After we settled on the design, I had to communicate that we wanted a flag made to the weaving goblins. Which, after a few hours of back and forth, they had a good idea of what needed to be done. With that done, it was up to me to make the stone gift crates for the dwarven warlords who would be showing up. Since we have no idea just how many will arrive, I'm going to prepare plenty, and if I have extra, I can always either bring them back, or, if there are enough, divide them up and give extras to all the dwarves.

I decided that, given the importance of the first impression, I'd make the crates with lightstone, and make our emblem out of darkstone on the crates. Though that did mean I had to take a bit of time making lightstone again. Ultimately, I made 80 crates over the course of twelve days, which means I have enough crates for fourty different emissaries. Half the crates have paper, and the other half have salt. Unfortunately, that does cut into our trade supply for next year quite deeply, but again, this is an investment in relations with the other dwarf warlords in the dwarven country.

Last time I had asked, which was many years ago now, the dwarven king had banned any demons coming to the dwarven mainland. So, if we want to change that, we'll need to convince enough of his military advisors that we should be allowed over. Thinking on the situation, this reminds me a bit of when Europe arrived in Japan and wanted to trade there. There are quite a few differences though in the dwarven mentality and their interactions with their neighbors. The dwarves seem much less isolationist than Japan was. I'm just hoping that it doesn't come to the same result, with the only way to properly open their borders being threat of military force, because I don't think I could do that. Perhaps after a few of the dwarves acquire large crystals, I'll gift the king an even larger crystal to try to improve our relations...

With the remaining twenty-three days until we went to the beach to await a ship to pick us up, I picked out the handful of hobgoblins that I wanted to accompany me on the trip. I had already decided that I'd bring one of the two goblins that had learned how to speak, read, and write dwarvish to assist in the whole endeavor. I also talked with Zaka, Zeb, the human harbormaster, Elora, and a particularly money savvy hobgoblin to handle trade with the merchant this year. I don't actually know if he stops on the dwarven island, or if I'll run into him this year, but I wanted to make sure we didn't miss out on what trade we could be doing.

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A mere five days into the first month of winter, and a ship bearing Kao's flag arrived to pick us up to take us to his island. We took a day to load in all the goods and the crystal, and then set off for their island. Shasta was aboard the ship, so I was able to get filled in on what to expect at the auction.

First, I seem to have drastically overprepared for the meeting. There are six participating dwarven warlords. I prepared for up to forty. So, I decided that I'd triple the initial gift size to six total crates each. That means we're still only giving away half of the prepared gifts. Having extra on hand isn't a bad idea though, incase one or two more arrive unannounced.

Second, Kao didn't really appreciate the short notice of such an event, and wanted to let me know that he won't do something like this again for me. That doesn't mean we don't keep doing the auctions, just that I shouldn't go about asking him to coordinate the other warlords for other events. As an apology, I've decided that another ten crates of goods will be given to Kao for organizing the event, in addition to the crystal that I'll give him next year.

Third, as for the auction itself, given the small number of participants and the unique situation, Kao is finishing up a special location on the island for the auction to take place. The crystal will be centrally visible for the participants to see, though it will be behind glass. The auction will be done in dwarven coin, though I'm allowed to tack on certain other pre-requisites to participation if I want.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I had initially thought I'd just have them each try to offer and negotiate with me for goods in exchange for the crystal, but when I asked Shasta about that, she said that would be a very bad idea. If we had it done via goods, some of the participants might feel slighted personally by me if I choose one participant's goods over another's. As long as it's done in a single currency, then all the other participants can only blame the selection criteria, which is known in advance, and no one can feel like a partial decision was made. This way, they'll also be able to leave with the crystal, rather than waiting a year to prepare their goods.

That makes sense, but it unfortunately means I'll have to wait even longer to properly trade for what I want, since I'll just be receiving dwarven coin instead of actual goods. Though I'm glad that I can at least tack on a few pre-requisites to participation. Like I can request a defensive pact similar to what I have with Kao, which was part of my initial plan. Part of this endeavor's goals is to make allies after all.

Given what Shasta said about accidentally slighting the warlords though, I want to be cautious about adding other prerequisites to the auction. Unless I think of something in between when the auction happens and now, I don't think I'll add in anything other than a defensive pact.

This is the first time I've travelled away from our island and actually seen the other islands up close. Our trip brought us along each of the other islands in the island chain, so I was able to get a pretty decent look at what is technically our territory. The total sailing time was three days, with about an equal distance between each of the islands.

The first island that we passed, which is also the one that I could spot from the peak of our own island, was somewhat similar to our island, if a bit smaller and shorter. It seems like it has eroded and sunk compared to our island. Though after seeing it, it's probably actually better for living on than our island is. The valleys are wider and there are more of them, though the island seems to follow the same sort of biomes as ours does. The peak has a tiny bit of snow on it, the side facing our island seems to have rainforest like plants similar to ours, and the far side is also dry.

I brought along my telescope, since I thought we might pass the islands, and while I was looking at the island, I saw a giant lizard, though it did look a little different than what I remembered that the ones on our island looked like. This one has three bright blue stripes down it's back, and it seemed a little smaller than the ones on our island, thought that might just be an issue with my memory given my change in size since then. In either case, I'm somewhat relieved that it doesn't seem like they've gone completely extinct.

The second island was quite a bit shorter and more eroded. There wasn't any snow on the peak, if you could even call it a peak anymore. It was more of a generally raised section near the center, with a relatively shallow slope and sharp valleys going out to the sea. In fact, the whole island looks like it's mostly craggy terrain. This island is easily only a third of our island's size, and it seems like very little of it would be easily inhabited, mostly around the beaches. To make use of the majority of the island, it'd take years of terraforming to cut away at the crags. If we planned on doing that, we'd just as well make our own crags useful on our island first.

Then, we finally made it to Kao's island. Most of the terrain of this island seems usable, but the island itself is very small. It's probably about the same size as our island's valley that our city is in. There are beaches around a large portion of the island, and fifty or so feet back from that are cliffs that are also about fifty feet tall. As we came around the island, I spotted their outpost. Along a portion of the shoreline, a small stream flows down to the sea, and the cliffs in that area are significantly more sloped. Nestled along the stream on the cliff is a stone fort. Along the beach, they have a few stone piers going out to the sea.

We pulled up to one of the piers, but our boat was floating almost twenty feet too low to dock. Shasta informed me that you can only use this dock at high tide, at which point you unload everything, so we'll have to wait some time before we can actually unload. We could use the rowboats, similar to how we do it on our island, but it seems that it's significantly easier to just wait, so that's what they do here. If there are important matters to relay, then a rowboat could be used to get important personnel to shore quickly, but we aren't in a rush.