The year, or at least the months without snow, passed by pretty uneventfully, although it did have its moments of surprise. The first surprise was that within the first two months, both of the goblins that Zeb and I had sent to the reservoir to manually cut stone got stone shaping. Given that success, it was decided that once the level in the reservoir returned to normal, three more goblins would be sent to cut stone to further expand the construction workforce.
In the next three months, a handful of goblins gained mana affinity while working with me on the mountain. It was decided that once any of the then reservoir goblins got stone shaping, goblins that had mana affinity should be the next ones to attempt to gain stone shaping. While all that was happening, I was making pretty good progress growing a new large crystal. With extra goblins working with me, I could spend the downtime during the gradual growth process making new vacuum chambers to fill with crystals, and the goblins would go melt the insides and bring them back to me.
In the next month, I got news that Zaka had fully recovered from his injury. Well, he evolved and fully regrew his injured parts would be more apt. He's grown to be not quite twice his previous height, and from his short visit, seems to be some kind of troll complete with rapid regeneration. His size is a bit of a problem for himself, as when he came to visit, he had to duck quite a bit to actually fit through any doors, and even standing inside wasn't possible. Part of the reason for his visit was to pass time while Zeb designed a new house for him in the village.
Speaking of the village, Zeb had expanded the housing to the point where he needed to add another layer at the tide pool. The total population had grown to almost four-hundred at this point, and they were starting to feel more growing pains. Namely, a lack of job opportunities. As Zaka returned, I advised that some more empty workshops be built, and to keep an eye out for any goblins that might have any interesting hobbies.
Once the winter deadline was about two months away, I had grown a new crystal to the size of the old one, but I hadn't decided to stop there. In the previous two months, in some of the waiting time, I carved out and designed an even larger apparatus for growing crystals. I then kept growing the crystal to the point it is at today. This new crystal stands about 8 feet tall at this point. I previously had only wanted to go up to the smallest limit of crystal size, due to safety concerns, but now I have a bit more knowledge about these giant crystals, and am not as concerned.
First, from living with the six foot crystal in the village, we observed lots of effects. Animals and plants nearby seem to enjoy some benefit from having the crystal in the area, it was helpful during the siege, and also produced quite the soothing bath to soak in. Second, knowledge about ParTor in the dwarven lands seems to indicate that the dwarves have a crystal that could be estimated at ten feet tall conservatively, but it still is able to functionally provide all the benefits without causing catastrophic harm. I could infer this fact from the information that the crystal there was probably found quite a long time ago, and yet they've maintained their capitol around it.
Which means I should be fine to grow the crystal larger this time, or at least, I presume that to be the case. Of course, I don't intend to install it in the old bathhouse until the dwarves have actually removed the previous crystal. I don't know when exactly they'll return this winter, but I'm hoping it's relatively early in the season. I'm pretty content with just having the one eagle on the island, and if they return too late in the season, there is a non-zero chance we'll end up with more eagles here. That is something I'd rather not have to deal with.
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After packaging the new crystal within a large amount of stone, it took four hobgoblins and Zaka using the cart system to transport it into the village. There we moved it to one of the warehouses to store until we can replace the old crystal. Honestly, calling it a village isn't quite right anymore. A town would be closer to accurate. I get the vibes that in a village, everyone knows everyone, here, there are almost too many individuals for everyone to know everyone else.
Which means its time to formally establish the police force and a judicial system. The police force should be easy, as we've already planned for it, and been training a selection of goblins for the job for a while now. As for a judicial system, for now, that can still be rolled into the executive branch, aka Zaka. I doubt there will be so many crimes that it will eat up much of his time. However, we do still need to coat that basement cell with metal, in case any of the stone shaping individuals end up in jail.
In fact, that's what I'll be doing while I wait for the dwarves to return. It shouldn't be too bad, mostly just making metal plates that can be slotted and slid into each of the walls, then bars that also slot into place. Since I can shape the stone outside of the cell to actually hold all the plates, it shouldn't be too difficult of a project. The time consuming part will be shaping the metal.
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I was right when I said it would be time consuming. I started with the small jail cell, and that ended up taking 14 days in total. As I was affixing the metal bar door as the last step, it started to rain in the village and snow on the mountain. The next jail cell will probably take about twice as long, just due to its sheer size. I think I want to take a short break from that and work on something else for a few days, just to break up the monotony of working around a forge, considering I did something similar for most of the year with the crystal growth apparatuses.
What I'd like to do is explore the expanded town, see Zaka's new house in full, and do some reconnaissance around the village to plot out where expansion should happen in the future. Ultimately, the village will need lots of new buildings and expansions, so knowing the best direction to actually expand the village to achieve future goals should be useful.
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Zaka's new house is pretty neat, and reminds me a bit of my house up on the mountain. It has a large reception hall and extra rooms. When Zeb built it, he probably thought about the fact we don't have a good meeting hall for formal situations, and having the chief's house roughly work as that was probably a good idea.
As for the areas around the village, the next obvious direction for expansion of the fields is upstream, given that has the most readily available access to water. If I'm facing upstream, to my right is the direction towards the second valley, along with the direction with the most easily developed land. If I head left instead, the slope starts to increase pretty severely after about a half-mile, which would make construction beyond that point difficult.
Unfortunately, I didn't find any physical features that would be useful to capitalize on at this time. It might be worth looking around again in springtime though, as the heavy rains might reveal areas that have seasonal streams which could be modified and maintained to be more useful. As for me now, it's back to working on the jail.
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After four days, I was interrupted by quite the spectacle. The eagle that we've had around was fighting another eagle in the sky above the island. Thankfully, our eagle seems to have won, and drove the other eagle off. Maybe it was something like a territory dispute? Either way, I'm glad they didn't just settle their differences and decide to coinhabit our island, taking care of one eagle is already enough of a pain.
I wouldn't be surprised if the dwarves return soon, as it seems like they arrive a bit after eagles show up in winter time. That being the case, I'm going to take a day or two to get the supplies ready for moving the crystal. I'll basically just be encasing it in a decent layer of stone, then attaching poles onto the crystal, so that they can carry it.