troups of dwarves on the ti.

  Losing access to that much of our nd is uable for us though. We could maybe learn to live without having access to the least useful of our nd, high up on the mountain. Giving up a rge amount of our isnd, including developed portions, however is something we 't really afford to do. The eagles represent a very unique problem to us, as a result.

  We 't simply ignore feeding them to drive them away, as they'll immediately just begin feeding on our citizenry. Unfortunately, they're also too intelligent and powerful to simply drive away by annoying them using something like irritants. They'd either learn to hate whatever creature brought the irritant to them, or they'd destroy whatever system we used to deliver the irritant to them over a distance.

  By the same measure, they're te and powerful to corral into some kind of bird sanctuary where we could keep them isoted. If that would work, we'd just keep them on a different isnd and that would be the end of it. That, or we'd forcibly relocate them to the highest point on our mountain, and just make them live in whatever situation that causes amongst themselves.

  I voiced my s with Shasta oter. If it was just us demons, I'd simply use rge artillery pieces to put the birds down at a safe distance, and that would be the end of it. However, the dwarven worship of the eagles makes the topic far more plicated. Killing a dozen or more of them would basically put ao any future dwarveions. Just the fact that dozens of eagles would potentially fly out to sea o be seen again would be too suspicious for the dwarves to accept.

  Giving up a rge amount of our nd is also uable. Likewise, we know just how much more productive we bee while having a rge mana crystal avaible. Our crops grow better, our people are more robust, and stru happens at a breakneck pabsp; So simply giving up on that idea is a no-go.

  There is one very low probability option that would leave everyone happy, though it would be dangerous as well. After I thought of the idea, I asked Shasta some more questions before I was willing to even utter it out loud. I asked about how often eagles around the capitol re-, and if there were any other unique properties they dispyed while ing.

  The eagles, it seems, have to spend a lot of effort buildis. As such, it's rare for them to ever actually abandon a . Along the coast and around the capitol, it's on fles that lose out in a test of strength to give their up to the winner. The loser either settles for the old , uses one of the dozen other abandoned s, or builds a new one. In the rare years where they have extreme rain, whole trees will frequently flow down the mountainsides as old ed s wash away.

  So, I then voiced my pn to Shasta. We'll build a few dozes around the upper most parts of the mountain, and maintai trails up to eaest area. We'll look over what is left of our own old and abandoned eagle s, alongside any information any of the dwarves might have, and try to make the areas entig, while also reinf them to help keep her rainfall from destroying unoccupied s.

  While our feeding area will be higher up the mountain, there are still multiple s reted to the eagles arriving. What if they don't choose our s? What if they start harassing our citizens? The reason aths to all the s is a hint to that. I've been thinking about making diethyl ether for a while now. It's a fairly useful substance for various reas. An iing property of diethyl ether is that it was used as an early ahetibsp; It's not that powerful of ahetic though, so actually successfully drugging them will probably be a fight in itself.

  If we ma the eagles that cause problems by ing in the wrong areas, we clip the feathers in their wings, and relocate them to the s we want them in while they're unscious. For a while after clipping they'll be uo fly, and we'll them food to their ing area. The hope would be that iime where they are rec from having their wings clipped, they'll beore depe on their caretakers, and beore pliant with living where we tell them to.

  Shasta seemed very impressed with the solution I'd devised. However, I was quick to warhat it wasn't actually a solution, just a pn that could easily fall through. If we 't drug the eagles for some reason, or they refuse to use our s, or bee violent after drugging, or any number of other problems, then we will o put them down. I told her that, in my estimation, the most likely oute is that less than 20% of the eagles end up behaving in an acceptable manner, and within a year, the other ones will be dead.

  If I lied now and simply said it will all work out, thehe time es to do what needs done, we could face far more backsh. I did give another silver lining though. In all likelihood, any new eagles that are raised on the isnd will be far more pliant, and they'll be used to having us around, and we curb their behavior from a young age. So after the all-too-likely initial purge, most of the eagles should be fine from then on.

  After that portion of discussion ended on a bit of a somber note, I asked Shasta to join me in talking with Zeb about pnning out the grand bathhouse where our crystal will be situated. The discussion was mostly about aesthetid scale, with very little need for actual detailed design of the pools. For the most part, we already have the necessary pos figured out.

  The main purpose ing Shasta along for this discussion was to lighten her mood, and remind her of one upside of the tradeoff that was likely to result in a few eagle deaths at a minimum. Though when I phrase it like that myself, it almost seems petty. The actual main upside is multiplying our avaible mana that be used by our citizenry and maery. We've used small mana crystals in the caves paired with zinc fluorite to make rechargeable fshlights, and when we briefly installed the 8-foot crystal in the old bathhouse to let the majority of the dwarves return home, some of the ovens nearby to the bathhouse became unusably hot.

  Following that logic, I imagihat such a rge crystal will probably increase the general mana in the area to a level where we'll o rebance all the ovens iy, and might o revisit some of our closer meical instaltions to make sure they aren't overheating due to excess mana. However, that also means that we'll have increased industrial potential around the city, which is something I've been somewhat desperate for. I've thus far had to be quite careful about overusing local mana to not starve the area of what mana it has, meaning most of our workers have long utes to industrial areas. This could potentially allow us to set up something like a textile manufacturing area or simir meical factory produg citizen grade goods o the city.