The next morning, Zaka made his announcement, which caused quite the shock in the village. There was a lot of hushed whispering, and even some outright yelling, but by the end of it, even the rowdy goblins had quieted down. He gave them a week to decide if they wanted to stay or go. At that point, they would set out towards the other valley to select where their new village would be. He also asked that even goblins that choose to remain help those who are leaving by going along with them to help carry supplies.
After the announcement, Gakus came up to the front, and said, "Although I don't have any ill will towards Zeb or Zaka, in fact, I quite respect them, I'll be moving to the new village. They'll need help building things, and despite everything, I feel that I should go and help there. I just wanted to let you know now." After his statement, he nodded his head and left. Well, he's always been quite straightforward, so I'm not surprised. Plus I know he likes to do repetitive tasks, so I'm sure he'll enjoy his time there.
Although, this might end up not really teaching the other goblins a lesson at all if he just duplicates this village over there. Well, he's good at replicating things, but for some of the constructions, he probably won't be able to replicate them. If the other village asks for help, I'd probably be willing to share info with Gakus if it doesn't take too long, but outside of that, I don't intend to build things over there for free. If I'm not welcome there, then I don't see what I would have to gain from giving them anything.
As for the village here, with Gakus gone, either myself or Zeb will start to be in charge of doing maintenance checkups again on all the various things within this village. As such, I should probably familiarize myself with any changes that happened in the last year.
First, I looked over the imp summoning chamber that Zaka had Gakus make in the village. It's a medium building with no windows and solid stone doors measuring about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. Once I entered inside, there is a wooden cellar door in a corner of the room, and a pillar in the center. Under the cellar door is a stairwell that opens into an underground chamber with the same dimensions as above. The basement has a bit of a bad odor, so I leave fairly quickly.
After asking Zaka about it, he would go in and summon one imp at a time in the basement and then go back to recharge in the bathhouse before repeating the process. In between each trip, he'd close the cellar door, and have two goblins guard it, to make sure no imps snuck past. Then when they finished, they'd close the heavy stone door, and keep watch for the night. By morning they'd usually have a goblin in the basement. The rest of the imps would get cleaned up, and then they could repeat the process the next day.
After he explained it, although it's a bit gruesome, it's not that different from when they were in the cave, so I'm not going to complain. It reminded me to check on the bathhouse though. I fully intended to remove the crystal and put it deep underground after everything that has happened so far, but given it actually is seeing use in the village, now I'm not so sure. If it lets Zaka stay here to summon imps rather that come up and use the cave, doesn't that just free me up to have full use of the whole cave all the time?
I don't want to jinx it, but as far as I can tell, the lizards have become extinct on the island now, and we've dealt with an eagle, although there was quite the suffering before it was dealt with. I can't even say for certain that the eagle was actually caused by the crystal, it could have just been a coincidence. Plus, as I understand it, since the crystal has been in place in the village, the wildlife and plants nearby have been thriving more than they did prior, which has made the harvests and hunts more successful.
Another construction that happened in the village was that Gakus built more houses. I'm going to wait until goblins leave to go to the new village before I inspect those houses, but I'm a little worried about drainage being set up properly, and whether the new road Gakus built have everything laid out as necessary for drainage.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Outside the village, some of the storage warehouses have become overgrown with vines due to neglect. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not, considering how they're built from solid stone, but ultimately, they should be cut down and kept clear. Although the vines are a bit more mangled than some that you'd find in the wild, they should still be useful for making rope, and considering the functioning path plus the fact Zeb and I can come to the village again, we probably will have quite a bit of use for heavy rope in the near future here.
The water level in the reservoir is currently sitting at about eight feet, which considering the time of year, is about right. None of the valves I can see are clogged, which is good. After a month or two, I should be able to tell if the reservoir needs mud removed, or if the bottom two valves need to be cleaned out.
A final thing that I found that does need some work is the pavilion basement. It looks like it has been expanded again at some point, as there is a third stairwell level going down now. However, it seems that it is only half constructed, and there is over a foot of standing water in it now. I can't say for certain why there is the water in the current state, but I'd like to remove it, and properly add another screw pump to remove the water, and finish the layer.
It could just be that the layer was never finished, but I'd guess that part of the problem is in the details of how I made the basement layers. I purposefully gave them an almost imperceptible slant towards the collection area where the screw pump would be operated from to bring the water to the next level. The second thing I did when building was to purposefully smooth the walls so that any water won't seep through the stone into the basement during heavy rains. If the walls aren't prepped, it's possible that all this water is just seeping in.
So first I'll need to smooth the walls, with the water present in case it is seeping in, then we'll have to remove the water manually, smooth the floor and slope it slightly, and finally add a screw pump to remove what water does fall in through the grates.
Overall however, the village seems to be more or less in working order, which is nice. I'm a little concerned about Zeb, as after Zaka made his announcement, he decided to just spend the rest of the day in Zaka's house. I'll keep watching him, but I think he's in shock after that fight with Kurg, and possibly shocked at the fact he killed him. I'll let him go at his own pace for a while, but eventually, if he doesn't start moving again on his own, I'll have to help him start living his life again.
----------------------------------------
The day has finally arrived. The goblins are setting out to form a new village. A little more than a third of the current village have decided to leave, and an additional third are going to help them initially get set up. As such, I've got my opportunity to check the new houses and road for construction issues. For the past week I've been fixing up the basement of the pavilion, and although it isn't finished yet, we've gotten the existing water out enough to start working on the finer details. That said, the fact that I have to bring burning wood down there to see has been a bit of a pain.
The road itself is in good condition, and constructed well, but when I open up the inside, I notice a few problems. There are some places with water puddles in the drainage pipe underneath where it is clear that it wasn't constructed in a continual downhill pattern to ensure that all the water flows out and doesn't stagnate. As such, I'll likely end up spending a few days working on that to make sure all the drainage occurs properly. Ultimately, it's something that Gakus will end up having to deal with in the new village if he builds it the same way over there, but again, I'm not planning on just volunteering information for that village.
As for the drainage under the houses, over here, there is a similar issue in a few of them, where care wasn't used to make sure that all areas were perfectly level and sloping away to drain the area. Which, given the fact I use levels to actually check the construction, and know that I need to do so, makes sense. If it wasn't raining when he built the drainage underneath the house, Gakus probably didn't fully understand why it was done to drain all of the water, and didn't understand the precision involved.
Thankfully, I shouldn't need to pull up the floors in each of the houses to fix this issue. If I just attach the level to the floor of the house, then I should be able to use tectonic sense to get a grasp of the situation, and fix it indirectly with stone shaping. Of course, I'll check back in after we've had a few rains to make sure I properly fixed all these issues.
All in all, I have at least a few more weeks of work ahead of me.