I only had to wait another 6 days for the merchant to arrive. After we unloaded last years goods, we discussed a few different matters, but most of the information that the merchant had to share I had already discussed with Shasta. We did, however, have a long discussion about the types of materials the merchant could procure for us. Basic goods, are fairly easy to acquire, even in decently large volumes, so that's not too much of an issue, but rarer materials, like the crystals I'm interested in, aren't able to be guaranteed in a single year. That doesn't mean that they're impossible to get, just that it's difficult to get them in a short period of time, generally.

For that reason, a special contract had to be drafted between the merchant and Kembora for the procurement of particular crystals. Due to the amount of money involved, and the lack of guarantee of goods, the contract has a time frame of 5 years, at which point the merchant would be required to pay us back for any goods he couldn't secure in that time.

As a result, the contract was quite detailed, with itemized prices that the merchant gave us for all the goods we were requesting. All our goods this year are on the contract, and we've requested a significantly larger volume than we have in the past. Of our usual goods, we requested three male bargas, a significant amount of waterproofing materials, a bunch of clothes for dwarves and humans to help keep our handful of migrants happy, and a decently large amount of iron.

Despite the fact we might be making our own iron from pyrite soon, I don't want us to be solely dependent on me figuring that process out. Plus, it'll take time for the pyrite process to actually produce iron for Karsh to be able to use. This iron will come in billets, so he'll be able to work it right away. We could use most of it to build the previously mentioned vault for a bank, so that valuables can reasonably be stored in the city, rather than deep in the mountain.

Overall, that portion of our order was about five times the normal volume that we could afford through salt and paper trade, but, with the money from the auction, we can afford it. That also brought us to about the limit of what their ship would be capable of transporting to us. Though it still had room for a small amount of goods, which is reserved for potential crystals if the merchant can acquire them.

Even a few pounds of crystals that produce effects when exposed to mana are very expensive. That's partially due to the danger associated with transporting them. When exposed to any mana at all, they produce a small amount of whatever their effect is, so they need to be handled accordingly. I've requested crystals that produce heat, fire, electricity, or water, if they exist that is. I've also explicitly asked that the crystals be checked and that their history is well known, so that we don't get any 'cursed' crystals. Even if it is radiation, it's still deadly, and I don't want to deal with it.

Due to those requirements alone, a few pounds of those crystals runs us about three years worth of trade for each type. In order to pay for the four types, I had to give up twelve years of trade value in dwarven coins. Though, if I consider it may take a few years for those crystals to be acquired, we'll probably have had another auction by then, and will have recouped that cost, so I'm not extremely concerned by it. After all, we still have more than half of our dwarven coins left.

It was fairly easy for the merchant to set out the next day, since we kept most of our salt and paper, as preparations for the next auction, so we sent him off with dwarven coin instead, which required a lot less effort to load onto their ship.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

----------------------------------------

After all the trade was taken care of, I returned back to the city, and started discussions with Zaka about getting permanent military positions on the island, given what we learned from Shasta. Those discussions went on for a few days as we discussed the details of how things would be run.

The biggest issue was that Zaka wasn't fond of having groups of our population living on other parts of the island for extended periods of time. I got the feeling during our discussion that he might have taken the other village being wiped out by the dwarves harder than I had previously thought. Ultimately, we settled on those positions being handled similar to the salvage and mining teams, but on a rotation. The five artillery locations and the lookout post will be occupied constantly, but they'll have a shift schedule of 20 days on, 20 days off, being relieved by the next team to take their place.

Each location will have a team of three, with one individual being "in charge" of the other two, and a singular individual back in the city being in charge of all twelve of the teams. Meaning that our military is going to consist of 37 individuals, though I suppose if you count the city guard, it's a bit higher. They'll also change which location they'll be at each time, to keep it fair, since some of the locations are much closer to the city than others.

While they're at their designated location, they'll be in charge of maintaining the equipment there, and making a dirt path to connect to the nearest road. In the past having the locations obscured was to our benefit, but now that we could potentially be attacked at any time, having the ability to quickly reinforce those positions is more to our benefit than having them be difficult to find.

With those discussions taken care of, I left Zaka to determine who should be part of the new military force, as he knows the population much better than I do. With that, there is still another month-and-a-half of winter, so I plan on building a new small bathhouse by the lab area, so that come springtime, I can move the crystal there and hopefully finish the ore roasting area for processing the galena and sphalerite, and hopefully also the pyrite when the time comes.

----------------------------------------

Since we already had the medium sized crystal in the basement of the lab, I was able to finish the bathhouse in only fourteen days, though I can't say I was a fan of how many trips up and down the stairs I had to make to do so. If it weren't for those stairs, I wouldn't even build the bathhouse, since I can just recharge at that medium crystal, but those stairs are exhausting, and it does interfere with some of Tiberius's experiments when I'm constantly interrupting to use the crystal.

He's still testing different mixes of blood, though it does seem he's moved from a general approach to something more precise, as I saw him carefully measuring out volumes of blood to go into a single container. I'm quite interested to see what results he can get from this sort of work. He must think there is something, since he's given up on two other projects when he realized there wasn't much more he could do with those.

With the bathhouse ready for springtime over here, I decided to resume work on the roasting area for the remainder of the time until I need to move the crystal. At night, rather than work in the dark so far from the city, I've been taking that time to produce lightstone in the city, where I have easy access to mana, then during the day, I haul it to the worksite while I wait for my mana to recharge, so I've been steadily building up a stockpile of lightstone there. Once spring arrives, I think I should be able to finish the ore roasting area pretty quickly.

Though I have a few improvements that I want to add to Konkur's design that might take a little longer after the general area is finished. Namely, I want to add forced air blowers to the roasting ovens, and add some medium sized windmills to the area to power that. The reason for wanting the forced air blowers is so I can add an exhaust chimney to the roasting ovens, and have the sulfur dioxide release higher up in the air, above a covered roof, so that the workers are exposed to much less of the gas than they would be otherwise.