I worked for a few more months on the handful of remaining crystal groaratuses to try to finish the new b spabsp; By winter, I was down to only one apparatus left to plete. After it's plete, I should be able to theoretically grow a mana crystal from a tiny seed all the to the 16-foot size of the rgest apparatus. I was interrupted, however, by a stru team notifyihat they were going to start work on the e and pit above the mana crystal b that I'd previously pnned out.

  Siheir work is going to take a few years, I'm gd they're starting on it now so there won't be any trouble when it es time to move the 16-foot crystal out of the b. If my calcutions are correct, that crystal will weigh close to 100 tons, so I'm gd we've already started making steel cable to hahat.

  At the same time, Zeb has also sent a stru team to get started on the stru of the lightstone facility I discussed with him. Or, at least, the sea ortion of that facility. He's reached the point of adding another stru team again, so more projects happen at the same time. Additionally, with the majority of the dwarves havi, we had quite a bit of surplus housing avaible, so there is less pressure to build it quite as fast.

  After I finish up with this st crystal groaratus, I pn on going back to the city for a little bit. I want to talk with Zeb about new projects reted to the tunnel, and che on how the goblins we summoned iests have been adapting. If things are manageable, I have a few new ideas to try out to see if we increase our effective popution growth rate.

  After a month of work, I'd finished up the st of the crystal apparatuses, and I'd given the stru crew w o enough instrus that they'd be able to work on their own for some time without any problems. I discussed with Zeb pns for improving the tuhrough the mountain and beginning work on a new city on the far side of the isnd.

  Previously, there were multiple good reasons to build a city on the far side of the isnd. Now, however, the reasons distill down to basically defense and resource access. We no longer have any trade partners, and with the dwarves not being an option anytime soon, future trade will be limited. That is still the side that we ship off in our longboats to have soldiers periodically hunt the giant lizards on the far isnd and there is a lot of unused nd, so there are advao having a vilge over there at the very least. My idea of having a mert capitol desigo be impressive and attractive tners, however, has evaporated.

  I find myself a little frustrated that we're basically being pigeon holed into developing more military ons to keep ourselves safe. The dwarven king clearly views us as a threat, at least some humans view us as dangerous, and the elves are using us for their own purposes. I'd like to think that when the demon invasion occurs, maybe the demons themselves could be something of an ally, but based on how Zaka and Shasta have both talked about them, I doubt that will be the case. Our society is quite the distant offshoot from what would be sidered normal demon culture. If we want access to mainnd resources, I only think of three options we have left.

  First, try to find an obscure trade partner in some small human try that we use as a middleman to get what we want. I'm not a big fan of that, as it still opens us up to growiive ses, and the middleman just as easily be cut off if our trading is discovered. If I make a rge list of items I'd want to buy a lot of to st us a signifit amount of time, we could potentially make it work for a few years though.

  Sed, try to have a rge impa the demon invasion on behalf of whichever side seems more ameo future trade. If we're making new military teology anyway, the liween offense and defense get quite blurry, so this could be an option. Even if it doesn't repair our image entirely with mainnd tries, it'd send a message that we 't just be ignored. If we have a rge impact, any smart nation would probably not want to be ht enemies with us.

  Third, stage our own invasion to cim territory. This is the option I'm least attracted to, but it could be an option. It's holy more of a follow up to the sed option, if push came to shove. Ultimately, while we've got a fairly resource rich set of isnds, they're still isnds, and what resources we have are more fihan any ti would have. Further, sihese isnds are volic, we've also been quite limited in our specific ores aals we have access to. Who knows what effeew metals would have when infused with fluorite, and that's only scratg the surface of what sort of magical effects might exist out there.

  We've been doing a good job of verting what we do have into useful items, but not having access to trade has started to really wear on me. The dwarves and humans that I've worked with have been a good source of knowledge from their homends, but most of them aren't specialists in the fields that I'd like to get more info on. For example, are there any other specialty ores or metals on the mainnd? Could we, for example, get access to nickel or cobalt? Cobalt, could potentially be found in simir deposits to the ones we've been mining, but the teology level of the rest of the world is a little odd.

  They already have hand powered trifuges, for example, but also seem to have settled rgely into te medieval tendencies. Perhaps these pure metals are known, but their usefulness is so limited with the rest of their teology that only a small number of specialists know of, or use them. Even if I found Cobaltite, I'd be hard pressed t or even refi.

  In any case, having a vilge of some kind on that side of the isnd is a strategic asset, at the very least. Given the rge bay, it's the easiest location for ao invade us with a rge scale assault. Having a static popution, plete with food and housing, makes stationing more soldiers on that side of the isnd logistically easier for us.

  Ultimately, Zeb wasn't that keen to build a whole new vilge over there, but I was able to talk him into starting the work for it. That side of the isnd is a bit wider close to the sea, so building a sea wall over there is quite the rge uaking. Thankfully, there is already a massive amount of stoockpiled from building the tunnel.

  The tunnel also reduces the travel time from one side of the isnd to the other to less than a day, and the travel itself, while dark, it actually quite easy, with a very smooth gradient and ft ground. Which then brought me to the sed thing I wao talk with him about, the tunnel stru teams.

  Soon, the tral area will be plete uhe mountain, and a year or so from now the other half of the tunnel will probably be widened all the way to the ter. I know he'd probably be gd to vert these mining teams back to stru teams, but I've got a list of things I'd like done iunnel. I'd like for a moderately sized seipe to be excavated uhe pathway. We already drain a siderable amount of water out of the tunnel, so I'd like to set up small rest stops throughout the tunnel. Ultimately, in a dark pce like this I'd hate for it to slowly build up filth.

  So, I want travelers to be able to go to the bathroom, and that be separate from the water that drains out of the tunnel. We'd just redirect a small amount of the water into the sewer pipe, and that should help keep the running water and avaible for drinking. That project is actually quite a bit smaller than the overall uaking of digging the tunnel, so it should only take a couple of years to plete. The other project, which is much bigger, is that I'd like to dig two fnking tunnels from the tral area, perpendicur to our existing tunnel's path.

  These would only be the size of the initial scouting tunnel, and would asd, rather than dest towards the surfabsp; The reason I want these two unnels are two-fold. I want to have new scouting for mining is the primary reason, but sedarily, it would add more water flow into, aually out of, the tunnels and to our city. Long term, I'd actually like to expand the tral area slowly, until it house something of a popution itself, if we get reasonable lighting in there.

  Zeb was far more hesitant to agree to those two projects than he was to the idea of a new vilge. The bes of the sewer pipe, pared to its time cost could at least have some be as the tunnel gets used more casually over time. The idea of new scouting tunnels, however, wasn't worth it in his eyes. After some bad forth, I had a pretty good uanding of why they aren't worth it to him as well.

  Outside of hitting a pocket of mana crystals or iron, any resource we find is basically just going to get stockpiled. We still have rge stockpiles of lead, zind copper just sitting unused. By parison, we do have dozens of stru projects lined up that would have short term payoffs. If either situation ges though, he's more than willing to discuss the issue again at that point. For now at least, we'll only be getting the sewer pipes put in, unless ditions ge.