We continued to wait in the harbor area for another thirty-one days, until the merchant returned again. He had some of the goods we requested prepared, but most of it would wait until next year. Though we did once again fill his ship with all the agreed upon goods like gypsum, salt, and paper. In the time while we waited, I worked with the goblins I brought along to continue improving the infrastructure on this side of the island. As I would dig out the second warehouse's basement, the stone would be hauled off to build out the roads further along the bay.
After the merchant left again, we waited around for another ten days, just in case some other ships arrived. After that point though, we were fairly certain that no one else would arrive, so we packed up what traded goods we had acquired and headed back to the city. Quite a bit of the iron we requested was delivered, and I think we're going to need some more coins minted soon, so after I move the crystal for springtime, I'll probably return up the mountain to mint coins and start growing the crystal for the auction next year.
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Once we got back to the city, we were only half a month from the first month of spring, so I got a few hobgoblins to help me move the crystal from the temporary bathhouse in the other valley all the way up to the stream, where I took a few days ensuring that even if the stream flooded the crystal wouldn't be damaged. I essentially made a pit with thick stone bars all around the crystal so water could flow through but even moderate debris wouldn't be able to interact with the crystal. That whole process took six days to complete.
The sea wall had already grown by another two feet with the help of the bathhouse in the area, and we're probably only a year or two out from having the second artificial tide pool finished at this rate. The city has been methodically clearing more and more forest and converting it to farmland as well. I did some quick mental math, and decided that it was time to plan out plots with the express purpose of growing trees on them for later harvest, given how reliant we are on wood for fuel.
We don't know exactly how long the trees take to grow to maturity, but the plan I have in mind involves setting aside one fairly large plot of land each year, in which we'll plant about one thousand trees in each plot, which will measure five hundred feet by two hundred feet, so each tree gets approximately 100 square feet of space. By repeating this every year until the trees are large enough to harvest, we can hopefully provide ourselves with a sustainable amount of wood each year. Though the goblins in charge of managing the existing forests and making dirt trails through them have been providing us with a decent amount of wood from ground clutter, which is technically sustainable as well.
These plots will be further from the city, part of the way up the mountain where growing other food is difficult due to the terrain. It might seem a bit odd to clear cut existing forest only to plant new trees in the area, but because it's a managed forest, rather than wild, the trees are grown a bit closer together. Also, since we're converting a large amount of the wood into furniture as well as charcoal, it's not like the wood itself is being wasted.
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Getting everything set up for the wood plots took a little bit of time, since I needed to demarcate the actual locations for the plots. Then I had to get a handful of goblins to put in charge of the whole matter. By the time everything was done, it took nineteen days. That was fine though, because I did want to wait until the snow on the mountain had properly melted before I worked on minting coins.
The coin minting itself doesn't actually take that long, so things were planned out such that I'd bring the couple of goblins who've worked on coin minting with me in the past up the mountain the day before the miners returned down the mountain. Ultimately, I'm still trying to keep the coin minting process relatively obscure, so the secrecy is somewhat important. Then, we'll mint coins for a few days before bringing the new coins down the day before the miners return.
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I'll spend the evenings mining more native copper for us to use for more coins, while during the day we'll all work to mint the various coins. We'll bring up some of the iron I traded for as well to mint the coins that previously were made from mangalloy. Honestly, given the usefulness of mangalloy, we might consider doing a trade in program for those coins, to replace them with plain iron, and buy them back at a small premium, just so we can have a small amount of the mangalloy available for certain hardened machinery. We'd probably only get a few ingots from the whole ordeal though, so it's hard to say if it would be worth it or not.
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After another eight days, we had minted the coins and brought the new supply of them down to Zaka for distribution again. I mentioned before that we could really use a bank of some sort in the city, so Zaka wouldn't need to manage this process, but considering we're slowly depleting our metal supplies, I don't know if it'd be feasible to build a bank. Similar to the jail, we need a metal vault for storing the valuables, since there are dozens of individuals in the city who can treat stone like butter at any point in time. We could make it using copper, but given how soft copper is I don't think that'd be feasible unless we find something with which to alloy the copper.
Though, once the sea wall is completed, we could potentially alleviate our metal issue via trade by building a harbor on the far side of the island, and utilizing our existing quartz supply to make large solar greenhouses to greatly increase our salt production. We could drastically increase our trade output of salt, which we could then exchange for the metals we need, and as an added benefit generate some freshwater for us to use. All those plans are a few years out though, so for the springtime season, I'm going to continue growing large crystals for us to utilize for both trade and productivity.
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Over the four months I spent growing crystals, I produced a six-and-a-half-foot crystal, and built up even more of a stockpile of the intermediate sizes. I ended up modifying the crystal growing lab area somewhat to accommodate a few things. First, I expanded out the crystal slag material storage area significantly. If we ever figure out exactly what gas is released by the crystals, and can isolate it again, then that slag can be useful to us once again.
Second, I dug out a new storage room where I can store all the intermediate crystals that we grow. That room is purposefully resealed in a way that makes it hard to notice, just in case someone were to attempt to steal some of our intermediates. That storage room currently houses nineteen one-foot crystals, eight two-foot crystals, and three four-foot crystals.
Due to the speed and volume at which the crystals grow in their chambers, it's much faster to produce the smaller crystal intermediates than the large ones because of the fixed rate at which the crystals actually grow. If, for some reason, I wanted to produce significantly more of the large crystals at a time, then I'd need to build more of the large crystal vats to do so. Though I don't know if I alone could operate any more of the vacuum chambers than I currently already operate at a time. With that though, we've made the crystal for the auction, should it actually occur. I doubt Kao will say no, but even if that's the case, then we can just use this ourselves.
I also talked with Konkur about a few things during the times where we both happened to be free while on the mountain. Firstly, we discussed just how much more crystal material I could reasonably expect from the stone layer where I've been extracting it. After doing some estimates, Konkur thinks I've probably extracted between 25 and 50 percent of the deposits from this area. Though he also said that it'd be reasonable to assume there are multiple other deposits like this buried in the mountain in other locations, so if this deposit runs out, we could probably find more.
Closer to the end of spring though, he had something else to discuss with me. His eldest child has reached the age of maturity for dwarves, which means that Konkur plans on returning to the dwarven continent this winter with his family. He isn't sure if he'll return or not either. If he does, it'll be at least a decade before he does, as that is when his youngest child would also reach the age of maturity. Our island doesn't have a lot of opportunities for jobs, let alone much of a dwarven population.
Ultimately, him leaving is actually going to be quite a loss for us in the knowledge department. I've picked up a few things here and there from him, and the goblins who've worked with him have learned quite a few mining techniques, so it's not like we've gained nothing, but losing his insight into what we can find and where will probably slow down things quite a bit.