I had planned to return to the city to move the crystal back to the temporary bathhouse by the sea, but as per Zaka's request, it's being left in the stream. Over spring, both the farmers and the fishergoblins noticed much better successes in their endeavors, and everyone who was drinking the stream water, even after boiling it, was feeling filled with energy, though it was probably just a small amount of excess mana. Based on the info I'd gained from talking with Shasta about Kao's territory, and the dwarven capitol, I'm not surprised. The reason their capitol is as successful as it is seems to be due to their massive crystal, ParTor.
So, despite everything, I'm moving the crystal I just made to the temporary bathhouse, and then I'll be headed back up the mountain again to grow another crystal to be presented in the auction. Though this has given me something to think about. I wouldn't be able to grow these large crystals without some amount of knowledge of crystal structures and vacuums, but I've really been neglecting magic technology research. Until now, I've basically been propelling us through the scientific tech tree, with a few magic tweaks thrown in here and there to shortcut some processes.
The first giant crystal was being used as a way for us to recharge our mana, and seemed to attract large animals, resulting in quite the bad initial experience, and some fear of messing with the technology further. I might have been a bit too conservative when it came to further crystal experiments. I'm still very worried about what would happen if you shattered a large crystal, but outside of the giant lizards and eagles, we haven't experienced any other problems from our crystal, and further, it sounds like the dwarven capitol generally doesn't experience problems from theirs either.
So the giant crystal, while a facsimile of something that occurs in nature, could be considered my first actual invention, though it still borrows a lot of concepts from earth knowledge. So maybe I should consider better integration methods for it into our society. For instance, I could grow an even larger crystal than our eight foot crystal in town just to check it's effects, though I'd hate to accidentally attract more eagles again. Though it would be nice to know if it proportionally affects our crop outputs and fish yields by making it larger, or if the size of it doesn't matter much to those factors.
Actually, as I'm thinking about it, outside of being hurt by directly touching those large crystals, mana itself is more like an easily convertible energy/mass source than it is it's own thing. Mana itself seems closer to a transmutation agent than it is to magic, at least as far as I can tell. In a way, it's sort of like light or electricity, though the differences are clear. It's somewhat like light in that it seems to be coming from the sun, life uses it for all sorts of processes, and lack of it doesn't kill you directly. It's somewhat like electricity in it's ability to flow through materials in non-linear ways, be converted into other useful things fairly easily, and that an overcharge will hurt or possibly kill you if you conduct it.
The issue really comes down to finding ways to utilize it. Life seems to have evolved plenty of ways to utilize it for it's own benefit, as sampled by pretty much everything I've interacted with, so there are clearly ways to use and convert it to do other things, and it seems to be universal as a power source. Evidence for it's universality follows from the fact that the same mana works for plants, fish, demons, and all of them work with mana from the crystals. Further, what Konkur told me about other crystals inducing certain effects on exposure to mana seems to further reinforce that idea.
Crystallography is starting to sound more and more interesting as a research topic, rather than continuing to pursue the biological harvest and use idea, but I won't be upset if Tiberius keeps it up. Though one thing I need to remember is that some of the crystals are incredibly dangerous, and from the sounds of the symptoms, produce deadly amounts of radiation. Though the flip side of that is that I could, in theory, produce something akin to magic powered furnaces powered by a large mana crystal. Then we wouldn't even need to cut trees down for smelting and cooking. Heck, we could even make a mana powered desalination plant if we could produce heat using crystals in a harvestable form.
Stolen novel; please report.
Though all of this is just daydreaming, as I don't currently have the means to pursue any of this. Though it might be worth attempting to negotiate for some crystal samples as part of the auction next year. Then I can pursue the idea further. Which means I really do need to go make the crystal for auction.
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Moving the new crystal to the temporary bathhouse, hiring goblins to help me grow the next crystal, and getting Tiberius set up with more funding took six days of time, then I returned up the mountain to grow another large crystal. The growth process took another three months and twenty-two days, but I've made another large crystal.
I stopped growing the 1 foot crystals, mostly because I've already got a decent number of them grown already. The storeroom now has fourteen one-foot crystals, eleven two-foot crystals, and five four-foot crystals. The resulting crystal for auction is once again six and a half feet tall.
In that time, the sea wall has gained a few more feet of height. At this point, it'd probably hold back a storm of the size we had last year. Well, as long as we manage to seal off the tunnel to the other valley before it floods us. Which means we should build a sea wall in that valley immediately after, so we won't need to close that valley off in case of storms.
At this point, though, we're only about two months from the potential auction date, which means I should probably get other things prepped for it. It's not my intent to just bring the crystal and be done with it. I need to dress the part, and put my best foot forward. So my intention is to get some fancy leather armor made, and pick a few higher level hobgoblins from our guard force to accompany me.
I also want to design a flag and emblem to represent our country. I'll need to consult with Zaka and Zeb, and arguably also Lucian and a dwarf, for design ideas. I'm thinking of reusing some of our coin designs for both, but again, Lucian and a dwarf each would probably have good feedback as to what the normal sort of designs are.
After that, I want to prep greeting gifts for the dwarven warlords. I'm thinking a crate each of paper and salt for each dwarf warlord will have to suffice, since we don't have other materials to offer. It's important to leave a decent first impression if I plan on doing these auctions repeatedly. If only one party is leaving with a large crystal, then I want to make sure that the other parties don't feel like they've gained nothing, even if it's a minimal gift.
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I scheduled a meeting with Konkur, Lucian, Zaka, and Zeb to discuss the design of a flag and emblem for our country, though it took fourteen days for everyone's schedules to line up such that we could hold the meeting. I opened the meeting off by asking what sort of designs were used in the dwarven and human countries for flags and emblems.
In short, I realized that things are more similar to medieval times than modern when it comes to flags and emblems. Having a complicated coat-of-arms seems to be generally considered a sign of wealth and power by the humans and dwarves, though elves seem to enjoy using basic and simple designs. Considering what I've seen, I think that the elves might be on to the right strategy of having everyone underestimate them.
Then, despite Lucian and Konkur's opinion, I said we should probably go with something simple, under the pretense that we actually don't have the wealth and power necessary to easily reproduce a complicated coat-of-arms. It's only partially false though. For a repeatable emblem, we could, in theory, have an extremely complicated coat-of-arms without any issue thanks to stone shaping. For the flag though, we do actually lack good abilities to dye any fabric properly. So, I proposed a fairly simple design. A rectangle with a dark blue bottom half, a light blue top half, and a black triangle cutting up through the center from the bottom to the top.
It generally just represents the island in the ocean. I've seen a few different flowers around the island that are colored in both dark and light blues, and black is fairly easy to make with charcoal as a color, so I think that the clothmaking goblins can probably figure out how to make a flag with that design in the remaining month and a half. The emblem will then just be a simple triangle, which I verified with Lucian and Konkur that they weren't aware of anyone else using such a simple emblem. Though they were concerned that an emblem that simple might just be misinterpreted as an instructional marking on crates. Although, taking a page from the elves, it's probably for the best if people don't see us as a massive threat.