As I started making the crates for salt and paper to take to the auction, I realized that I should actually take a few days replacing some of the stakes along the road with permanent stone posts, rather than letting most of the work go to waste. Ultimately, I spent eight days doing so. I replaced every ninth stake with a larger stone post that I stoneshaped onto the bedrock or the road, depending on the location. I also replaced the second stake, and the second from the last stake, so they can be used as relative points for aiming the eventual tunnel.
However, rather than doing the math now to figure out each post's altitudinal change and linear distance to the last post, I'll save that for later. I have a feeling that I'll be waiting on Kao's island again for some time for the auction, and while I'd like to spend some of the time learning dwarvish, I can also spend some of my time doing those calculations. Though it means I'll need to prep some payment to Shasta to cover her teaching costs.
With that in mind, I spent an additional six days getting 110 crates ready. Four each for the participants, and ten for Kao, in appreciation for the work he's putting into this. Those ten are in addition to the 5% of the auction's earnings that he'll be getting. In retrospect, 5% might be a bit too stingy considering all the decorum that seems to go into interacting with other dwarven warlords, but I suppose that ultimately depends on how well the crystal auctions go moving forward. I did also give Kao that second crystal, which is, in essence, an entire auction's income...
Well, outside of the gift, I won't offer up extra money to Kao for free. If he brings it up, I'll be open to negotiating new terms. I do still have a bit less than a month left until the actual trip to Kao's island begins, so I can do a little more work here before I leave, so I think I'll focus on building the rest of the tools for the mining crew.
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I've made a handful of tools to assist the mining crew to ensure that everything is dug as accurately as possible, though I'm sure that will also slow down their rate of excavation somewhat. The first item is a sled supported on two long rails, one on either side. Since they're mining using stone shaping, the idea is that you use the two rails to mark the edges of the tunnel, and their flat base to make sure the tunnel is staying level with itself.
I've decided on a very, very gentle slope for the tunnel, with a 1:200 slope. That means for every 200 feet the tunnel runs, it should only rise one foot in altitude. It's not quite as gentle of a slope as some aqueducts are built at, and it means that that I had to add functionality to the sled that they'll use, since it's too hard to properly read a plumb bob on a protractor for that gentle of a slope.
Ultimately, by making the sled 8 feet long, I embedded a water level into it. This water level is somewhat special though. I built the sled on a work area that I made exceptionally level initially, and built a water level into it. Then I tilted the sled to match the slope I wanted, and cut a notch into the back of the water level, so it drained the level slightly. I then cut a horizontal mark along the new water level along the water's meniscus at the slight incline. This way, whenever they want to check that they've been working at the right level, they simply add water until it overflows, and check that the water hugs that horizontal marking, this isn't perfect, but it should help prevent them from getting too far off the expected grade.
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Beyond that though, I made a tool for them to verify and correct their work long term. With Karsh's help, I made a fifty foot long copper pipe, two right angle connectors, and some marked measuring tanks. By filling them with water, we can check the level in both tanks, and see what the difference is, since water pressure will correct the level in both tanks to be horizontal. We'd expect the lower tank to have 3" more water than the uphill tank. If it isn't that, we can either manually correct the tunnel at that point, or simply keep track of the differences, and attempt to correct it later, while digging from the other side. If, for instance all the error is in the same direction, then we might simply be able to use the same sled for the other tunnel, and the error would even out.
The final tool I made for them is a smaller sled, used for marking the drainage gutter, and the stone rail locations for eventual carts. It's ultimately just there to help standardize the final product, since they could just eyeball both of those, and it'd be relatively fine. With all those tools completed though, I have about ten days until Kao's ships pick us up, so I need to head to the other side of the island to be ready for that.
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It only took Kao's ships 9 days to arrive, and after factoring in hauling our goods and travel to the far side of the island, we had four days of actual waiting. Though I didn't let that time go to waste. I used the opportunity to get an estimate for the height between the last measuring stake on this side of the island and the approximate high-tide mark, which was about 41 feet, give or take a foot. Ultimately, waves made it harder than I expected to measure the exact high tide point, but we got pretty close, all things considered.
The trip to Kao's island was less interesting the second time, but I still used my telescope to look over the other islands for anything of value. While I didn't spot anything valuable, it does seem like the lizards on the second island are still thriving. I also noticed a few locations that would probably be decent for setting up new villages in the future.
When we arrived on Kao's island though, I noticed quite a few things had changed in three years. The port area had been expanded with multiple new docks, likely to accommodate the expected number of ships. Beyond that, the road from the port to the fort was expanded, and the road continued up the slope beyond the fort now. The fort's walls also expanded beyond just the half of the slope it covered previously, and now encompassed the whole of the slope, meaning you'd need to pass through the fort to enter the raised center of the island, or else scale the cliffs elsewhere.
On the first night, we stayed in the fort, but the next day, I was shown to the new addition to the island. For all intents and purposes, there was now a large village in the center of the island, with a central arena. Upon closer inspection though, it's not really a village, but more like a bunch of small mansions with walls around each of them, demarking their own yards. It seems, due to their custom of waiting until all the expected warlords gather before any of them meet with each other, this is the result. Each warlord can occupy a mansion with their retinue without interacting with each other.
The central arena is, as expected, the location that the auction will take place, and just seems to be a much larger version of the previous auction's arena. Though this time there are rooms on top of each other as well, so it's even more intimidating than previously to be in the center of it all. Shasta did inform me that I shouldn't expect all the warlords to actually be present this time. Given the novelty of the first auction, those who participated where interested enough to arrive in person, but this time, I should expect a lot of representatives, rather than all participants being the warlords themselves.
Well, regardless of any of that, it'll be a month before the auction begins. I've brought along a decent chunk of dwarven currency to pay Shasta for more lessons on dwarvish, and I have calculations to do for the posts along the road. Unlike last auction, I don't plan on doing a bunch of physical labor leading up to it.