Zaka did not give approval immediately, for the same reasons I was concerned with. He considers the island his, so having such a large external group moving in concerns him. He said he'd want to have at least 500 individuals on our side before he'd be willing to accept that deal. When I told Shasta about that, she said that would be fine, as it would take time to actually gather the people and supplies for everything.
Which again means I'll be building housing for a while. I thought our previous wall expansion would be plenty, but to have 500 goblins means it needs to be expanded again. Considering everything, I suppose its time to really start the full restructuring of the goblin village. 500 individuals is way too many to keep under control without some bureaucracy. We won't be big enough to need a full military, but dedicated guards who double as police will be necessary.
I've hashed all those details out before, but now I'm considering the idea that all those individuals are going to need to be leveled, and physically strong to perform their job. I'd like to select a handful of those individuals now, so that we can have them help with the tree clearing process in order to fast track them to stronger forms. I myself could use quite a few levels, since I'm only level 10 now.
----------------------------------------
After a day off from talking with Shasta in order to talk with Zaka and plan out for the future, both Shasta and Katarko are much more willing to cooperate with us. It seems like I wasn't the only one who was talking things over with my compatriots. After some brief negotiating, they'll be allowed to do some supervised work within the village. I also will need to build a new building for them to stay in, rather than the prison cell.
Shasta tried to negotiate to have the other two individuals included in getting to not stay in the prison, but I was adamant that they had to be cooperative in order to not stay in the prison cell. Based on the reactions of the individuals in the prison, I find it unlikely that the human will cooperate, but the elf might.
As for finding actual work for them, Shasta seems to have general knowledge of quite a few things in the dwarven kingdom, and Katarko is knowledgeable enough about metalworking that I think I can trust him to work the forge. Shasta will need to be the go between for communicating with him for now though. Honestly, that's way more than I was hoping for help-wise.
As for magical abilities, it seems that Katarko's abilities are all combat focused. Shasta has some abilities that are a little interesting though. It seems she's capable of something somewhat similar to stone shape, although different in its own way. It lets her cut a block of stone out from a wall. It works a little faster than my stone shaping, and it costs less mana, but its the same size and shape every time. Most dwarves that get that ability cut blocks that are almost the same size and shape. Occasionally though, there are some who get unique shapes and sizes.
Shasta is one of those individuals. Her blocks are apparently about four times the size of normal dwarven blocks, at four times the cost, which makes them much less useful because of their bulk. So, instead of continuing a career in which she was unwanted, she turned to research. As for helping us though, it can be quite useful if we have some strong goblins or hobgoblins to actually move those blocks. Her blocks weigh about 300 pounds though, so either someone will need to be exceptionally strong, else Zeb or I will need to at least split the blocks once to make them a more usable size.
Of course, we also don't plan on letting them leave the village, so I'd also need to figure out where I'd have Shasta cutting stone at. Push comes to shove, I can always just have her cut stone from something about the size of the warehouse I built. There are a few more convenient places she could cut stone from, but I still don't trust the dwarves enough to let them see our sewer system, the escape tunnel, or the dam.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
As for where they'll stay, I've decided to build something akin to an inn. Since there is the other goblin village on the island, and potentially a dwarven outpost at some point in the distant future, somewhere that travelers can stay for either a short or extended period seems like a good building to have. I'll have to ask Shasta what sort of amenities would be expected for such a place. Ideally, I'd like it to be able to handle twenty people. Which might seem like a lot, but it can double function as temporary housing for any goblins or other individuals who have to have their housing displaced for one reason or another.
----------------------------------------
I've been working on the inn building for five days now. At Shasta's recommendation, the rooms will be moderately sized and include a bed, table and chair, shelf, and a moderately sized window. She said that the basic necessity is just a bed, but if I want it to be able to house individuals for more than a few days having a few other basic pieces of furniture makes the experience more bearable. She also recommended having an enclosed outdoor area, as well as some central lobby area.
I ultimately settled on a two floor, U-shaped design with the enclosed area inside the U with a small fence. The design ends up with 28 rooms. 12 on the first floor and 16 on the second. The first floor has a central lobby which then leads to the enclosed yard, and a set of stairs that leads up to the second floor or down to the basement on either side of the lobby. As with all buildings in the village, I'm digging a basement. This basement is going to be left relatively empty save for support pillars, and is mostly just built to acquire more stone for construction.
As for where the construction is at, I've gotten the basement complete, and some of the first floor walls done. It'll probably take around ten more days before the inn is done. The carpenters have been making good progress with the trebuchets, and Katarko has made better quality metal than I did from the ore I provided.
He's actually been quite excited by the metal itself, which is surprising. He said the quality of the ore and metal is some of the highest he's seen, and asked if he could use some of it for personal use. I asked what he planned to use it for, and he apparently wants to make a new weapon and armor for himself. After some bargaining, it was decided to let him do so, but only after he makes weapons and armor for some of the goblins.
As for the metal ore itself, well, we actually are going to need more of it moving forward. After the inn is completed, I've got two small tasks I want to work on before returning to village expansion. The first task is designing and building a rock crusher out of metal. We'll see just how durable it is, but the metal itself has some pretty good properties for it so I'm hopeful. If the rock crusher works, then it'll be much easier to get more of the metal ore. Which brings us to the second task, cutting blocks of ore out. If the crusher works, I can just cut blocks of the ore out, and goblins can transport it down to the village using the cart system and then use crushers to make fine powder.
----------------------------------------
Finishing the inn took twelve days, but the structure is now complete. It'll still take a day or two to get the furniture finished inside though. Zeb's finished the two other apartment style buildings as well, so I've set him up with a new task. He's to continue digging the escape tunnel with the help of some of the goblins so that we have additional stone resources available for the wall expansion.
I also neglected to think about how much additional food we'll need to support this much larger population. The field inside the walls is already going to need to be replaced with housing as part of the expansion, making the issue even worse. We've been clear cutting trees on two sides of the village to prepare for expansion, but actually, I think we'll need to clear a much larger area than I thought.
I talked it over with Zaka, and what we've decided is that a road should be made from the village all the way to the bay area following the stream the whole way. Then alongside that area, the trees can be cut down to make room for more fields. I also decided we'd mark some trees along the path and stream that we should keep to provide some shade and help prevent erosion.
Overall, it's quite the significant undertaking, and is going to end up producing a lot more wood than we'll know what to do with. That's why Shasta has been given a marked area where she can use her block cutting to help dig out a basement, then a second basement, right next to the existing warehouse. That should give us plenty of stone to work with for a while, and provide us with storage space for quite a bit of wood and charcoal.